Vimpulse features

Fri Feb 11 20:16:49 CET 2011

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Largo <splatter at proinbox.com> wrote:
> Tim Harper wrote :
>
>> As seen at the top of the wiki page:
>>
>> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-es/Vimpulse
>>
>> "Vimpulse extends Viper with Vim features like Visual mode and text objects."
>>
>> So, in short: "ciw", "ci)", "viw", "V", "C-v" (block select), etc....
>
> A list of commands like "ciw" doesn't help me much since I don't know
> VIM and I was looking for an answer which would not require reading VIM
> docs.

So would it be accurate to restate your question as "what does vim
provide over vi"?

viper is vi emulation (mostly)
vimpulse is vim emulation (more so)

Text objects gives the editor primitive knowledge about the structure
of your text.  In vi, you have "ce, cb, c$, etc" (I'm assuming you're
familiar with those commands), they allow you to change to the end of
the word, change to the beginning of a word, the change to the end of
the line, etc.

In vim, you get commands such as “change this word, change inside of
these parentheses, delete inside of these parentheses, delete
everything including these parentheses, quotes, single quotes,
brackets, etc.”. This is what it refers to by “text objects”. It's a
little more sophisticated than what you could achieve with VI macros:
for example, certainly you can change everything inside of enclosing
parentheses by issuing “T(ct)”, and that would work if you were inside
of a single parenthetical enclosure. However, what if another set of
parentheses is nested inside, such as:

(5| + (3 * 5))

vim, with "ci)", would leave you with this:

(|)

the aforedescribed vi Macro would leave you with this:

(5))

I hope that makes sense.

In addition to adding several vim features, vimpulse also brings
visual mode in most of its vim glory. Press “V” to enter line
selection mode, “control-V” to enter column selection mode. You can
use the previously described text objects in combination with visual
mode, rendering it (in my opinion) far superior to what Viper offers
alone.

I hope this helps

Warmly,
Tim