Easiest way to go to start/end of html element

Question

I seem to be using a hack approach to getting to the start of an html tag. For example:

To get to my cursor to be on the t after the tag, I end up doing yit -- this yanks the component (which I don't care about). Is there a way to just do something like "it" to get to that t without doing anything (also doing ft gets me stuck at the t before so that becomes a hassle). And then, what about going to the end of the text, that is the 't' right before the </td>?

Answer 1

Although vim provides text objects for tags, it doesn't have motions for tags. One options is to reuse it to create a pair of maps [t and ]t somewhat analogous to [b:

nnoremap [t vit<esc>`<
nnoremap ]t vit<esc>`>

These both work by temporarily visually selecting the inner tag and then moving to the start and end of the visual selection.

Answer 2

You can use the optional plugin :h matchit , it's an extension for the built in :h % .

Add this to your vimrc and restart vim.

packadd! matchit

Now you can jump between <td> and <\td> by %, note you must not place your cursor at < or > for this to work, otherwise it jump between < and >

If you are in the body and you want to jump to the open or close tag, use [% or ]%.

If you want to go to start of the inner body, use [%%l, [% jump to < of <td>, % jump to >. use ]%%h for the other direction.

There is also Mass's vim-matchup , it provides highlight, more motions, and textobjects.