How to select the content within brackets including brackets and without including brackets?

Question

I have some code structure e.g

{
  {
    // Some content goes here
  }
  [
    // Some content goes here
  ]
}

I want to select the content inside { } in some case and also content inside with opening and closing brackets included in some case. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You can use text objects to accomplish this. Start a selection with v and then:

For selecting inside use: i{

For selecting the whole block including braces use: a{

You can also do this with any type of parenthesis by changing { to [ or whatever. It's worth taking a little time to learn text objects as they make vim a lot more powerful!

See :h text-objects for more info.