mapping the 'n' key in vim while not searching - vim

Is it possible to map over the 'n' and 'N' keys without overriding the time they're used for skimming search results?

Basically you could be searching for something any given time, so remapping n in normal mode without modifications would override the skimming.
After a little considering, if you always quit your searchings with <C-l> (clearing the highlights, I'm not sure if that is the default), you could indeed do something like this with a few extra helper functions:
/,?,*:
--> set s:searching = true
and do the builtin things
<C-l>:
--> set s:searching = false
and do the builtin things
n,N:
--> if s:searching then use the builtin n
else activate your own functionality

Yes you can map a key in a certain mode. You could read over the documentation for map for all of the available options to fine tune your mappings.
Specifically, the map-overview for a list of the mappings and what mode they are used in.

Related

Trigger a Vim custom g# command on a single line?

In Vim 8.x, is there a way to specify a same-line action when using g# and :set opfunc to define a custom command? In other words, I know how to use map to:
noremap <silent> <a-z> :set opfunc=MyFuncOp<cr>g#
Let's say MyFuncOp does some custom type of yank or delete. It works perfectly to press alt-z then j and do that on two lines. But what if you need it on just one line... just like you would with repeated operators like dd or yy? Mapping g#g# doesn't work. How do you convey a single linewise (i.e., the current line) to a g# custom command?
It may depend on how your MyFuncOp() is implemented but, in general, you should only need to do <A-z>l, <A-z>h, or basically use any motion that stays on the current line: 0, $, etc. Just like with a real operator.
Showing us your MyFuncOp() would help.
No, it's not to be implemented by custom g# only. Basically, you have two options.
Either, (1) create also a custom motion (mapmode-o) that includes the whole current line. So, say, you have Y to perform custom "yank" and al to select current line in operator pending mode. Then typing Yal will do. There are many existing implementations of such "custom motion" out there. And it's also pretty easy to devise another one yourself.
Or (2), define special version of your mapping. That is, both Y to invoke g-at, and YY to perform custom operation on the current line without entering the operator pending mode. Proper use of functions and commands should help to avoid code duplication in this case.

Is there a one-liner to tell vim/ctags autocompletion to search from the middle of a word?

In vim (in Insert mode, after running exuberant ctags), I am using ctrl-x followed by ctrl-] to bring up a dropdown of various possible words/tokens. It's a great feature.
The problem is that by default, this list starts with a bunch of numeric options and automatically inserts the first numeric option, and if I backspace to get rid of the numbers and start typing a part of a word fresh -- with the idea of searching from the middle of the word -- the autocompletion behavior exits entirely.
I know I could type the first letter of the word that I want, then go from there. But that assumes that I know the first letter of the word, which is not necessarily a given.
For example, if I'm working on a pair-programming project with a friend during a long weekend, I might not remember at any given moment whether he called his method promoteRecordStatus(), updateRecordStatus() or boostRecordStatus(). In this example, I would like to type RecordStatus and get the relevant result, which does not seem to be possible at a glance with the current behavior.
So with that scenario in mind: Is there a simple, vim-native way to tell the editor to start its autocompletion without any assumptions, then search all available tokens for my typed string in all parts of each token?
I will of course consider plugin suggestions helpful, but I would prefer a short, vim-native answer that doesn't require any plugins if possible. Ideally, the configuration could be set using just a line or two.
The built-in completions all require a match at the starting position. In some cases, you could drop separator characters from the 'iskeyword' option (e.g. in Vimscript, drop # to be able to complete individual components from foo#bar#BazFunction()), but this won't work for camelCaseWords at all.
Custom :help complete-functions can implement any completion search, though. To be based on the tags database, it would have to use taglist() as a source, and filter according to the completion base entered before triggering the completion. If you do not anchor this pattern match at the beginning, you have your desired completion.

jump over user defined text objects in vim

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.

Vim Visual Select around Variables

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 a "verbatim" mode for the vim map command?

I am trying to set up some useful coding templates in vim, for example I have mapped
map `cl iclass <+CLASSNAME+><CR>{<CR><Esc>Iprotected:<CR><+PROTECTED MEMBERS+><CR><Esc>Ipublic:<CR><+PUBLIC INTERFACE+><CR>};<CR><++><CR><Esc>3kv<0v3k<2k
so that when I type `cl in vim I get
class <+CLASSNAME+>
{
protected:
<+PROTECTED MEMBERS+>
public:
<+PUBLIC INTERFACE+>
};
<++>
(so that I can jump between the <+ +> tags with C-j). This works fine, but I find the above remap pretty obscure. Is there a way to enter what I want vim to type in "verbatim mode"? So I would want to write something like
map `cl i{VERBATIMSTART}class <+CLASSNAME+>
{
protected:
<+PROTECTED MEMBERS+>
public:
<+PUBLIC INTERFACE+>
};
<++>{VERBATIMEND}
?
Thank you
Paul
I don't know if there is such a "verbatim"-mode for mappings.
I, personally, would use one of the snippet-plugins to do this.
See www.vim.org and search
for "snippet". I have not tried all of them (just SnippetsMgr ;-) ),
but I suppose that they are handier to define multi-line-snippets.
Some of the available snippet-plugins on vim.org: snippets.vim ,
snippetsEmu, snipMate, SnippetsMgr, etc.
As Habi has mentioned, one way to go about this is with a snippet plugin.
Another way is to copy that snippet of code into its own file and set up your mapping to insert that file below the cursor:
map `cl :r /path/to/code_snippet<CR>
Kind of obvious (and probably not what you want) is:
map `cl iclass <+CLASSNAME+>
\<CR>{
\<CR>protected:
\<CR> <+PROTECTED MEMBERS+>
\<CR>public:
\<CR> <+PUBLIC INTERFACE+>
\<CR>};
\<CR><++>
\<CR>
\ in beginning of line tells that the line is the continuation of the previous one. But this is rather literal continuation: it doesn't add new lines so one has to add them manually. Since it uses the insert mode, the operation would be also affected by the current indentation mode. (Though one can try to work that around with :set paste/:set nopaste.)
I would have tried to put the text into a temp variable or register then Pput (or :put) it into the buffer. E.g. setreg() allows one to tell that the content of a register are lines and thus Putting it would work regardless of indentation.
Otherwise, looking in :help line-continuation or :help variables I see no way how one can specify a multi-line string or text.

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