Decisive.nvim

Decisive.nvim is a neovim plugin to assist work with CSV files. It uses neovim 0.10+ 'inline extmarks' feature to insert virtual text to make the CSV columns line up.

This means that you see the columns lined up, but you can edit the file, save it to disk, and the padding text is never written to disk. If you enter extra text, you may have to re-trigger decisive to align the columns again (see the auto_realign setting).

Besides the function to line up columns, the plugin also provides:

• functions to jump to the next and previous columns, which you could map to [c and ]c for instance
• a "inner cell" text object, so you can yank, change, delete, select a single cell of the csv (with yic for instance)

You can see a quick demo here:

Besides adding extra spaces to line up columns, it could maybe be technically possible to hide the separators, but I'd like to keep the plugin simple and easy to reason about.

Possible setup:

vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>cca', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv({})<cr>", {desc="align CSV", silent=true})
vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>ccA', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_clear({})<cr>", {desc="align CSV clear", silent=true})
vim.keymap.set('n', '[c', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_prev_col()<cr>", {desc="align CSV prev col", silent=true})
vim.keymap.set('n', ']c', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_next_col()<cr>", {desc="align CSV next col", silent=true})

-- setup text objects (optional)
require('decisive').setup{}

The align_csv function takes a map parameter; here are the keys for the align_csv function map parameter:

• csv_separator: string, character to use for this alignment. If not specified, decisive will attempt to guess it;
• auto_realign: string list or false, whether to automatically re-align the columns after some events. Default: {'InsertLeave', 'TextChanged'}. Set to false to disable, or set other events; this is a buffer-local autocommand, not global;
• auto_realign_limit_ms: auto_realign will not trigger if alignment takes more than 50ms or the duration you specify

The setup function is totally optional, it enables the cell text object if you want it. You can change the text object leader (the default is c) through the cell_text_object_leader option.

The highlight groups that are used for the virtual inserted spaces are CsvFillHlEven and CsvFillHlOdd. You could use them if you wanted the virtual spaces to have a specific color, for instance with hi CsvFillHlEven ctermbg=red guibg=red.

Plugin Setup

Lazy

return {
  "emmanueltouzery/decisive.nvim",
  config = function()
    require('decisive').setup{}
  end,
  lazy=true,
  ft = {'csv'},
  keys = {
    { '<leader>cca', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv({})<cr>",       { silent = true }, desc = "Align CSV",          mode = 'n' },
    { '<leader>ccA', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_clear({})<cr>", { silent = true }, desc = "Align CSV clear",    mode = 'n' },
    { '[c', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_prev_col()<cr>",         { silent = true }, desc = "Align CSV prev col", mode = 'n' },
    { ']c', ":lua require('decisive').align_csv_next_col()<cr>",         { silent = true }, desc = "Align CSV next col", mode = 'n' },
  }
}