Sort Motion.vim

This plugin provides the ability to sort in Vim using text objects and motions. Sorting lines and argument lists manually can be a hassle, and thus most write it off as a waste of effort, but when its as easy as anything else in Vim, it becomes a viable option.

sort-motion has three different sorting modes:

Linewise: sort a sequence of lines (require statements, gem lists, etc)
Character: sort a comma separated list (argument lists, attribute lists, etc)
Visual (linewise or normal): provided for continuity, similar to linewise
Block Visual: By default behaves the same as the other visual modes. Optionally, you can provide a specific sort command which you might use to sort by a column (example: Vissort)

Installation

Using Vundle:

" add this line to your ~/.vimrc
Bundle 'christoomey/vim-sort-motion'

then run :BundleInstall from within Vim.

Usage

Linewise

The primary interface to this plugin is via the gs mapping, for sorting based on a text object or motion. To use the mapping, type gs followed by a motion, ie 2j to sort down two lines.

Examples:

gs2j => Sort down two lines (current + 2 below)
gsip => Sort the current paragraph
gsii => Sort the current indentation level (requires text-obj-indent plugin)

Character

In addition, if the text object is within a line then sort-motion will attempt to sort the text as a comma separated list.

Examples:

gsi( => Sort within parenthesis. (b, c, a) would become (a, b, c)

Visual

For continuity, sort-motion also defines a visual mode mapping for gs. This behaves as a linewise sort over the lines defined by the visual selection.

You can also (optionally) specify a blockwise command to use for block selections (example: Vissort).

Configuration

sort_motion_flags

If you'd like to pass any options to sort you can set g:sort_motion_flags. For example you could use:

let g:sort_motion_flags = 'ui'

To make all sorts case insensitive and remove duplicates.

Note: this only applies to linewise sorting (including visual), but does not apply to the character based sorting of comma separated lists.

sort_motion_visual_block_command

If you'd like to specify a specific command to use for blockwise selections you can set it here. This is useful if for example you want to use Vissort so that you can sort by a column.

let g:sort_motion_visual_block_command = 'Vissort'

By default the command used is sort.

NOTE: To use Vissort you will need to install this plugin.

christoomey / vim-sort-motion