Auto-insert left bracket in Vim

Question

I'm trying to code some Objective-C in Vim and one thing I'm missing from Xcode is the ability to auto insert the left matching bracket.

Say if I have the following text:

NSString *string = [NSString alloc] init

and I insert ']' at the end of the row, then I want it to complete to:

NSString *string = [[NSString alloc] init]

Any ideas?

Answer 1

That's a nice feature.

Apart from using Surround, I don't know of an exact solution.

With surround, starting with the cursor on the t of init in NSString *string = [NSString alloc] init:

1. v to enter visual mode
2. F[ to select everything up to the first [
3. s] to surround it with []

vF[s] can be tedious in the long run, in absence of a better/smarter solution you could make a dumb mapping like:

inoremap ]] vF[s]

Answer 2

This might be what you're looking for. Haven't tried it out properly myself yet, but it seems to do the job.