I've noticed that gq does not work when I paste in a long line. For example, with a textwidth=72 and formatoptions=tcroqbnl, gq refuses to wrap this (in insert mode, I pasted the entire label contents, and then exited insert mode with ESC):
<label for="contact_reason_1">To get assistance with or to confirm a tire replacement recommendation</label>
If I add a line break in (after "to", for example), it'll wrap then. The funny thing is if I join the line back together, it'll happily wrap it again. So VIM seems to somehow be remembering "oh, this is one paste, don't wrap it".
How do I turn that feature off? I'd like gq in command mode to always work. Taking l out of formatoptions did not seem to help (and it shouldn't, this isn't insert mode).
clarification
Yes, I'm using a motion command, in particular, gq<Right>. formatexpr and formatprog are both unset. If it matters, this is in gvim on Debian GNU/Linux, vim version 7.2p284.
steps to reproduce
Pop up gvim on an open file.
Press i to get into insert mode, then type This is a long line. A long line. But not wrappable yet. Or yet. Soon.
Press ESC, then I. Type Now putting text in front of the long line. note: there is a space after the final period, can't get SO to show it, except when this note is here. FUN.
Press ESC, then A. Type And some after. note: space before the And, same SO problem.
Press ESC one last time. Now try gq<Left>, note it only wraps And some after.; I can't get vim to wrap the rest of the line (without going into insert mode and doing a line break by hand, then it works).
Fixing this state is doable; putting a newline after "now" and then hitting undo makes line wrap work again. WTF.
gq isn't enough to wrap the text. You have to give it a motion over which to wrap (like gqj) or tell it to wrap the current line with gqq. Are you sure you're not just mistyping it?
If you aren't, what are the formatexpr and formatprg options set to, if anything?
Update
The problem is the b setting in formatoptions. That's telling Vim to only wrap the text added during the last insertion.
I find that if I select the line before doing the gq, it works fine. Doesn't gq want to be combined with some text selection operation to work?
UPDATE
I confirm the bug. Running vim -u NONE, my formatoptions are vt.
Maybe Bram Molenar or at least the vim community would be interested?
Related
If you're like me and often use Ctrl+Shift+U to enter special characters (like Ctrl+Shift+U 2014 to enter —), you may have occasionally accidentally gotten the timing wrong and pressed Ctrl+U+Shift instead (pressing the U while holding Ctrl but just before pressing Shift).
(For me, it's even easier to fat finger since I usually press all 3 of those keys with my left hand (I use Dvorak) so that I can leave my right hand on their home keys.)
But if you make this mistake while in Insert mode, you can inadvertently and permanently lose an entire line of input—without any way to get it back. Wait, wat!?
(Ctrl+U "Deletes all entered characters before the cursor in the current line." See :help i_CTRL-U or this question)
Pressing Esc U does not undo this deletion, like it would if I had deleted the line with dd. (Even pressing Ctrl+O U without leaving insert mode does not work).
Needless to say, if you've just spent several minutes or an hour composing a really long paragraph (which will be considered a single line if you haven't inserted any line breaks) without leaving Insert mode, it can be very disheartening and disconcerting to vainly press u, expecting to get your line back but having it instead revert back to an even earlier undo state! The confidence you've placed in your trusty editor, vim, suddenly gets dashed to pieces as you dolefully realize that you now have to try to remember what you just wrote and compose it all over again.
I can think of a few workarounds to try to make editing safer, like trying to remember to exit insert mode frequently so that a new undo block is created (see :help undo-blocks)...
But I shouldn't have to tread so carefully when composing something. I should be able to stay in the flow (that is, keep composing without leaving Insert mode) as long as the words keep flowing. (And it's probably safe to say that most editors don't have this problem. In most editors, Undo would undo your changes one character at a time since they don't have any way to group multiple characters together as a single "insert").
Since I probably won't remember to be so careful, I ended up simply disabling use of Ctrl-U altogether in Insert mode, for now, with this:
imap <C-U> <Nop>
But what I'd like to know is if there's any decent way to make Ctrl-U still work in case I ever want to use it, but create an undo state so that this deletion can be easily undone with U. Is this possible? (And why isn't this the default behavior?)
I fairly often find myself in a situation like this:
I'd like to start typing on the line on which my cursor is currently. However, in order to get to the correct indentation level, I'd have to press TAB several times.
Usually I'd press ddO (delete current line and insert a new one above the cursor), which resets my indentation position to the right place:
But that seems like an odd way to go about adding the correct amount of whitespace.
Is there a better way that I'm overlooking?
When in normal mode, you can use cc or its synonym S. If you are already in insert mode, Ctrlf is the default key for this, but that can be changed by altering cinkeys (see :h cink for details).
See also this answer on the Vi/Vim stack
Kevin mentioned some shortcuts, but another method is <C-i> (indent) and <C-d> (dedent) in insert mode.
I am trying to use the vim autowrap functionality to automatically wrap my paragraph into lines no longer than 80 letters in real time as I type. This can be done by set textwidth=80 and set fo+=a. The a option of the vim formatoptions or fo basically tells vim to wrap the entire paragraph while typing.
However, there is a very annoying side-effect, that I can no longer break a line by simply pressing enter.
This is a sample sentence.
Say for the above sentence, if I want to make it into:
This is
a sample sentence.
Usually I can just move the cursor to "a" and enter insert mode and then press enter. But after set fo+=a, nothing will happen when I press enter in the insert mode at "a". One thing I do notice is that if there is no space between "is" and "a", pressing enter will insert a space. But nothing else will happen after that.
So what do I miss here? How do I stop this annoying behavior?
You can run :help fo-table to see explanations of the options:
a Automatic formatting of paragraphs. Every time text is inserted or
deleted the paragraph will be reformatted. See |auto-format|.
When the 'c' flag is present this only happens for recognized
comments.
This means that every time you insert a character, vim will try and autoformat the paragraph. This will cause it to move everything back onto the same line.
I don't think you need to add a at all. I use neovim, but the behavior here should be the same. The default values are, according to the help pages:
(default: "tcqj", Vi default: "vt")
Try removing set fo+=a entirely from your .vimrc. Keep set textwidth=80. That should fix your issue.
EDIT: Once you have set textwidth=80, if you want to format an existing paragraph, you can highlight it in visual selection and press gq.
The following allows me to use the enter key to start a new line while setting the text width to be 79 characters:
set tw=79 "width of document
set fo=cqt
set wm=0 "# margin from right window border
After some exploration, I find a workaround that can solve the problem to some extent, though not perfect.
The basic idea is that when entering a line break, disable the auto-wrapping temporarily when sending <CR> and resume auto-wrapping after that. There are multiple ways of doing that. And the best one as far as I know is using the paste mode, since you don't have to exit insert mode when entering paste mode. So just make the following commands into any key binding you like in insert mode. The one I am using right now is inoremap <C-N> <F2><CR><F2>
The reason why I think this one is not optimal is that for some reason I cannot bind <Enter> in this way, but have to use another key.
If <Enter> or <CR> can be configured in this way then the problem is 100% solved.
If I write an if statement in my C program, press enter three times, then write a comment, the below is my output. Notice the two lines between the condition and the comment are completely empty.
if(my_condition) {
<Tab>// My comment here
My issue is that Vim does not insert any tab character(s) between the beginning of the line and the cursor position until a character is typed. This is very annoying for me, because I like to move my cursor up and down the block of code often. Since there isn't a real tab on the two lines, if I moved up one line my cursor would go to the beginning of the line, instead of staying on the same column. I come from Sublime Text and other editors where this has never been a problem.
Is there a plugin or setting such that I can accomplish the following?
if(my_condition) {
<Tab>
<Tab>
<Tab>// My comment here
All help is appreciated. I've looked into using Visual mode, but have had undesirable side effects of enabling it all the time. Certainly there is a simple way to automatically add the tabs when I make a new line?
This is very annoying for me, because I like to move my cursor up and down the block of code often.
Well, as you might have noticed, switching to vim means that you need to change your own editing behavior. And that might be the toughest, more than learning the new commands, because habits die hard!
I'm not saying that you should stop scrolling around your function in an useless manner, though, but that you should stop moving around with the "cursor" keys in insert mode.
When you're doing movements when in insert mode it has the side effect you're exposing as "inconvenient", but it also has the side effect of breaking the "repeat" command (.). After a cursor movement in insert mode, a . will only repeat characters typed after that movement.
So, what you should consider in your editing behavior, is to avoid empty lines, avoid trailing spaces/tabs and never move around in insert mode. Insert mode is for insertion, and the normal mode is for moving around and doing actions on the text.
There are a lot of move commands you can abuse in normal mode (j/k, <C-e>/<C-y>, {/}, …).
That being said, if you get yourself in a situation where you've fscked the indentation, you might want to keep on editing, not caring about the indent, and once you're back in normal mode issue a =i{ that will indent everything within the block following the syntax file (and your indent settings).
I've been using vim for somewhat longer than a year now and during this time I have never feel really comfortable with the way vim works with yanking and pasting text (or maybe it is just me not using it in the most efficient way)
For example, I have the word "World" yanked onto a register, and I want to paste it after "Hello". (Note that there are no spaces on either of the words). So, what I would do is
Hello
|
Place cursor here, and press "p". Then, what I will end up with is
HelloWorld
So, in order to avoid this, I have always to swith into insert mode, insert a espace, and go back into normal mode (or either make sure that the yanked word has a space before it). Be as it may, this is quite annoying behaviour I can't think of a solution for... Am I missing something here?
Suggestions will be appreciated.
Thanks
option zero
just live with what you have now.
option one
create a mapping for your workflow. for example
nnoremap <leader>p i<space><esc>p
option two
:set ve=all
then you could move your cursor to anywhere and paste
option three
you could in insert mode use <c-o> do normal mode stuff or <c-r> to get register values
I recommend option zero
You can use the Smartput : Adjust spaces and commas when putting text plugin for that. It modifies the p / P commands (this can be toggled on / off).