How to increase the 2nd number on a line

Question

One thing I need to do frequently is to increment the 2nd number on a line. Increasing the first is very comfortable by just pressing Control-a, but I just can't find a nice way to increase the 2nd.

There is no useful substring (as in, a word or a token or whatever) in that line that I can use for searches or jumps by text objects.

Answer 1

I mean, it's basically a hack, but assuming you're at the start of the line with the number on it:

<C-A><C-X>w<C-A>

Go to the next number, increment it, decrement it, go to the start of the next word, increment the next number. This jumps past and increments the second number. Unfortunately it's not easy to chain as you need to repeat most of the keys again.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this is the 'best' way, but 'a' way would be to create a mapping like this:

noremap <Leader>a ^/\d\+<CR>n<C-a>

• ^ to go to the start of the line
• /\d+<CR> to search for the first number
• n to go to the next (second) match
• <C-a> to increment the number under the cursor, which should be the second number now.

Or perhaps a slightly better way is to use a script

fun! IncSecond()
    normal ^
    call search('\d\+')
    call search('\d\+')
    execute "normal \<C-a>"
endfun
noremap <Leader>a :call IncSecond()<CR>

Calling search() doesn't set the / register and doesn't start highlighting if you have hlsearch set.
You could cram those lines in a keybind without a function:

noremap <Leader>a ^<Bar>:call search('\d\+')<Bar>:call search('\d\+')<Bar>:execute "normal \<C-a>"<CR>

But I would go for the readability of the function...