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)???
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
That long solution is ugly. Suppose your cursor is at the left the first letter of the first word, that is 'p'. Do this: dwlpldw%p.
This fits in your special case. How about dealing with daily editing? Try dwwP, or dWWP. :D
Tips: Don't always write long regular expression, if you don't need to do this often. Otherwise your vimrc booms. All vim users shall be familiar with its builtin cursor movement.
+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.
I wrote up repeatable mappings using a combination of vim-exchange, Repeatable (which depends on repeat.vim), and argtextobj.
" Swap function arguments, move the argument under the cursor to the left or to
" the right.
Repeatable map <leader>al cxiaf,cxia
Repeatable map <leader>ah cxiaF,hcxia
The advantage in using the exchange and repeatable plugins for these mappings are:
u will undo the swap (they're atomic changes). to keep moving the argument left/right.I know I know, it seems like a whole lot of plugins for a simple operation, but think what else those plugins give you:
ia and aa textobj for deleting (dia and daa), and yanking (yia)...The swap mappings from the Vim wiki will not operate correctly on words with accented characters.
These mappings are adapted to work with (European) ISO/IEC_8859-1 Latin-1 Supplement characters. This is done by substituting all instances of \w in the Vim wiki code with [0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-] and all instances of \_W with \_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-].
Furthermore, the search highlighting is cleared where needed.
This is achieved by adding :nohlsearch<return> at the end of each mapping where it is required.
Here is the end result:
" Use gc to swap the current CHARACTER with the next, WITHOUT changing the cursor position.
nnoremap <silent> gc xph
" Use gw to swap the current WORD with the next, WITHOUT changing the cursor position.
nnoremap <silent> gw "_yiw:s/\(\%#[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\(\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\([0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><c-o><c-l>:nohlsearch<return>
" Disable Alt+[menukey] menu keys (i.e. Alt+h for help)
set winaltkeys=no
" Use Alt + ← or Alt + h to swap the current WORD with the previous, keeping the cursor on the current word. This feels like "PUSHING" the word to the left.
nnoremap <silent> <A-Left> "_yiw?[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\%#<CR>:s/\(\%#[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\(\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\([0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><c-o><c-l>:nohlsearch<return>
nnoremap <silent> <A-h> "_yiw?[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\%#<CR>:s/\(\%#[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\(\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\([0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><c-o><c-l>:nohlsearch<return>
" <A-h> corresponds to è
" Use Alt + → or Alt + l to swap the current WORD with the next, keeping the cursor on the current word. This feels like "PUSHING" the word to the right.
nnoremap <silent> <A-Right> "_yiw:s/\(\%#[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\(\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\([0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><c-o>/[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+<CR><c-l>:nohlsearch<return>
nnoremap <silent> <A-l> "_yiw:s/\(\%#[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\(\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)\([0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\)/\3\2\1/<CR><c-o>/[0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+\_[^0-9A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ_\-\`]\+<CR><c-l>:nohlsearch<return>
" <A-l> corresponds to ì
" Use g{ to swap the current PARAGRAPH with the next.
nnoremap g{ {dap}p{
Eclim plugin provides a good one. All credits to them :)
:SwapWords
.. and if you don't want to install the whole plugin, here is their function extracted:
" Swap words:
" taken from Eclim
" https://github.com/ervandew/eclim
function! SwapWords() " {{{
" Initially based on http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=329
" save the last search pattern
let save_search = @/
normal! "_yiw
let pos = getpos('.')
keepjumps s/\(\%#\w\+\)\(\_W\+\)\(\w\+\)/\3\2\1/
call setpos('.', pos)
" restore the last search pattern
let @/ = save_search
silent! call repeat#set(":call SwapWords()\<cr>", v:count)
endfunction " }}}
command! SwapWords :call SwapWords()
