The % key is one of the best features of vim: it lets you jump from { to }, [ to ], and so on.
However, it does not work by default with quotes: Either " or ', probably because the opening and closing quote are the same character, making implementation more difficult.
Thinking a bit more about the problem, I'm convinced that it should be implemented, by counting if the number of preceding quotes is odd or even and jumping to the previous or next quote, accordingly.
Before I try to implement it myself, I'd just like to know if someone already has?
Depending on your reason for needing this, there may be a better way to accomplish what you're looking for. For example, if you have the following code:
foo(bar, "baz quux")
^
and your cursor happens to be at the ^, and you want to replace everything inside the quotes with something else, use ci". This uses the Vim "text objects" to change (c) everything inside (i) the quotes (") and puts you in insert mode like this:
foo(bar, "")
^
Then you can start typing the replacement text. There are many other text objects that are really useful for this kind of shortcut. Learn (and use) one new Vim command per week, and you'll be an expert in no time!
Greg's answer was very useful but i also like the 'f' and 'F' commands that move the cursor forward and backward to the character you press after the command.
So press f" to move to the next " character and F" to move to the previous one.
I have found this technique very useful for going to the start/end of a very long quoted string.
when cursor is inside the string, visually select the whole string using vi" or vi'
go to start/end of the string by pressing o
press escape to exit visual select mode
this actually takes the cursor next to the start/end quote character, but still feels pretty helpful.
Edit
Adding Stefan's excellent comment here which is a better option for anyone who may miss the comment.
If you use va" (and va') then it will actually visually select the quotes itself as well.
– Stefan van den Akker
I'd like to expand on Greg's answer, and introduce the surround.vim plugin.
Suppose that rather than editing the contents of your quotes, you want to modify the " characters themselves. Lets say you want to change from double-quotes to single-quotes.
foo(bar, "baz quux")
^
The surround plugin allows you to change this to
foo(bar, 'baz quux')
^
just by executing the following: cs"' (which reads: "change the surrounding double-quotes to single-quotes").
You could also delete the quote marks simply by running: ds" (which reads: "delete the surrounding double-quotes).
There is a good introduction to the surround plugin here.
I know this question is old but here is a plugin to use % to match the corresponding double quote:
https://github.com/airblade/vim-matchquote
Related
I come upon one scenario when editing a file in vim and I still haven't found a way to do it quickly in vim way. When editing a call of a function, I offently put my arguments in a wrong order.
anyFunction(arg2, arg1)
When arriving on this situation, I have to find arg2 / delete it / append it before the ')' / deal with the ', ' / etc.
Isn't it a better way to this task quickly ? I am open to any idea (macro/ shortcut / plugin) even if I'd rather have a 'vim only' way of doing this
You need two things:
A text object to quickly select an argument (as they aren't always that simple like in your example). argtextobj plugin (my improved fork here) does this.
Though you can use delete + visual mode + paste + go back + paste, a plugin to swap text makes this much easier. My SwapText plugin or the already mentioned exchange plugin both do that job.
put this mapping in your _vimrc.
" gw : Swap word with next word
nmap <silent> gw :s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/<cr><c-o><c-l>
then in normal mode with the cursor anywhere in arg1 type gw to swap parameters
anyFunction(arg1, arg2)
Explanation:-
arg1 the separator (here a comma) and arg2 are put into regexp memories 1 2 3
the substitute reverses them to 3 2 1
Control-O return to last position
Control-L redraw the screen
Note that the separator is any non-alphanumeric character or string e,g whitespace
I actually made a plugin to deal with a exact situation called argumentative.vim. (Sorry for the plug.)
Argumentative.vim provides the following mappings:
[, and ], motions which will go to the previous or next argument
<, and >, to shift an argument left or right
i, and a, argument text objects. e.g. da,, ci, or yi,
So with this plugin you move to the argument in question and then do a <, or >, as many times as needed. It can also take a count e.g. 2>,.
If you have Tim Pope's excellent repeat.vim plugin installed <, and >, become repeatable with the . command.
I would recommend a plugin: vim-exchange for that:
https://github.com/tommcdo/vim-exchange
This is a perfect use for a regular expression search and replace.
You want to find "anyFunction(", then swap anything up to the ',' with anything from the ',' to the ')'. This is fairly straightforward, using [^,]* for "anything up to the ','" and [^)]* for "anything up to the ')'". Use \(...\) to capture each thing, and \1, \2 to refer to those things in the replacement:
:s#anyFunction(\s*\([^,]*\),\s*\([^)]*\)#anyFunction(\2, \1#g
Note how I use \s* to allow any whitespace between the "anyFunction(" and the first thing, and also between the ',' and the second thing.
If you want this to be able to span multiple lines, you can use \_s instead of \s, and capture the whitespace if you want to maintain the multi-line format:
:s#anyFunction(\(\_s*\)\([^,]*\),\(\_s*\)\([^)]*\)#anyFunction(\1\4,\3\2#g
There is also a multi-line variant of [...] collections, for example \_[^,] meaning "anything (even a new line) except for a ',' " which you could use in the pattern if your use case demands it.
For details, consult the help topics for: /\s, /\_s, /\1, /\(, and /[.
If you want a more general-purpose mapping to use at every location, you can use the cursor position in your regular expression, rather than keying off the function name. The cursor position in a regular expression is matched using \%# as demonstrated here: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Exchanging_adjacent_words
Similar to what Peter Rincker suggested (Argumentative), sideways also does what you describe.
Let's say I have this text:
something "something else"
something here "just another quoted block"
I want to substitute "something else" with "just another quoted block", so I do:
/quot<enter> (to jump to second quoted block searching for the string "quot")
yi" (to yank inner text for current quoted block)
?else<enter> (to jump back to the first quoted block wich contains "else")
vi" (to visually select the quoted block)
p (to paste yanked text)
This works, but I would like to know if the two last steps can be replaced by a single one, to avoid visual mode. I know it's not a huge gain keystroke-wise, but I think that the Vim philosophy would encourage what I'm trying to do, and every time I do this my mind keeps asking for this command. :-P
What I tried so far:
r (replace) replaces just one character
c (change) throws me into Insert mode and does not let me paste the text.
"_di"P
Delete inside quotes to the blackhole register; paste last yanked before cursor.
Or
ci"<Ctrl-R>0<ESC>
Change inside quotes to retrieve last yank; leave insert mode.
With my ReplaceWithRegister plugin, the last two steps would be gri". It also offers grr (replace current / [count] lines); though it only saves a little typing, I find this indispensable.
Key stroke wise, j$yi"k then vi"p is actually probably the fastest. However, if you absolutely must go into insert mode you can j$yi"k then "_ci"<C-r>" or ci"<C-r>0. The :help i_CTRL-R operator allows you to put the contents of a register into insert mode.
I usually try to keep it simple, using what I feel is more intuitive with every day commands:
j
yi"
k
ci"
<ESC>
p
I want to copy the parameters foo(bar).baz in the following code:
function(foo(bar).baz)
First attempt: Cursor on one of the parentheses, then y%. This gives me the parameters plus a bit extra:
(foo(bar).baz)
Second attempt: Cursor on opening parenthesis. Set a mark ma, jump to end with
% then y`a to copy back to the mark. This gives me:
(foo(bar).baz
Setting a mark at the end and going the other way gives me exactly the same. Setting a
mark on the f, then typing mah%y`a does give me the foo(bar).baz that I want, but maybe there's something more concise. Is there?
Use text objects:
yi( (or ya( if you want to include the parenthesis).
You can also use " to work inside quotes, etc. See the link for details, or type :help text-objects in Vim.
A slightly shorter alternative to yi( is yib. Similarly yiB is equivalent to yi{ - yanks the contents inside braces.
Personally I usually do vib (visual select the text inside braces) first to make sure that the expected text is selected, followed by a y.
For more text object goodness, see :help text-objects.
Following should do it
Yank Inner Block
yi(
With the syntax highlighting in vim, I get the handy feature where the matching paren or bracket will be highlighted when I put the cursor over it. Is it possible to do the same thing for quotes?
While not eloquent, one workaround is to select everything inside of matching quotes. You can do this by using the command:
vi"
This will select everything in-between the quotes. However, you won't get proper results with nested quotes as it will match the first found ".
The problem with quotes is that they are symmetrical. It would be very hard to determine which quotes belong with each other.
For instance: "Which \"quotes\" go with each other in this statement?"
This has been discussed on the vim mailing lists a few times, as well as in the bug trackers of a few of the auto-delimiter type plugins. In every case that I've seen, it's been decided that this is better left as is.
The solution is here: Stackoverflow in matchquote except it has the unfortunate limitation that only the current line is considered.
matchit seems to comes close by allowing defining of multi-line matches of words such as if/endif but still no multi-line possibility that I can figure out to get matching for " and '.
VIM already highlights quoted text in a different color, so you can easily identify strings. Do you really need it to match quotes when the whole string is already highlighted?
From :h matchparen
The characters to be matched come from the 'matchpairs' option. You
can change the value to highlight different matches. Note that not
everything is possible. For example, you can't highlight single or
double quotes, because the start and end are equal.
I am trying to use vim properly - to aid me I've mapped my arrow keys to "" so that I am forced to use {hjlk} to move around.
This is causing me a problem when I want to just surround a character with spaces, eg:
"2+3" is better formatted "2 + 3"
Previously I would have put my cursor over the + and typed:
i[space][arrow-right][space][Esc]
That's 5 presses.
To do this without the arrow I seem to need to put the cursor over the + and go:
i[space][Esc]lli[space][Esc]
That's 8 presses.
I can convert the "li" into an "a" which reduces it to 7 presses:
i[space][Esc]la[space][Esc]
Short of writing this into a macro is there a better way of doing it? Is there some magic vim command which will allow me to do it in less than even 5 presses - and some way to generalise it so that I can do it to entire words or symbols, eg if I want to convert 3==4 to 3 == 4?
Personally, I think it makes most sense to destroy what you want to surround, and then repaste it.
c w "" ESC P
Obviously, you can replace both the object and the quotes with whatever you like. To change just one character + to be [space]+[space], you would do
s [space] [space] ESC P
on the +
The first thing that jumps to mind after reading just the title is surround.vim which is an excellent script to do all kinds of useful things along the lines of what you've described.
To solve your specific problem, I would probably position the cursor on the + and:
s[space]+[space][esc]
To change 3==4 into 3 == 4, I might position the cursor on the first =, and:
i[space][esc]ww.
i have been wondering about this as well. i tried with surround.vim, but the naive approach
S<space>
(after making a visual selection) does not work since the space is already taken up as a modifier for adding space to other surrounding character pairs. S<space><cr> adds a ^M in the output. Ss almost works but inserts a space only before.
after asking at tpope/surround.vim on github:
S<space><space>
in visual mode works. alternatively, from normal mode, ysl<space><space> works for a single character
Hah! I've been trying to figure out how to surround a block in spaces for quite a while and I finally found the right combination.
Using surround.vim you say surround selector space space.
So for this specific case I would use visual mode (a good trick for operating on single characters under the cursor BTW) thus: "vs " <- four key presses!
I also have a habit of typing things like argument lists without spaces. With this technique you can just navigate to the second argument using w and say "vws " to visually select a word and surround with spaces.
I prefer visual select mode generally. Also the alternate surround syntax "ysw " excludes the word final comma that is caught by "vw".
You could create a macro with one of the described actions and call it everytime you need it (Like amphetamachine proposed while I was writing) or you could simply search & replace:
:%s/\(\d\)\(+\|-\)\(\d\)/\1 \2 \3/g
You probably have to execute this command two times because it will only find every second occurence of +/-.
EDIT:
This will replace everything without the need to be called twice:
:%s/\d\#<=+\|-\d\#=/ \0 /g
Try positioning your cursor over the '+' and typing this:
q1i[space][right arrow][space][left arrow][esc]q
This will record a quick macro in slot 1 that you can re-use whenever you feel like it, that will surround the character under the cursor with spaces. You can re-call it with #1.
There is also the more versatile one:
q1ea[space][esc]bi[space][right arrow][esc]q
Which will surround the word under the cursor ("==" counts as a word) with spaces when you hit #1.
You could set up a mapping like this (press enter in visual mode to wrap spaces):
:vnoremap <CR> <ESC>`<i<SPACE><ESC>`>la<SPACE><ESC>h
This method allows you to use . to repeat the command at the next +.
Put your cursor over the + and type:
s[SPACE][CTRL-R]"[SPACE][ESC]
I know this is and old thread, but this might be useful to someone. I've found that the map (map it to anything else you want!)
noremap <leader>ss diwi<SPACE><C-R>"<SPACE><ESC>B
works ok both for turning 'a+b' into 'a + b' (when used over the '+' char) and for turning 'a==b' into 'a == b' (when used over either the first or the second '=' sign).
I hope it's useful to someone.