In Windows, using the AutoHotkey utility, it's possible to write simple scripts to expand some text in an editor of choice (e.g. Visual Studio's editor).
For example, if in Visual Studio editor I type:
d1 [TAB]
(i.e. press the keys in sequence: d,1,Tab) the above "d1" text can be replaced with one or more lines of code snippets. The mapping between "d1" and the expanded lines of code is specified in a AutoHotkey script.
This is very convenient e.g. for demos; for example: at some point if I'd like to enter a whole function body, assuming that I associated it to e.g. "d3", I can simply press d3Tab on the keyboard, and I get the function body automatically pasted in the editor in current cursor location; and I can have different code snippets associated to different key combinations, e.g.
d1 --> DoSomething() function definition
d2 --> class Foo definition
d3 --> test code xyz...
Is it possible to achieve the same goal using Vim?
In other words, I'd like to have a set of code snippets previously prepared, and I'd like to paste each one of them in my currently edited source code file in Vim, in a way similar to what I described above.
Basic expansion can be done via the built-in abbreviations, for example:
:inoreabb d1 DoSomething()<CR>{<CR><CR>}<CR><Up><Up>
Read more at :help abbreviations.
snippets are like the built-in :abbreviate on steroids, usually with parameter insertions, mirroring, and multiple stops inside them. One of the first, very famous (and still widely used) Vim plugins is snipMate (inspired by the TextMate editor); unfortunately, it's not maintained any more; though there is a fork. A modern alternative (that requires Python though) is UltiSnips. There are more, see this list on the Vim Tips Wiki.
There are three things to evaluate: First, the features of the snippet engine itself, second, the quality and breadth of snippets provided by the author or others; third, how easy it is to add new snippets.
I have previously used snipMate that does something like what you're describing.
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php%3Fscript_id%3D2540
Related
I am new to Vim and I need to speed up my typing for this kind of statements.
if (a == 'e') {
foo();
}
In other text editors, I usually type if() {} first and then insert the text in to the parenthesis and curly braces. If I do this in Vim, I need to switch back to normal, move cursor to middle of () then middle of {}... switch between i and esc ...
What is your suggestion on typing this kind of syntax for Vim beginner? I would be grateful if you can show me the commands for that example step by step.
This is a job for snippet expansion. Take a look at SnipMate or UltiSnips.
snippets are like the built-in :abbreviate on steroids, usually with parameter insertions, mirroring, and multiple stops inside them. One of the first, very famous (and still widely used) Vim plugins is snipMate (inspired by the TextMate editor); unfortunately, it's not maintained any more; though there is a fork. A modern alternative (that requires Python though) is UltiSnips. There are more, see this list on the Vim Tips Wiki.
There are three things to evaluate: First, the features of the snippet engine itself, second, the quality and breadth of snippets provided by the author or others; third, how easy it is to add new snippets.
There are two approaches that solves your goal:
abbreviations
and snippets engines
Abbreviations and the old way of doing things. You just type if and space, and tada! You'll find plenty examples around the web. Only a few will be context-sensitive (i.e. they won't expand within comment or string contexts), or able to take the current project spacing style into consideration. In lh-cpp, you'll find the usual control-statement abbreviations for C and C++, they'll need to be duplicated for similar languages (a runtime ftplugin/c/c_snippets.vim from a php ftplugin should do it in your case)-- in lh-misc I support a couple of others languages (for VimL and shell)
Snippet engines are the trendy way of doing the same thing. This time, you will be able to type i or if and then <tab> (or CTRL+SPACE, or ...). Control-statement snippets won't need to be aware of the current context as we need to explicitly require the expansion. Others have already given links to the trendy snippets engines. Snippets from lh-cpp (which relies on mu-template) take the project style into account when expanding control-statement snippets (i.e. some projects want ) and { on a same line, other want a newline in between, ...)
Here's my answer in case you want to go with vanilla Vim.
In the majority of the cases I guess there is no point in entering the parentheses first and filling in the condition later, just type it all in right away:
if (a == 'e')
Then you can either continue
by typing {}<ESC>:
if (a == 'e') {}
^ cursor is here
The cursor is already placed so you can continue with i<CR> and type the body (if properly configured, Vim should indent for you).
or by typing {<CR>}<ESC>:
if (a == 'e') {
}
^ cursor is here
Then you can enter the body by pressing O (open new line above cursor). Possibly Vim also automatically indents here (it doesn't in my configuration).
If you really want to fill in the condition after you have entered this:
if () {
}
^ cursor
you can do so by typing kf(a.
If anybody knows better ways to do this without plugins, suggestions are welcome.
I'd like to add a command to my .vimrc that allows to, within a visual selection or the range of the current fold level to
yank all, but only those lines that match a certain pattern.
and as a bonus to
reverse their order
and
perform a small pattern substitution.
Specifically the idea is to reduce the legwork in writing the common C idiom fail-goto-rollback, i.e. (can be found in lot of C projects most prominently the Linux kernel) if the body of a function (or a block) is this
someErrorType errorcode;
if(fail1) {
errorcode = someError1;
goto error_1;
}
prepare_a();
if(fail2) {
errorcode = someError2;
goto error_2;
}
then the result of the desired transformation shall be this.
error_2:
/* <insert cleanup code operation that did not fail1 here> */
error_1:
for the "yanking all", you can do:
normal mode: qaq to clear reg a
do visual selection
press :, vim will auto add '<,'>, then g/pattern/y A<Enter>
all your needed lines are in reg a, you can "ap to paste. for the reversing order requirement, I don't understand. What output do you expect. A concrete before/after example may help.
For adding boilerplate code, the usual solution is via a snippets plugin, which solves this (at least partially) in a generic way, instead of building a (possibly brittle) special solution with Vim built-ins.
snippets are like the built-in :abbreviate on steroids, usually with parameter insertions, mirroring, and multiple stops inside them. One of the first, very famous (and still widely used) Vim plugins is snipMate (inspired by the TextMate editor); unfortunately, it's not maintained any more; though there is a fork. A modern alternative (that requires Python though) is UltiSnips. There are more, see this list on the Vim Tips Wiki.
There are three things to evaluate: First, the features of the snippet engine itself, second, the quality and breadth of snippets provided by the author or others; third, how easy it is to add new snippets.
I am using the kana / vim-textobj-user for defining some custom user objects but the problem is I can't jump over them : case in point
let's say I am using the same indent text object which is mapped by ai and ii
I want to jump around the text in normal mode something like ]i and [i
currently I am using a very hacky way of selecting and exiting visual mode
So is there a simple way to do that and have some kind of mappings for all the other user text-objects as well .
Something like ]{text-object}
I am using the kana / vim-textobj-user for defining some custom user objects
[...]
let's say I am using the same indent text object which is mapped by ai and ii
I want to jump around the text in normal mode something like ]i and [i
Vim has a bunch of built-in commands like ]m, [M, etc. So I thought you meant ]i/[i to move the cursor to the next/previous text object. If so, vim-textobj-user supports both selecting and moving to a text object since its first release. But it's not automatic. At least you have to declare what keys (such as ]i/[i) to be used for the commands.
But I wonder about the following sesntence:
currently I am using a very hacky way of selecting and exiting visual mode
So you typed like vaio<Esc> and vai<Esc>? What you want to do is to move the cursor to the first/last line of the text object under the cursor? If so, vim-textobj-user currently doesn't provide API to define such commands.
In this case, it is probably possible to automate defining key mappings like nmap ]i vai<Esc>. But it seems to be fragile and overrides several built-in commands.
Text objects are only for applying a command (e.g. gU) or visually selecting an area of text. Motions over / to the next occurrence are highly related, but different commands. I think the vim-textobj-user plugin only provides the former, but not the latter.
My CountJump plugin is quite similar, and provides commands to set up both text objects and jumps based on regular expressions.
I'm wondering if there's a way to select variables intelligently in the same way that one can select blocks using commands like va}. There's some language-specific parsing going on to differentiate php and ruby, for example. For future reference, It'd be nice to tap into that - ideally selecting around various syntactic elements.
For example. I'd like to select around $array['testing'] in the following line of php:
$array['testing'] = 'whatever'
Or, lets say I want to select the block parameter list |item, index| here:
hash.each_with_index { |item, index| print item }
EDIT:
Specific regexps might address the various questions individually, but I have a sense that there ought to be a way to leverage syntactic analysis to get something far more robust here.
Though your given examples are quick to select with built-in Vim text objects (the first is just viW, for the second I would use F|v,), I acknowledge that Vim's syntax highlighting could be a good source for motions and text objects.
I've seen the first implementation of this idea in the SyntaxMotion plugin, and I've recently implemented a similar plugin: SameSyntaxMotion. The first defines motions for normal and visual mode, but no operator-pending and text objects. It does not skip over contained sub-syntax items and uses same color as the distinguishing property, whereas mine uses syntax (which can be more precise, but also more difficult to grasp), and has text objects (ay and iy), too.
You can define your own arbitrary text objects in Vim.
The simplest way to do custom text objects is defining a :vmap (or :xmap) for the Visual mode part and an :omap for the Operator-pending mode part. For example, the following mappings
xnoremap aC F:o,
onoremap aC :normal! F:v,<CR>
let you select a colon-enclosed bit of text. Try doing vaP or daP on the word "colon" below:
Some text :in-colon-text: more of the same.
See :h omap-info for another short example of :omap.
If you don't mind depending on a plugin, however, there is textobj-user. This is a general purpose framework for custom text objects written by Kana Natsuno. There are already some excellent text objects written for that framework like textobj-indent which I find indispensable.
Using this you can easily implement filetype-dependent text objects for variables. And make it available for everybody!
Is there plug-in that makes vim close syntactic constructions that wraps code blocks automatically for any language based on data in indent and syntax files?
For example I editing lua file, when I write
function myfunction()
and press enter it automatically make an closing "end"
function myfunction()
<cursor position>
end
Or maybe anyone can show an example how to write your own plug-in for specific language with long keywords for code blocks (like lua, erlang or pascal) ?
Endwise seems to be what you're looking for. It already has lua support, and it looks like it would be pretty easy to extend, if you are comfortable with VimL.
I would use a snippet plugin like UltiSnips (my favorite) or Snipmate. They essentially expand some small word or piece of text into larger pieces of code and allow you to edit only the parts that are unique for each structure. Both UltiSnips and Snippmate include snippets for many languages and let you create your own snippets.
For example UltiSnips inclueds a function snippet for Lua. I just have to type out fun and then press tab and it gets expanded to
function new_function(args)
end
and new_fuctnion gets selected so I can edit the function name. Then once I press Ctrl-j (in my vimrc I rebind this to Tab) it selects the next part of the snippet which is args in this case allowing me to enter the function's arguments. A final Ctrl-j puts the cursor in the body of the function.