I've got a problem with backspaces in Vim. If I hit backspace, the last character gets removed. I'd like to get the Vi (not Vim) behaviour. In Vi backspace moves the cursor to the left, and if I type in something, the characters I backspaced get replaced.
I tried
:imap <BS> <Left>
It works in GVim (even if the backspaced chars don't get replaced), but it does not work
in Vim. If this helps, I use the standard XTerm as my terminal emulator, and my $TERM environment variable is set to 'xterm'.
I believe you want Replace instead of Insert mode. Hitting the 'insert' key once will put you into Insert mode but hitting it twice will put you into Replace mode. That should give you the expected behaviour.
Related
In "Practical Vim" (second edition), the writer says <c-h> can delete back a character. I've tried in git bash, and it worked. However, it doesn't work in gvim in win10 as expected.
When I enter something in insert mode, I can use <c-h>, <c-w> and <c-u> before I leave insert mode. When I switch to insert mode without entering anything, <c-h>, <c-w> and <c-u> don't work.
Note that <c-h> is not mapped (:map <c-h> prints No mapping found).
Vim, by default, does only allow to delete characters that you typed since you entered insert mode. It does not allow to delete chars before the point where you started inserting. This behavior is inherited from the original Vi.
To change that, Vim has the option 'backspace'. It configures how <Backspace>, <Del>, <c-w> and <c-u> work. Add the following to your _vimrc and Vim will behave as you expect:
set backspace=indent,eol,start
Then you can backspace over autoindent, start of insert and end-of-lines.
See :help 'backspace'.
Currently, when I press cursor-left in the command line in neovim (:whatever foo bar), the cursor will move over a whole word. Most of the time, I just want it to move one character.
This shouldn't be the default behaviour. It's probably a plugin or something you once added to your vimrc at some point. Try using :verbose cmap to see what it's set to (also see How do I debug my vimrc file?).
You should also be able to use :cnoremap <Left> <Left> to restore the default behaviour.
This has to do with putty and how it sends cursor keys. The trick is to find out what nvim actually sees, and then :cnoremap... accordingly.
The way to figure out what your nvim receives, is this:
enter input mode
hit ctrl-v
hit the key you want to see
Be aware that nvim behaves slightly differently than vim here: vim shows you the actual escape sequence, while nvim shows you the translated keys. The latter is a tad unfortunate.
In my case, for reasons I haven't figured out, nvim saw Ctrl-Left as , but Left as . Since I never need S-Left in the command line, :cnoremap <S-Left> <Left> did the trick.
I want to map the Home button so vim goes to the first non blank character in vim. But mapping the home button doesn't do anything? If I map another key, then it works correctly.
See below my vimrc file:
map <Home> 0w
imap <Home> <ESC>0wi
The above doesn't work. While the following works (Ctrl-F for example)
map <C-f> 0w
imap <C-f> <ESC>0wi
Isn't there a way to map Home key to this? I really need it, because I got used to this when working with Notepad++, Sublime text 2, Visual Studio,...
I also tried the following, with no results. When using another key, it works again...
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Smart_home
From Vim FAQ (also available through this nice plugin):
20.4. I am not able to create a mapping for the <xxx> key. What is wrong?
1) First make sure, the key is passed correctly to Vim. To determine if
this is the case, put Vim in Insert mode and then hit Ctrl-V (or
Ctrl-Q if your Ctrl-V is remapped to the paste operation (e.g. on
Windows if you are using the mswin.vim script file) followed by your
key.
If nothing appears in the buffer (and assuming that you have
'showcmd' on, ^V remains displayed near the bottom right of the Vim
screen), then Vim doesn't get your key correctly and there is nothing
to be done, other than selecting a different key for your mapping or
using GVim, which should recognise the key correctly.
This way you can check if the home key you are pressing is the same that Vim understand as <Home>.
Another possibility is that some other mapping is interfering with this one. You could try the following:
noremap <Home> 0w
inoremap <Home> <ESC>0wi
Edit:
It seems the problem is that your terminal is sending a home keycode that Vim isn't recognizing as <Home>.
I believe that the best solution is make Vim recognize that key correctly, so you can move your .vimrc to other terminals/systems without changes.
From :h xterm-end-home-keys:
On some systems (at least on FreeBSD with XFree86 3.1.2) the codes that the
<End> and <Home> keys send contain a <Nul> character. To make these keys send
the proper key code, add these lines to your ~/.Xdefaults file:
*VT100.Translations: #override \n\
<Key>Home: string("0x1b") string("[7~") \n\
<Key>End: string("0x1b") string("[8~")
If that doesn't work, you could try :set t_kh=^V^[[1~. If it work you can enclose it on a check of your terminal type.
Additional information can be found at :h terminal options
Edit 2:
20.4. I am not able to create a mapping for the <xxx> key. What is wrong?
:
:
3) If the key is seen, but not as itself and not as some recognizable
key, then there is probably an error in the terminal library for the
current terminal (termcap or terminfo database). In that case >
:set term?
will tell you which termcap or terminfo Vim is using. You can try to
tell vim, what termcode to use in that terminal, by adding the
following to your vimrc: >
if &term == <termname>
set <C-Right>=<keycode>
endif
where <termname> above should be replaced by the value of 'term'
(with quotes around it) and <keycode> by what you get when hitting
Ctrl-V followed by Ctrl-Right in Insert mode (with nothing around
it). <C-Right> should be left as-is (9 characters). Don't forget that
in a :set command, white space is not allowed between the equal sign
and the value, and any space, double quote, vertical bar or backslash
present as part of the value must be backslash-escaped.
Now you should be able to see the keycode corresponding to the key
and you can create a mapping for the key using the following command: >
:map <C-Right> <your_command_to_be_mapped>
For more information, read
:h map-keys-fails
:h map-special-keys
:h key-codes
Right now in Vim when I go to a new line (or press 'p' or 'o' in normal mode) I get a lovely automatic indent, that also disappears if I exit insert mode without adding anything to it.
Is there a way to bind something to before I exit insert mode, such as inserting a phantom character then removing it?
Argh, I just read about this exact thing like two days ago but I can't remember where.
Anyway, the trick is to input a character right after <CR> and delete it immediately. There are a bunch of ways to do it:
<CR>a<Esc>x
<CR>a<C-w>
<CR>a<BS>
--EDIT--
Vim being Vim there are probably many other ways.
To automate these, you need to add a mapping to your .vimrc:
inoremap <CR> <CR>a<BS> " insert mode mapping for <CR>
nnoremap o oa<BS> " normal mode mapping for o
But I'm not sure you should overwrite defaults like that.
--EDIT--
However, what is annoying with Vim's default behaviour is that you may need to do some <Tab><Tab><Tab><Tab> before actually inputing some text on non-indented line or do == when you are done or rely on the automatic indentation rules for your language at the next <CR>.
All that can be skipped by using <S-S> which puts you in INSERT mode right at the correct indentation level.
Try either cc or S in normal mode to change a line with respect to indention. No need for phantom characters.
:h cc
:h S
A mapping like the following should do the trick:
imap <esc> <esc>:s/\s\+$//<CR>
This one deletes trailing characters when you press esc in insert mode.
I'd like Ctrl-Backspace to delete the current word in vim insert mode. From within xterm I can pull this off via
:inoremap <C-H> <C-W>
but in gnome-terminal I cannot figure out a way to make it happen.
When in vim insert mode, if I type control-v and then press backspace, I get ^H in xterm, and ^? in gnome-terminal. Unfortunately,
:inoremap <C-?> <C-W>
doesn't do the trick in gnome-terminal; control-backspace just erases a single character no matter what.
Regarding ASCII codes:
Gnome-terminal lets you change the backspace character under Edit -> Profile Preferences -> Compatibility. Unfortunately, no option works, as far as I can tell: whatever character I apply to Backspace via the settings, if I try mapping the character itself, like
:inoremap <C-H> <C-W>
then regular backspace and control-backspace both erase an entire word; and if I try mapping control plus that character, like
:inoremap <C-^H> <C-W>
then regular backspace and control-backspace just erase a single character.
gnome-terminal's libvte would need to be patched.
libvte already has several options to map backspace, none of which distinguish Ctrl-backspace. It needs an option that does, maybe one that follows the behaviour of the linux console (^? for backspace, ^H for Ctrl-backspace). See this gnome bug.
2015 update: this was fixed in 23c7cd0f99d504cbab06d4c27254d4f3e2807ba8.
libvte 0.41.90, 0.40.3 and newer have the fix.