Can I yank (copy) around a block comment in vim? - vim

One of my favorite things about vi(m)'s yank (i.e. copy) syntax is the ability to copy the entire contents of the current word, line, parens, code block, etc. using the ya{something} and yi{something} syntaxes
Examples for reference:
word: yaw
parens: ya(
curly braces (without the braces): yi{
XML/HTML tag: yat
So what I'm trying to figure out now is whether vim recognizes block comments as a yankable unit. I'm imagining something like yac. Is this standard? If not, is there a plugin or a mapping that someone's figured out?

You can, if you install a plugin, for example: https://github.com/glts/vim-textobj-comment

Related

How to delete enclosing braces in Vim?

I have the following text:
Monkeys eat {bananas}.
My cursor is in the middle of the word banana:
Monkeys eat {bana|nas}.
Here the | symbol denotes the cursor's position.
How can I delete the braces from there?
I can change bananas to apples with a simple ci}apples, so perhaps I could use a similar trick just to get rid of the { and } characters?
Also, can I do this even in this case, which is actually what I really need to do?
networks {
local
is|p
}
(The simplified example above was just to introduce the concept.)
Using Tim Pope's excellent surround.vim plugin (which I highly recommend), you would do ds{ for delete surrounding {
I understand that adding another plugin isn't always the ideal solution when you could find a native key sequence instead, but surround.vim is supremely useful, as it can also handle XML/HTML tags and perform enclosures on complex text objects. I regard it as one of those "stuck on a desert island, must have under any circumstance" plugins.
The task can be accomplished by means of Vim built-in text motions.
Delete the text inside the braces, select the braces, and paste the
previously deleted text over them:
di{v%p
What about this:
yiBvaBp
No plugin and simple.
Delete the braces and leave everything else?
mz[{x]}x`z
Expanded
:help m - set a mark. In this case marking the initial cursor position so I can go back there at the end. :help [{ - moves the cursor to the opening brace of the smallest block enclosing the cursor. :help x - delete the brace which is now under the cursor. ]} and x - doing the same to the closing brace. And finally
help `
returning to marked position, the one called z created at the start.
"Plugins" aren't my style...

Remove command with matching braces

I'm using (mac)vim with tex-suite and would like to have a single regex command (or any other way) to do the following thing:
Change
\textcolor{green}{some random text}
into
some random text
This should be done for all occurrences of \textcolor{green}{} in my tex file...
Any idea?
EDIT: I need it to recognize matching braces. Here an example :
\textcolor{green}{
with $v_\text{F}\sim10^6$m.s$^{-1}$ the massless Dirac fermions
velocity in pristine graphene}.
In my experience, things like this most often crop up during editing, and you might have the search for \textcolor{green}{ already highlighted.
In such a scenario, :global is usually my weapon of choice:
:g//norm d%diBvaBp
diBvaBp: diB (delete inner block), vaB (select block), p (put)
If you have surround.vim installed (recommend it!) you could remove the pair of braces simply doing dsB (delete surrounding {})
:g//norm d%dsB
Of course, you can combine it like
:g/\\textcolor{green}{/norm d%dsB
I just noted a potential issue when the target patterns don't start at the beginning of a line. The simplest way to get around that is
:g//norm nNd%diBvaBp
A more involved way (possibly less efficient) would be using a macro:
/\\textcolor{green}{
gg
qqd%diBvaBpnq
Followed by something like 100#q to repeat the macro
:%s,\\textcolor{green}{\([^}]\+\)},\1,g
Updated as per your updated question:
:%s,\\textcolor{green},\r-HUUHAA-&,g
:g/\\textcolor{green}/normal 0f\df}lvi{xhP$xx
:%s/\n-HUUHAA-//
Quick explanation of how it works:
Put all \textcolor{green} lines onto a line of their own, with 'special' marker -HUUHAA-
Use visual selection vi{ to select everything in between the {}, paste it outside and delete the now empty {}.
Delete leftover stuff including the marker.

Vim Surround: Create new tag but don't indent/new line

I would like to mimic Textmates CTRL+ALT+w, which creates a new pair of opening and closing HTML tags on the same line.
In VIM Surround I'm using CTRL+st in Edit mode for this, but it always indents and creates a new line after setting the tag, so that it looks like this (* = cursor position):
<p>
*
</p>
Is there a way to achieve this? :
<p>*</p>
I guess your problem is that the selected area is "line wise". For example, if you select a few lives with V and surround it with tags, the tags will be placed one line above and one bellow the selected lines.
You probably want to create a "character wise" selection, with v before surrounding it.
Anyway, please post the map you created, so we can help debugging this.
Update
After some clarification in the comments, I would tell you that the surround plugin is not the best option. As its name describes, it was created to deal with surrounded content. So you may need content to surround.
In your case, I recommend taking a look in HTML AutoCloseTag. This plugin closes the html tag once you type the >. It is certainly more appropriated, and uses less keystrokes than surround.
<p <--- Now when you type ">", if becomes:
<p>|</p> <--- Where "|" is the cursor.
Obviously, you will get this behavior to every tag. But that may be handy if you like it.
From normal mode, type vstp> to enter visual mode and output an opening and closing <p> tag on the same line at the current cursor position. Use a capital S to maintain the current indent level.
This doesn't place the cursor in between the tags as you describe, but neither does Textmate's CtrlW shortcut (I think you meant CTRL+Shift+w, not CTRL+ALT+w, as the latter just outputs a diamond sign.)
My answer is probably coming to late, but I'll try to help.
I had similar problem with Vimsurround plugin. Every time I select sentence (one line) using ctrl+V and try to surround it with something I get this:
{
var myVar
}
instead of this:
{ var myVar } // what I wanted
I found easy solution: From a normal mode I choose a line with vis command and then I type capital C (my vim surround mapping ) and choose brackets to surround.Then I get one line nicely surrounded.
The question title is technically mislabeled based on what the author was actually looking for, but since I was actually looking for the answer to the question asked in the title, I figure I should provide an answer to it as well.
To create a new tag surrounding an element without the automatic indentation Vim Surround uses when using a block wise selection (ie: VysS), you can instead do something like:
^ys$
This command will move your cursor to the first non-blank character of the line, issue the command that you want to utilize You Surround, and move to the end of the line. Then, simply start entering your tag.
The result is this:
<input type="email" name="email">
Could become something like this:
<li><input type="email" name="email"></li>
The command is repeatable as well with . and all the normal other Vim goodness.
Stumbled upon this question because I was wondering this as well - I believe the simplest way to do this is just:
yss<p>
(yss surrounds a line with something without indenting - see here: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-surround-vim/)
You can accomplish this by selecting the relevant text object: :h text-objects
...and surrounding that instead of surrounding a Visual Line selection.
The most common example I found myself running into was when trying to surround one tag with another. In that situation, the it and at text objects are quite useful:
*v_at* *at*
at "a tag block", select [count] tag blocks, from the
[count]'th unmatched "<aaa>" backwards to the matching
"</aaa>", including the "<aaa>" and "</aaa>".
See |tag-blocks| about the details.
When used in Visual mode it is made characterwise.
*v_it* *it*
it "inner tag block", select [count] tag blocks, from the
[count]'th unmatched "<aaa>" backwards to the matching
"</aaa>", excluding the "<aaa>" and "</aaa>".
See |tag-blocks| about the details.
When used in Visual mode it is made characterwise.
For example, if you had your cursor in a paragraph and you wanted to surround it with a div on the same line, ysat<div> would accomplish that.

Is there a good way to copy text within parentheses in Vim?

I want to copy the parameters foo(bar).baz in the following code:
function(foo(bar).baz)
First attempt: Cursor on one of the parentheses, then y%. This gives me the parameters plus a bit extra:
(foo(bar).baz)
Second attempt: Cursor on opening parenthesis. Set a mark ma, jump to end with
% then y`a to copy back to the mark. This gives me:
(foo(bar).baz
Setting a mark at the end and going the other way gives me exactly the same. Setting a
mark on the f, then typing mah%y`a does give me the foo(bar).baz that I want, but maybe there's something more concise. Is there?
Use text objects:
yi( (or ya( if you want to include the parenthesis).
You can also use " to work inside quotes, etc. See the link for details, or type :help text-objects in Vim.
A slightly shorter alternative to yi( is yib. Similarly yiB is equivalent to yi{ - yanks the contents inside braces.
Personally I usually do vib (visual select the text inside braces) first to make sure that the expected text is selected, followed by a y.
For more text object goodness, see :help text-objects.
Following should do it
Yank Inner Block
yi(

Does Vim have an auto-comment feature based on the file's syntax?

I'm not sure this is possible, but I'm interesting in making this happen.
Ideally, I would like to map this feature to SHIFT+CTRL+3.
I'm looking for a way to have Vim enter a comment (single line) which corresponds to the syntax of the file I'm editing. If there are multiple single-line comment styles, Vim could either automatically pick one, or give me the choice. If the single-line comment has two parts (e.g. /* and */), then pressing SHIFT+CTRL+3 the first time will start the comment, and the second time will close the comment.
Examples:
Python: #
JavaScript: //
C, C++: /* with */ or //
I know there are scripts which will insert comments for you, but I haven't seen any that will do this based on the syntax of the file.
I highly recommend NERD Commenter.
Sort of! I don't believe vim will do this out of the box, but you can install plugins that will do fairly intelligent commenting (using movement keys, visual line highlighting, etc) that are specific to the filetype being edited. You can get these plugins off of vim.org, and you should be able to make your own key mappings in your .vimrc file if you don't like the ones they come with.
tComment is pretty well regarded, and has worked for me.
I've heard that EnhCommentify might be better, but I haven't used it myself.
Seems like a similar question to this:
How to comment in vim while respecting the indent?
Use the nerd commenter plugin:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1218
See: this script which provides a function to commented a highlighted area in visual mode.
You want to start a comment in insert mode so your function would look more like:
fun CommentLines()
exe ":s#^#".g:Comment."#g"
endfun
Not quite what you're looking for, but efficient, and I suppose you know which comment to use.
(all this in command mode)
Put your cursor to the first line you want to comment. We willl then set a marker called a (valid names are a-z, single character) by typing
ma
put the cursor to the last line, then set a marker called b by typing
mb
Then comment the whole block (by searching for a newline and inserting the comment character (note the use of "#" as search delimiter because otherwise wee have to escape the "/")
:'a,'bs#^#//#
or for Python:
:'a,'bs/^/#/
To uncomment:
:'a,'bs#^//##
As we do line comments, it doesn't matter if we have other comments already in the file, they will be preserved.

Resources