When programming/writing I heavily use word-wise commands, for example "move to the left/right by one word", "delete next/last word" by pressing Ctrl (+left,backspace...).
The problem I have is, when the text I am editing contains symbols which will not be recognized as words, therefore ctrl + right will jump over a sequence of symbols AND a regular word after that.
Ideally I want to be able to set the delimiting characters for word-wise operations to space, tab, newline and opening and closing brackets - maybe also arithmetic operators (similar to how Eclipse handles it).
I am using Linux. Do you know any way how to change my settings system-wide or alternatively for xterm and (g)vim individually to achieve this?
Most likely, system-wide won't work. VIM is easy, you can set the characters that define the identifier using the iskeyword setting. In your case, there is too much in it, and you need to remove the ones you do need, or redefine it by adding the ones you do want. eg: :set isk=9,32,50-51
This will set keyword detection to spaces, tabs and parentheses.
However, in VIM you can jump based on word and WORDs, where the first is defined by the abovementioned iskeyword setting, while the latter will jump over all non-blank characters. Maybe, that's the motion you want. You can read more about this in the help (:help w).
Instead of holding down the control key and pressing the left/right cursor keys, why not use Vim's normal mode word motion commands?
w/W - move to start of next word/WORD
e/E - move to end of next word/WORD
b/B - move to beginning of previous word/WORD
ge/gE - move to end of previous word/WORD
You can read up on the difference between a word and a WORD by running :help word.
Related
I frequently use the combination c-a-w to change a word in Vim.
Are there any similar means by which one can quickly also change all other occurrences of said word in the specific file?
Use gn option for this purpose, in my case, I have a slightly different version of it
" allows me to use a smarter cgn
nnoremap c* *<c-o>cgn
nnoremap c# #<C-o>cgn
Now when you have to change a word many times, as long as you have not so many of it, because in this case, a classical substitution would be better, just press c* and then press "dot --> ." to change the next occurrencies of it.
If you want to see how awesomeness gn can give us have a look at: Operating on search matches using gn (vimcasts)
You could try:
%s/<CTRL-R><CTRL-W>/NewWord/g
<CTRL-R><CTRL-W> means keep control key pressed and hit R and W.
This copies the word under the cursor to the command line.
See :help c_CTRL-R_CTRL-W.
The main command for replacement of all occurrences is :substitute. Unfortunately, being an Ex command, it doesn't integrate too well with the single-word replacement (e.g. caw) in normal mode: Though you can insert the previously replaced word into the command-line with <C-R>", you still have to enclose it in \<...\> to enforce a whole word match, and also escape any special characters inside the word.
That said, there are plugins that offer help in that area. One of them is my ChangeGlobally plugin, which offers a gc{motion} alternative to c{motion} that then applies the change (or deletion) to other matches in the same line or entire buffer. (The plugin page has links to alternative plugins.)
I am wondering about a improvement for vim that I can jump back for where I was the last time I stopped to move around for like 3 seconds. Then I can scroll around and have a kick shortcut to jump back where I was with the same old CTRL+o.
Vim put a lot of movements in the :jumps list and I wondering that half of that is useless in any moment for me, so how could I do that ?
In any another words I'm trying to make the jumplist more sensible.
ps: Netbeans and VS has a similar behavior.
To have the current position automatically added to the jump list, you can utilize the CursorHold event:
:autocmd CursorHold * normal! m'
Navigation is with the default <C-o> / <C-i>.
It's common to use the m and ' commands to jump around. For instance, you can type mx, go off and do some things, and then do 'x to jump back to where you were when you did mx. This works for every letter of the alphabet (i.e. ma, mb,... mz). Uppercase marks (mA, mB,...) will also remember the filename so you can jump between files. There are a number of other special marks you can set for various purposes.
The "previous context mark" is called '. It is set automatically when you jump around, and can also be manually set with m'. Jump to it with ''. The m' command also manually adds a jump to the jumplist. '' is roughly equivalent to Ctrl+O, but doesn't take a count.
If you replace the apostrophes in these commands with backticks, Vim will jump to the specific column rather than just the line. In practice, apostrophe is easier to type and often close enough.
You can set a mark in the ' register. The keystrokes would be m'
I found this in vim's documentation :help jumplist.
You can explicitly add a jump by setting the ' mark with "m'".
When I edit XML-files I sometimes want to jump to the next occurrence of text between quotes. For example, when my cursor is on my.attr in attr="my.attr" I want to jump to the next occurence of my.attr. I want to do it via some key combination (like Shift + * which is for words occurrences). Is is possible?
You can create a visual selection of the attribute value inside double quotes with vi". Then, there are several plugins that implement the * command for visual mode (usually by overloading the * command), i.e. they search for the next occurrence of the selected text. One such plugin is my SearchHighlighting plugin. (The plugin page has links to alternative plugins.)
Related plugins
If you want to change all attribute values (without constructing a :%s/ substitution), my ChangeGlobally plugin provides a gc{motion} and {Visual}gc command that does that.
I would yank the text inside the quotes with yi" (only works if the opening and closing quotes are on the same line) and then /<C-R>". (The <C-R> means CTRL-R, not 5 characters.)
This gives you a chance to modify the pattern before submitting it; as #Kalanidhi pointed out, you may have to escape some special characters. It uses the same i" text object as in #Ingo Karkat's answer.
If your text is short, then you can edit the command line with the arrow keys, but if it is long you may want to edit it in a command-line window with <C-F>. (Alternatively, if you are thinking ahead, use q/ instead of /.)
:help y
:help text-objects
:help c_CTRL-R
:help cmdline-editing
:help cmdline-window
You can use in command mode type /<exact pattern> if any special character then escape the special character like \
For example In command mode /"my\.attr"
So only search the exact pattern. N or n to move forward and backward .
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.