# vim text objects


For a few <strike>weeks</strike> months now I'm learnings how to use 
VIM text-objects. There is
an extended help wth `help text-objects` in VIM. I'm trying to condense the
VIM help in a smaller blog entry here.

What *are* a text-objects in vim? Text-objects are things like a
'paragraph' or the text between braces or something like a
word. Text-objects can be used with the normal vim commands `y`, `d` and
`c`. To make you really understand it, I can recommend using `control-V`
to actually *visually* select your text object.

In vim's text-objects documentation they talk about an important
property. A text-object selection is either *inner* or not...

Some text-object selectors:

* `aw` - a word, works on words
* `iw` - *inner* word, works on words
* `ab` - brace, works with text between ( and )
* `ib` - *inner* brace, works with text between ( and )
* `...` - there are many more

Note: the `i` is used to denote *inner* selection, the `a` for
*normal* ones.

Consider the following text:

> (passed init=/sbin/bootchartd)

(this is some stuff from Ubuntu's bootchart implementation).

Now an *inner* brace selection will be

<span class="inverse">passed init=/sbin/bootchartd</span>

*without* the braces. An inner text-object selector will *always*
select less than the *normal* block selection. The normal brace selection
will select

<span class="inverse">(passed init=/sbin/bootchartd)</span>

*with* the braces. You can check this for your self with the 
combo: control-V+a+b (normal selection) or control-V+i+b (inner
selection). Note the selection works from *anywhere* inside the
braces: it does not matter where the cursor is positioned.
With `dib` you delete the inner brace text-object.

The word text-object works by letting you select *only* the word 
(= inner selection) or the word + whitespace (= normal selection).
Thus, with the same sentence as above and the cursor positioned on
the p of passed.

> (passed init=/sbin/bootchartd)

control-V+i+w, selects

(<span class="inverse">passed</span> init=/sbin/bootchartd)

In contrast with, control-V+a+w, which selects

(<span class="inverse">passed </span>init=/sbin/bootchartd)

*With* the space after 'passed' also.

See vim's online help for more info, but I hope this little text was
helpful to you (It certainly helped me).