I have this line in a MacVim buffer:
abcdefghijklm
I then type fev3l<esc>, to move the cursor to e, visually select the text efgh, and go back to normal mode.
I then press `< , and expect the cursor to move to e. Instead, it moves to a. If I then press `>, the cursor moves to h. Where the cursor actually moves seems a bit arbitrary, but I haven't figured out if there is a consistent pattern.
When doing this in /usr/bin/vim on the command line, I get the expected behaviour.
Looking at :nmap, I do not have ` mapped.
What could I be doing wrong?
You should check your keyboard layout.
On a non-US layout that contains diacritics, keys that correspond to diacritic marks will behave differently. Instead of being produced right away, such keys now are meant to be used in combination with another one to produce a letter with a diacritic, which may alter their expected behavior with programs.
Related
In vim, I've always been curious why pressing the esc key causes the cursor to go back by one character (usually). For example if I've typed:
This is |
With the cursor being the |, after I have finished typing and press esc, the line will look like:
This is|
And to re-type from where I left off I would have to press a instead of i. Why is this the expected behavior in vim?
I found the following answer in this question on the Unix & Linux Stack Exchange:
In insert mode, the cursor is between characters, or before the first
or after the last character. In normal mode, the cursor is over a
character (newlines are not characters for this purpose). This is
somewhat unusual: most editors always put the cursor between
characters, and have most commands act on the character after (not,
strictly speaking, under) the cursor. This is perhaps partly due to
the fact that before GUIs, text terminals always showed the cursor
on a character (underline or block, perhaps blinking). This
abstraction fails in insert mode because that requires one more
position (posts vs fences).
Switching between modes has to move the cursor by a half-character, so
to speak. The i command moves left, to put the cursor before the
character it was over. The a command moves right. Going out of
insert mode (by pressing Esc) moves the cursor left if
possible (if it's at the beginning of the line, it's moved right
instead).
I suppose the Esc behavior sort of makes sense. Often,
you're typing at the end of the line, and there Esc can
only go left. So the general behavior is the most common behavior.
Think of the character under the cursor as the last interesting
character, and of the insert command as a. You can repeat
a Esc without moving the cursor, except that
you'll be bumped one position right if you start at the beginning of a
non-empty line.
Credits to the original author.
If you would like to edit this behavior, you could follow the advice from #ib. in this answer:
Although I would not recommend changing the default cursor mechanics,
one way of achieving the behavior in question is to use the following
Insert-mode mapping.
:inoremap `^
Here the Esc key is overloaded in Insert mode to
additionally run the `^ command which moves the cursor to the
position where it had been the last time Insert mode was left. Since
in this mapping it is executed immediately after leaving Insert mode
with Esc, the cursor is left one character to the right as
compared to its position with default behavior.
Unlike some other workarounds, this one does not require Vim to be
compiled with the +ex_extra feature.
is it possible in vim to select all lines in the current file, but leave the position where my cursor is unchanged?
Let's say I am currently at line 500 (of 3000) and want to quickly select everything (not yank), as my selection is simply set up to show whitespace characters. Can this be done without leaving my current line?
To achieve exactly what you like, you can press the following:
ggVG<Esc><Ctrl-O><Ctrl-O>
gg moves to the beginning of the file
V starts visual line mode
G moves to the and of the file (now you have selected the whole
file)
<Esc> leaves visual mode
<Ctrl-O> moves your cursor back to the prevois location (first to the beginning of the file, then the second time to your last position before pressing gg)
And if you like to select only the visible lines in you window (to not scroll away). You can use HVL instead of ggVG (H moves to the top of your window and L to the bottom).
You also could show whitespaces without using visual selection with something like this in your .vimrc:
set list listchars=tab:»·,trail:·,nbsp:·
This helps me to detect trailing whitespaces, and mixed (spaces/tabs) indentation.
usually pressing
ggVG
in normal mode will select all the lines, but it will leave your cursor at the last line of the file.
If you wants to highlights the whitespace characters then you can highlight this by using the below command in command mode (this white color chosen is for dark theme)
: hi ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=White guibg=White
Depending on what you are trying to achieve you can use something like :
%cmd
To apply the command to the whole file.
For example, %y will yank the whole file, %=will format the whole file, without moving your cursor. It does not really work if you do something like %d...
It is not a real selection though but rather a way to apply a command on the whole file.
To go further you can use something like
%norm Atest
To add 'test' at the end of each line. (Actually this is a bad example, because this command will move to the last line...)
It is not possible to have the cursor inside a visual selection. This caused by that, vim defines visual selection through two marks. As soon as you move the cursor one of the marks gets updated. Basically this means one of the marks is always lays where the cursor is(at least when using "v" to select). You cannot have the border in the middle of the region that the border defines :)
When I switch to command mode in Vim, the cursor seems to move one character back when it's at the end of or on a word, and when I go to the end-of-line with $, it does not go to the actual end of line but one character before the end of the last word, and l ("el") does not move it forward and I have to use the arrow key to get there.
I haven't been able to find documentation of this behavior, but this seems strange to me. What's the reasoning behind this (for my own curiosity), and how can I get around it (or deal with it)?
it is a little more clear if you use gvim, where the cursor changes.
insert mode in gvim has the cursor as an I-beam, since the next letter you type will be inserted after the |. normal mode has the block cursor, because the next thing you type may just effect the letter that is currently highlighted (like if you use x, s, etc). So insert mode is actually adding text, but normal mode is modifying text in some way.
So in normal mode, jumping to the end of the line really just means the last character, since that is the last thing that is possible to be modified. in insert mode, the cursor goes passed the last character, since it is possible to add things afterwards.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can control which side of the block you end up on going from normal mode to insert mode
([] means that the block cursor is over that h)
Let's say you have t[h]is text
if you pressed i at this point, the cursor would look like this (in gvim)
(| being the insert mode cursor)
Let's say you have t|his text
if you pressed a instead of i, it would look like this
Let's say you have th|is text
Another thing to keep in mind (as pavanlimo mentioned), from normal mode you can go to insert mode with your cursor just before the first character of the line, or just after the last character, with shift-I or shift-A.
I'm not quite sure of the reasoning behind it, but you can work around it by pressing:
Shift + a
You might be interested in the option virtualedit and the following value:
set virtualedit=onemore
With this option you can move the cursor one character over the end of the line and then press i to insert mode after the last character.
This solves the issue in a way but personally I find this behavior a bit odd. Only in a few cases you encounter the problem so it might be worth ignoring it ;-)
That's because all commands you use affect the letter the cursor is over. If wouldn't make sense to press x (delete 1 letter) behind the actual letter.
There's actually no need to move the cursor in command mode behind the last letter, if you want to e.g. append you can press a which puts the cursor behind the letter in insertion mode.
It is implementation-dependent on whether the cursor can move past the end of the line (at least it is an option in my editor's VIM emulation mode). You can press a to enter insert mode and start editing after the current character in this situation (rather than i).
pressing i will enter the insert mode before the cursor
a after the cursor
I before the first non empty character in the line
A at the end of the line.
So, use A to quickly start typing at the end of the line.
I suggest
:set virtualedit=onemore
:inoremap <Esc> <Esc>`^
Using macvim, when I copy a text selection, it always includes the character under the cursor.
For example, if the cursor is at the far left and I press shift-down arrow, it selects the entire line plus the first character of the next line (since the cursor is sitting over the next line's first character).
Is there a way to configure macvim to not include the cursor character in text selections?
Take a look at the selection option. By default it's set to inclusive, but you can change it to exclusive to make text selections act the way you want:
:set selection=exclusive
You can also set it to exclusive with the behave command:
:behave mswin
This also sets several other options, however, which may or may not be what you want. See the Vim help for the specifics.
:help :behave
:help 'selection'
I am guessing that shift-down arrow activates visual character mode, and moves the cursor down a line. If you are trying to select entire lines, you would be better off using visual line mode, which is activated from normal mode by pressing V (shift-v). This will select the current line in its entirety. You can then extend your selection to include the lines above and below using the k (or up arrow) and j (or down arrow) keys.
When using Vim, I think it is better to go with the grain rather than to fight against it. Don't expect it to work the same way as other text editors. Accept that the Vim way is different.
Is there a way to keep the cusror location off-screen in Vim / gVim while scrolling? Similar to many Windows editors.
I know about marks, and do use them. I also know the '.' mark (last edit location), But looking for other ideas.
I'm asking this because sometimes i want to keep the cursor at some location, scroll to another place using the mouse-wheel, and then just press an arow key or something to get me back to that location.
No. vim is a console application, so it doesn't really make sense to have the cursour off-screen (it's possible, but would just be confusing)
An alternative solution, to paraphrase posts from this thread from comp.editors:
Ctrl+o goes to the previous cursor location, Ctrl+i goes to the next (like undo/redo for motions)
Marks seem like the other solution..
Also, use marks. Marks are named by letters. For instance typing ma remembers
the current location under mark a. To jump to the line containing mark a,
type 'a. To the exact location use `a.
Lower-case-letter marks are per-file. Upper-case-letter marks are global;
`A will switch to the file containing mark A, to the exact location.
Basically ma, move around, then `a to jump back.
Another option which Paul suggested,
gi command switches Vim to Insert mode and places cursor in the same position as where Insert mode was stopped last time.
Why don't you split the window, look at what you wanted to look at, and then close the split?
:split
or
:vsplit (if you want to split vertically)
The only similar behavior that I've found in Vim:
zt or zENTER "scroll the screen down as far as possible without moving the cursor"
zb "scroll as far up as possible".
Ctrl+E "scroll one line down, if possible"
Ctrl+Y"scroll one line up, if possible"
Sometimes you can avoid jumping to marks before entering text — gi command switches Vim to Insert mode and places cursor in the same position as where Insert mode was stopped last time.
Google says that the cursor (and therefore current line) must be visible in Vi, so you'll have to use marks.
Also very useful are the '' (2x single quotes) and `` (2x back quotes).
The former jumps back to the line you were prior to the last jump (for instance, a page down).
The latter jumps back to the line and column you were prior to the last jump.