How to "dereference" variables in keymappings?

Question

I just learned about vimscript. I'm trying to write a small vimscript that'll kinda copy what this does, but more verbosely and very explicitly. (The first case would case typing a ( will insert ())

" make keymappings
for [opener, closer] in {'(': ')'}
  inoremap l:opener <C-r>=InsertPair(opener, closer)<CR>
endfor

" Typing the opener will also insert the closer
function! InsertPair(open, close)
  return a:open . a:close . "\<Left>"
endfunction

But I ran into a problem. The inoremaps aren't working as planned - they're remapping the literal chars l : o p e n e r instead of the value of the local variable named opener (().

Is dereferencing a variable in a call to map possible in vimscript?

Answer 1

So close! Use the "= register again. What that looks like for your question is

inoremap <C-r>=opener<CR> <C-r>=InsertPair(opener, closer)<CR><CR>

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If you want to lock in the values of the variable at runtime then you can also do something like this:

execute "inoremap " . opener . " <C-r>=InsertPair('" . opener . "', '" . closer . "')<CR>"