In vim, is there a command to delete the newline, and all empty space behind the cursor?
Say I stand in the middle of a text in insert mode and press Enter, what command would the reverse what I just did?
A) An example:
"some code{ in here }"
B) After pressing Enter:
"some code{
in here }"
Now pressing backspace will delete one space of the indentation. I would rather have it delete all indentation, and jump back to A.
Can this be done in a command or by doing some remapping to the backspace key?
It's tragic how unknown the J command is. It joins lines in normal mode.
In insert mode, you can press <C-U> twice; first, it'll delete the indent before the cursor, then it'll join with the previous line. Note that this requires
:set backspace=indent,eol,start
did you try J (uppercase) ? it will give exactly what you want.
"some code{ cursor on this line, pressJ
in here }"
You can do ᴇꜱᴄ, K, Shift+J.
K jumps up to the previous line and Shift+J joins the two lines.
However, with properly configured indentation and syntax, a backspace doesn’t just delete a space, it deletes the full previous indentation block.
One easy way is up one line, to end of that line and just delete. As long as you still are in insert mode it will do the same thing as J when deleting at the last position - like most other editors. For me that is the quickest alternative because I'm used to it from other editors.
That is: ↑, End, Delete (when still in insert mode)
One quick alternative (the VIM-way) is (when still in insert mode):
↑, Ctrl+o, J (when still in insert mode)
(Ctrl+o is used in insert mode to enter one normal mode command.)
It's also possible to use a remapping of the backspace key:
inoremap <expr> <bs> getline('.')[:col('.')-2]=~'^\s\+$' ? "<c-u><c-u>" : "<bs>"
Note that this mapping completely overrides the normal behavior the backspace key. This will only be useful when you don't intend to use its normal behavior. This is not recommended if you can easily access the other options (c-u or J)
However, (as far as I know) there's no way to distinguish between manually added leading white spaces and auto indent. If you use noexpandtab, you can edit the regex to only match tabs.
This also does not work in some modes of auto-indent (for example, in block comment in C, vim automatically start a new line starts with *)
Related
Say I want to edit the following line:
var myVar =
"I am a string!";
So that it looks like this:
var myVar = "I am a string!";
Is there a movement that goes to the end of the previous line?
What you want is the line join command, J.
In normal mode, put your cursor anywhere on the var myVar = line and type J (capital j).
Direction-wise motions work with J - 5J indents 5 lines below the cursor, etc. You can also select a range of lines using visual mode (v to start visual mode selection) and join them all into one using J.
The &joinspaces option affects this behavior as well. When it's "on" (set joinspaces or set js) it adds two spaces after a sentence-ending mark (i.e. '.', '?', or '!') when joining lines. set nojoinspaces or set nojs to turn that off and insert only one space.
Also,
:set backspace=indent,eol,start
The backspace option determines the behavior of pressing the backspace key (). By default, Vim’s backspace option is set to an empty list. There are three values that can be added that each independently alter the behavior of the backspace key. These are indent, eol, and start.
When indent is included, you can backspace over indentation from autoindent. Without it, Vim will not allow you to backspace over indentation.
When eol is included, you can backspace over an end of line (eol) character. If the cursor is at the first position of a line and you hit backspace, it will essentially be joined with the line above it. Without eol, this won’t happen.
When start is included, you can backspace past the position where you started Insert mode. Without start, you can enter Insert mode, type a bit, and then when backspacing, only delete back as far as the start of Insert mode.
The backspace default is absurd, you are going to want to add all of the above to your Vim settings.
See :h 'backspace' for more details.
kJ will do what you want and is probably what you should be using, however if you want to do exactly what you've asked for Delete backwards from cursor to the end of the previous line then you can do the following:
:set virtualedit+=onemore
^ " go to the start of the line
d?$<cr>
?$<cr> is a movement that goes to the end of the previous line.
:set virtualedit+=onemore allows the cursor to move just past the end of the line, without which we would end up deleting the last character of the line, which in the example you have given would be the trailing space.
You could then create a mapping to do this (:nohl just clears the search highlighting):
:nnoremap <leader>J ^d?$<cr>:nohl<cr>
Although a simpler mapping to achieve the same thing would be:
:nnoremap <leader>J kJ
In traditional text editors, whenever I needed to open a string or parentheses and type something between it I used to do:
Type () or ""
Press left
Type in what I need
Press right
But in vim (that is if I followed the vim way) the process becomes quite tedious as I have to enter the normal mode to move a whole bunch of times:
Type () or ""
Press <ESC>
Press i
Type what I need
Press <ESC>
Press l
Press a
If it is not a good practice to use the arrow keys at any time, is there a more efficient way of doing this kind of task in vim?
It is actually quite easy to automatically append those closing characters in a mapping, and put your cursor where you want it. The trick is to do that, without also messing up the undo/redo/repeat actions. The problem is that cursor movement commands in insert mode will break the "undo sequence" so that any change you make after moving the cursor is undone separately from changes made before moving the cursor.
Warning: the following information may become dated
There are plenty of plugins available to automatically append these characters (see the partial list at the Vim wiki page for appending closing characters), and prior to Vim 7.4, some of them even had complicated workarounds for keeping the undo sequence intact. Unfortunately, they all relied on a bug in Vim that got fixed in version 7.4 for this.
A patch is available to add a cursor movement that does not break undo, so if you want to compile Vim yourself, you can grab that patch and use mappings like the following (no plugin required!) to do what you want:
inoremap ( ()<C-G>U<Left>
inoremap <expr> ) strpart(getline('.'), col('.')-1, 1) == ")" ? "\<C-G>U\<Right>" : ")"
These mappings will insert "()" when you type an opening (, placing the cursor in between the parentheses. When you type ')' and there is already a closing ')' after the cursor, Vim will skip over the parenthesis instead of inserting a new one. Cursor movement is preceded by <C-G>U which is the feature the aforementioned patch adds, allowing the following cursor movement to not break the undo sequence (as long as the movement is all in a single line).
As of Vim 7.4.663, this patch has still not been officially included.
No. Doing it in Vim is exactly the same as in your "traditional" editor:
Type () or ""
Press left
Type in what you need
Press right
But… why don't you type the opening character, what you want inside the pair and then the closing character?
Type ( or "
Type what you need
Type ) or "
Too simple?
I think using arrow keys to move around is bad practice in normal mode but in your case; moving one space while in insert mode, I would hazard to say using the arrow keys is probably best practice.
That being said if you are dead set on avoiding them you could use <i_ctrl-o>.
:help i_ctrl_o
CTRL-O execute one command, return to Insert mode *i_CTRL-O*
So, while in insert mode, you could type: ()<ctrl-o>h<xxx><ctrl-o>l, where <xxx> is whatever you want in the brackets.
Unfortunately that doesn't work if you cursor is on the last character of the line, which if you are typing it most likely is.
To solve that problem do :set virtualedit+=onemore or add it to your ~/.vimrc file.
Note that this solution is more keystrokes than simply using the arrow keys but you don't need to move your hands away from the home row so it may be faster anyway.
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>`^
In vim with smartindent on:
Press Enter after say an if-statement
Type in {
Press Enter twice
Type in }
If you hit ↑ and go to the previous line, indentation is removed from the blank line.
Even the vim documentation says that:
If you do not type anything on the new line except <BS> or CTRL-D and then type <Esc>, CTRL-O or <CR>, the indent is deleted again.
Is there any way to keep this indentation and not have it deleted?
Use Shift+S to start editing on a blank line (from command mode, obviously). This will start your cursor off with the expected level of indentation.
Another doesn't-answer-the-question-as-asked-but-is-a-better-solution-overall:
When typing an opening brace in insert mode, this will insert a matching set of braces
and leave the cursor on a new line in the middle.
:imap { {<CR>}<Esc>O
Similarly, this will auto-insert matching parens and square brackets.
:imap ( ()<Left>
:imap [ []<Left>
(Strip off the leading : when adding to vimrc.)
As I commented on Victor's answer, changing Vim's indentation behavior will leave "empty" lines containing extraneous spaces throughout your files. IMO, this is completely intolerable.
When this happens to me, I sometimes use ddko (or ddO) to delete the line without enough spaces and open a new line with the correct indent. Or, I'll just press A and then Tab enough times to get to the correct indent.
the article here talks about you're very same problem, and what to put in vimrc to fix it.
inoremap <CR> <CR><Space><BS>
nnoremap o o<Space><BS>
nnoremap O O<Space><BS>
I havn't exactly tested this tho.
also the same article links to a shorter alternate solution.
My preferred method is {<CR>}<esc>shift+o as it outpaces {<CR><CR>}<esc>k shift+s by several strokes. I get in a rut with it, though, and end up just using o or O to grab new, properly-indented lines off an empty when I should be using S.
That is, set up your bracing structure and open line-above:
if (true) {
}//cursor here, press shift-o
And you get the indenting you expect.
The open-above trick isn't any fewer keypresses than <up><end><cr>, but with escape remapped and shift being chorded, you can throw it in quite fast.
Also, don't forget your manual indent reset and block-movement. If you're inside a mangled curly brace block, simply use ={ (or =i{ if you're on top of one of the braces). I use that when I have a Good Idea that needs to see text asap, and I don't worry about any formatting frippery until I take a breather.
Is possible to insert a line break where the cursor is in Vim without entering into insert mode? Here's an example ([x] means cursor is on x):
if (some_condition) {[ ]return; }
Occasionally, I might want to enter some more code. So I'd press i to get into insert mode, press Enter to insert the line break and then delete the extra space. Next, I'd enter normal mode and position the cursor before the closing brace and then do the same thing to get it on its own line.
I've been doing this a while, but there's surely a better way to do it?
For the example you've given, you could use rEnter to replace a single character (the space) with Enter. Then, fspace. to move forward to the next space and repeat the last command.
Depending on your autoindent settings, the above may or may not indent the return statement properly. If not, then use sEnterTabEsc instead to replace the space with a newline, indent the line, and exit insert mode. You would have to replace the second space with a different command so you couldn't use '.' in this case.
A simple mapping to break the line at the cursor by pressing Ctrl+Enter:
:nmap <c-cr> i<cr><Esc>
essentially enters 'insert' mode, inserts a line break and goes back to normal mode.
put it in your .vimrc file for future use.
Here's how to create a macro that inserts a newline at the cursor whenever you press 'g' while not in insert mode:
From within vim, type:
:map g i[Ctrl+V][Enter][Ctrl+V][Esc][Enter]
Where:
[Ctrl+V] means hold the Ctrl key and press 'v'
[Enter] means press the Enter key
[Esc] means press the Esc key
You'll see the following at the bottom of your vim window until you press the final Enter:
:map g i^M^[
Explanation:
[Ctrl+V] means "quote the following character" -- it allows you to embed the newline and escape characters in the command.
So you're mapping the 'g' key to the sequence: i [Enter] [Escape]
This is vim for insert a newline before the cursor, then exit insert mode.
Tweaks:
You can replace the 'g' with any character that's not already linked to a command you use.
Add more to the command, e.g. f}i^M^[O -- This will find the } and insert another newline, then escape from insert mode and Open an empty line for you to enter more code.
You can add the command to your .vimrc or .exrc file to make it permanent. Just omit the colon from the beginning, so the command starts with "map"
Enjoy!
If you're usually expanding a one line block to three lines, try substitution. Change the opening bracket into bracket/return, and the closing bracket into return/bracket.
The command for substituting bracket/return for bracket looks like this:
:s/{/{\r/
Since you want to use this often, you could map the full sequence to an unused keystroke like this:
:map <F7> :s/{/{\r/ ^M :s/}/\r}/ ^M
Where you see ^M in the sequence, type [Ctrl-V], then press enter.
Now with your cursor anywhere on your sample line, press the mapped key, and the carriage returns are added.
Check :help map-which-keys for advice on selecting unused keystrokes to map.
Assuming you're okay with mapping K to something else (choose a different key of your liking), and using marker ' as a temporary marker is okay why not do this?
:nmap K m'a<CR><Esc>`'
now pressing K in normal mode over the character after which you want the line break to occur will split the line and leave the cursor where it was.
Basically, when you split a line you either want to just insert a carriage return, or in the case that you're on a space, replace that with a carriage return. Well, why settle for one or the other? Here's my mapping for K:
"Have K split lines the way J joins lines
nnoremap <expr>K getline('.')[col('.')-1]==' ' ? "r<CR>" : "i<CR><Esc>"
I use the ternary operator to condense the two actions into one key map. Breaking it down, <expr> means the key map's output can dynamic and in this case hinges on the condition getline('.')[col('.')-1]==' ' which is the long winded way to ask vim if the character under the cursor is a space. Finally, the familiar ternary operator ? : either replaces the space with linebreak (r<CR>) or inserts a new one (i<CR><Esc>)
Now you have a lovely sister key map to the J command.
Vim will automatically kill any whitespace to the right of the cursor if you break a line in two while autoindent (or any other indentation aid) is enabled.
If you do not want to use any of those settings, use s instead of i in order to substitute your new text for the blank rather than just inserting. (If there are multiple blanks, put the cursor on the leftmost and use cw instead.)
In fact you need the following combined operations:
Press v to enter Visual Mode
Select the line you want to split
Press : to enter in Command Mode
s/\s/\r/g
Done
If you have the input:
aaa bbb ccc ddd
and want to output
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
You can use the command
f r<ENTER>;.;.
o ESC command will do it for you.
Set this key mapping in your vimrc
:map <C-m> i<CR><Esc>h
Then press Ctrl+m if you want to use it in your vim.
IMHO, the built-in mapping gs is not a useful mapping (put vim to sleep), one could use this for splitting:
nmap gs i<CR><ESC>
In Vrapper you can use gql which will split a line without entering insert mode, but may not always maintain indentation.
I found this to be the most faithful implementation of what I'd expect the opposite behaviour to J
nnoremap S i<cr><esc>^mwgk:silent! s/\v +$//<cr>:noh<cr>`w
It does the simplistic new line at cursor, takes care of any trailing whitespace on the previous line if there are any present and then returns the cursor to the correct position.
i <cr> <esc> - this is one of the most common solutions suggested, it doesn't delete non-whitespace characters under your cursor but it also leaves you with trailing whitespace
^mw - goto start of new line and create a mark under w
gk - go up one line
:silent! s/\v +$//<cr> - regex replace any whitespace at the end of the line
:noh<cr> - Clear any search highlighting that the regex might have turned on
`w - return the the mark under w
Essentially combines the best of both r<esc><cr> and i<cr><esc>
Note: I have this bound to S which potentially overwrites a useful key but it is a synonym for cc and since I don't use it as often as I do splits I am okay with overwriting it.
This mapping will break up any one-line function you have. Simply put your cursor on the line and hit 'g' in normal mode:
:map g ^f{malr<CR>`a%hr<CR>`a
This assumes that you have a space after the opening brace and a space before the closing brace. See if that works for you.