Delete numbers at the beginning of lines

Question

I have a file "file.txt" in which some rows begins with numbers. E.g. file.txt: ``` 1 bla bla 390 23 foo foo 100 # bar bar some word 45 junk ``` Is there an easy and fast way to delete the numbers (and the space) from all the lines that start with a number, while deleting only the space from the others? I would like a command so that the file then looks like: ``` bla bla 390 foo foo 100 # bar bar some word junk ```

Accepted Answer

You can use the command editor line:

```
:%s/^\d*//
```

This uses the global search `%s` to find any line that begins with a digit `\d*` and replace it with nothing `//`.

Additionally, if you need to remove the extra space after the number as well:

```
:%s/^\d* //
```

Delete numbers at the beginning of lines

Solution

Problem