Friday, September 27, 2013

Wishlist item: comma object-selecting motion

Object selections have become one of my favorite Vim features. (See :help object-select for some context for this request.) It took me awhile to discover them, but now that I have I use them constantly.

I'd like to see a new one (or actually two considering the a and i forms) to select comma separated items in a list.

In the simplest use case, comma object selection would include text starting at the previous comma or '(' to the next comma or ')'.

a, - Select the current parameter in a C-style parameter list. Any previous whitespace will be included, as well as any trailing ','. Whitespace after the trailing ',' will not be included. If the parameter is the last in the parameter list, the ending delimiter will not be selected.

i, - Same as a, except that leading whitespace and a trailing ',' (if present) will not be part of the selection.

Other bracketing delimeters should work in addition to '(' and ')', including '[' and ']', '{' and '}' and possibly '<' and '>'.

Examples:

Consider this line of programming code:
func( a, b(c, d[0]), "this, is a test")

In normal mode with the cursor on the first parameter, "da," would change this to:
func( b(c, d[0]), "this, is a test")

Or, if the cursor is on 'b' in the second parameter, "da," would yield:
func( a, "this, is a test")
(Note the ignored ')' and ']' characters.)

Or if the cursor was in the string of the third parameter, "da," would yield:
func( a, b(c, d[0]), )
(Note that the ',' in the string was not a delimiter because it was nested between quotes.)

Some filetypes have other needs. For example in a CDF file, <C-R> is a bracketing character. To accommodate this I suggest some accompanying options:

listsep - Characters used to separate items in a list. Default: ',;'
liststart - Characters used to start a list (if not nested in quotes or balanced bracketed strings). Default: '({[<'.
listend - Characters used to end a list (if not nested in quotes or balanced bracketed strings). Default: ')}]>'.

-Codie

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