5. Operators
Its purpose is to find all matches inside a visual selection, or a text object. It can be started in 3 ways:
- C-f from visual mode
- g/ from visual mode, to start a regex search inside of it
- m + text object: from normal mode ('m' stands for 'matches')
If run from visual mode with C-f, and VM hasn't started yet, it will look for patterns matching the current search register. Otherwise it will look for the current patterns. Method 3. can only work after VM has started.
Example from visual mode, using vim-indent-object: press C-n, then vii and C-f to select all occurrences inside the indentation level.
Example from normal mode, using vim-textobj-function: press C-n, then maf to select all occurrences inside the function.
The Select Operator is activated with gs or s (after VM has started). gs creates selections from nothing, while s creates them from existing regions.
They're different because:
- gs always creates a new region, and never touches existing regions.
- s acts on all regions at the same time, and will remove the regions/cursors that have been used as 'jump-points'.
That is, s creates regions from cursors: from a cursor, a new region is made, but the old cursor is removed.
You can use the Select Operator in the same way you would use the v key in vim. While v starts Visual Mode and creates a visual selection, the Select Operator starts extend mode (if it's not started already) and creates selections for every region, similarly to how v would create them.
| gs | s | |
|---|---|---|
| VM not started? | creates selection | mapping not set |
| cursor mode? | creates selection and turns on extend mode | removes cursors and creates selections out of them |
| extend mode? | creates selection | removes selections and creates new selections out of them |
The Select Operator is basically a yank motion, so it supports all custom operators from plugins you may have installed, eg:
wellle/targets
kana/vim-textobj-indent
kana/vim-textobj-function
In cursor mode, several operations are allowed, with some limited plugin
support. All default yank, delete and change operations are supported, with
registers and count, for example "zdw, c2b, etc.
vim-surround is explicitely supported, while others are implicitely supported
if they replace default vim motions/text objects.
| operator | special | example |
|---|---|---|
| y | s,S | ysiW] |
| d | s | ds( |
| c | s,S | cs(] |
kana/vim-textobj-function and
kana/vim-textobj-indent are also
supported, so that change operations will work correctly. An example using
cii and kana/vim-textobj-indent:
