What Vim command(s) can be used to quote/unquote w

Question

How can I quickly quote/unquote words and change quoting (e.g. from ' to ") in Vim? I know about the surround.vim plugin, but I would like to use just Vim.

Answer 1

VIM for vscode does it awsomely. It's based one vim-surround if you don't use vscode.

Some examples:

"test" with cursor inside quotes type cs"' to end up with 'test'

"test" with cursor inside quotes type ds" to end up with test

"test" with cursor inside quotes type cs"t and enter 123> to end up with <123>test

test with cursor on word test type ysaw) to end up with (test)

Answer 2

Here's some mapping that could help:

:nnoremap <Leader>q" ciw""<Esc>P
:nnoremap <Leader>q' ciw''<Esc>P
:nnoremap <Leader>qd daW"=substitute(@@,"'\\\|\"","","g")<CR>P

If you haven't changed the mapleader variable, then activate the mapping with \q" \q' or \qd. They add double quote around the word under the cursor, single quote around the word under the cursor, delete any quotes around the word under the cursor respectively.

Answer 3

To wrap in single quotes (for example) ciw'<C-r>"'<esc> works, but repeat won't work. Try:

ciw'<C-r><C-o>"'<esc>

This puts the contents of the default register "literally". Now you can press . on any word to wrap it in quotes. To learn more see :h[elp] i_ctrl-r and more about text objects at :h text-objects

Source: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/pasting-from-insert-mode/

Answer 4

I wrote a script that does this:

function! WrapSelect (front)
    "puts characters around the selected text.
    let l:front = a:front
    if (a:front == '[')
        let l:back = ']'
    elseif (a:front == '(')
        let l:back = ')'
    elseif (a:front == '{')
        let l:back = '}'
    elseif (a:front == '<')
        let l:back = '>'
    elseif (a:front =~ " ")
        let l:split = split(a:front)
        let l:back = l:split[1]
        let l:front = l:split[0]
    else
        let l:back = a:front
    endif
    "execute: concat all these strings. '.' means "concat without spaces"
    "norm means "run in normal mode and also be able to use \<C-x> characters"
    "gv means "get the previous visual selection back up"
    "c means "cut visual selection and go to insert mode"
    "\<C-R> means "insert the contents of a register. in this case, the
    "default register"
    execute 'norm! gvc' . l:front. "\<C-R>\""  . l:back
endfunction
vnoremap <C-l> :<C-u>call WrapSelect(input('Wrapping? Give both (space separated) or just the first one: '))<cr>

To use, just highlight something, hit control l, and then type a character. If it's one of the characters the function knows about, it'll provide the correct terminating character. If it's not, it'll use the same character to insert on both sides.

Surround.vim can do more than just this, but this was sufficient for my needs.

Answer 5

In addition to the other commands, this will enclose all words in a line in double quotes (as per your comment)

:s/\(\S\+\)/"\1"/

or if you want to reduce the number of backslashes, you can put a \v (very-magic) modifier at the start of the pattern

:s/\v(\S+)/"\1"/

Answer 6

I don't know any builtin vim command for this, but using r"f'r" to change from ' to " and r'f"r' to change from " to ' works if you stand on the first ' or ". The command r' replaces whatever character is under your cursor with ', and f" moves you forward to the next ".