Vim normal mode commands are made up of verbs, adverbs, and nouns. Many of them are mnemonic such as visual, change, yank and delete. Others like ` are less obviously “go to” in context of a mark.
Some Vim plugins add additional commands. In this example, we rely on
functionality from vim-unimpaired and vim-surround which add the [ and
ya]/vi> functionality, respectively.
Let’s break down a relatively verbose Vim normal mode command:
"wya]}[ "wpa: <https://example.com><Esc>vi>
"wApply the next command to a register named “w”. “w” happened to be an unused register in my Vim setup.ya]Yank the text around the brackets.}Move the cursor to the first line after the current paragraph.[Insert a blank line above the cursor, but don’t move the cursor and stay in normal mode. The space is “” in :help files. "wAgain, do something with the “w” register.pPaste its contents.aOpen insert mode to append after the character under the cursor.: <https://example.com>Insert that literal text.<Esc>Press escape, bringing us back to normal mode from insert mode.vi>Visually select inside angle brackets.
So what does this do?
With your cursor inside [brackets] as on this line
Insert the text [brackets]: <https://example.com> after the paragraph, leaving
a blank line above. Visually select the link text and leave it to me to make
changes if desired.
This is great when authoring a post in Markdown when you’d like to add a link to
some text. I have it mapped to <Leader>e in Markdown files with:
autocmd filetype markdown nnoremap <Leader>e :normal "wya]}[ "wpa: <https://example.com><Esc>vi>
Combine it with ysa2w] for even more fun. What does it do?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t play nicely if the current paragraph is followed by an
EOF, as the } motion moves to the end of the paragraph and does not create a
new line.
Can you fix this? (hover for the answer.) You might need to open up the
:help files and jump around a bit until you have about 2 more
commands under your belt.
