Command to surround a character with spaces in vim

I am trying to use vim properly - to aid me I've mapped my arrow keys to "" so that I am forced to use {hjlk开发者_如何学C} to move around.

This is causing me a problem when I want to just surround a character with spaces, eg:

"2+3" is better formatted "2 + 3"

Previously I would have put my cursor over the + and typed:

i[space][arrow-right][space][Esc]

That's 5 presses.

To do this without the arrow I seem to need to put the cursor over the + and go:

i[space][Esc]lli[space][Esc]

That's 8 presses.

I can convert the "li" into an "a" which reduces it to 7 presses:

i[space][Esc]la[space][Esc]

Short of writing this into a macro is there a better way of doing it? Is there some magic vim command which will allow me to do it in less than even 5 presses - and some way to generalise it so that I can do it to entire words or symbols, eg if I want to convert 3==4 to 3 == 4?

Personally, I think it makes most sense to destroy what you want to surround, and then repaste it.

c w "" ESC P

Obviously, you can replace both the object and the quotes with whatever you like. To change just one character + to be [space]+[space], you would do

s [space] [space] ESC P

on the +

The first thing that jumps to mind after reading just the title is surround.vim which is an excellent script to do all kinds of useful things along the lines of what you've described.

To solve your specific problem, I would probably position the cursor on the + and:

s[space]+[space][esc]

To change 3==4 into 3 == 4, I might position the cursor on the first =, and:

i[space][esc]ww.

i have been wondering about this as well. i tried with surround.vim, but the naive approach

S<space>

(after making a visual selection) does not work since the space is already taken up as a modifier for adding space to other surrounding character pairs. S<space><cr> adds a ^M in the output. Ss almost works but inserts a space only before.

after asking at tpope/surround.vim on github:

S<space><space>

in visual mode works. alternatively, from normal mode, ysl<space><space> works for a single character

Hah! I've been trying to figure out how to surround a block in spaces for quite a while and I finally found the right combination.

Using surround.vim you say surround selector space space.

So for this specific case I would use visual mode (a good trick for operating on single characters under the cursor BTW) thus: "vs " <- four key presses!

I also have a habit of typing things like argument lists without spaces. With this technique you can just navigate to the second argument using w and say "vws " to visually select a word and surround with spaces.

I prefer visual select mode generally. Also the alternate surround syntax "ysw " excludes the word final comma that is caught by "vw".

You could create a macro with one of the described actions and call it everytime you need it (Like amphetamachine proposed while I was writing) or you could simply search & replace:

:%s/\(\d\)\(+\|-\)\(\d\)/\1 \2 \3/g

You probably have to execute this command two times because it will only find every second occurence of +/-.

EDIT:

This will replace everything without the need to be called twice:

:%s/\d\@<=+\|-\d\@=/ \0 /g

Try positioning your cursor over the '+' and typing this:

q1i[space][right arrow][space][left arrow][esc]q

This will record a quick macro in slot 1 that you can re-use whenever you feel like it, that will surround the character under the cursor with spaces. You can re-call it with @1.

There is also the more versatile one:

q1ea[space][esc]bi[space][right arrow][esc]q

Which will surround the word under the cursor ("==" counts as a word) with spaces when you hit @1.

You could set up a mapping like this (press enter in visual mode to wrap spaces):

:vnoremap <CR> <ESC>`<i<SPACE><ESC>`>la<SPACE><ESC>h

This method allows you to use . to repeat the command at the next +.

Put your cursor over the + and type:

s[SPACE][CTRL-R]"[SPACE][ESC]

I know this is and old thread, but this might be useful to someone. I've found that the map (map it to anything else you want!)

noremap <leader>ss diwi<SPACE><C-R>"<SPACE><ESC>B

works ok both for turning 'a+b' into 'a + b' (when used over the '+' char) and for turning 'a==b' into 'a == b' (when used over either the first or the second '=' sign).

I hope it's useful to someone.