How to switch words in an easy manner (in VIM)?

Question

I'm not good enough at vim to determine whether this was possible or not (which is why I came to superuser and not good) ~ is there a way in vim to easily switch two words?

for example in def function(param1, param2) is there a quick/easy way to change that to def function(param2, param1)???

Answer 1

I don't remember where I originally got this, but it's been in my ~/.vimrc for at least a few years:

" Swap the word the cursor is on with the next word (which can be on a
" newline, and punctuation is "skipped"):
nmap <silent> gw "_yiw:s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><C-o>:noh<CR>

After you have this defined, all you need to do is put your cursor somewhere on "param1" in normal mode and type: gw

Answer 2

+1 for @Heptite's answer.

For more completeness, here is what I have in my .vimrc:

" push current line up or down
nnoremap <leader><Up> ddkP
nnoremap <leader><Down> ddp

" exchange character under cursor with the next character without moving the cursor
nnoremap gc xph

" exchange word under cursor with the next word without moving the cursor
nnoremap gw "_yiw:s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><C-o><C-l>

" push word under cursor to the left
nnoremap <leader><Left> "_yiw?\w\+\_W\+\%#<CR>:s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><C-o><C-l>

" push word under cursor to the right
nnoremap <leader><Right> "_yiw:s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><C-o>/\w\+\_W\+<CR><C-l>

Source: the vim wiki.

I see my (and the wiki's) gw is slightly different from Heptite's one. I'm not sure which one is better.

Answer 3

The vim tip messes up the current search pattern, in the end I've completely rewritten it (using other techniques): here