Unable to match one or more whitespaces in Vim

Question

I want match spaces at the beginning of lines in Vim

PseudoCode of what I want to do

^( )*

I know the following fr

Answer 1

If you're looking to match any sort of whitespace (be it space or tab) the following regex is applicable

^[\s]*

^ matches the beginning of the line
[\s] / [\t] matches space or tab character (both seem to work, though according to the vim documentation you should use [\s]
* provides repetition, 0 or more.

of course using the / to search as mentioned by others.

Answer 2

If I understand correctly..

/ * will match 0 or more spaces

/ {0,n} will match 0 to n spaces (where n is a number)

To match 1 or more space starting from the beginning of the line:

/^ \+

Answer 3

I think you can really do is match spaces until some kind of non-space character, right? Try this:

^\( \+\)

Or, for any kind of whitespace:

^\(\s\+\)

In Vim regex (, ) and + need to be escaped. Also, if you planning to use backreference, the syntax is \1 (the first group, for example) and not $1 like Perl.

Answer 4

/ * matches zero or more spaces.

Example:

/foo *bar will match foobar, foo bar, foo    bar,etcetera`.

Note that if you want to use parenthesis like in your example then you need to escape them with a \\. Vim expressions are not standard Perl regular expressions nor POSIX regular expressions. You example would be:

\\( \\)*

Answer 5

Typing

/^ \+

In command mode will match one or more space characters at the beginning of a line.

Typing

/^\s\+

In command mode will match one or more whitespace characters (tabs etc. as well as spaces) at the beginning of a line.

Answer 6

To match spaces or tabs from the beginning of the line, you can also use: ^\s*.