"Visual around two Words"?

Question

If I type 2daW, I can delete the current Word and the next (though I can't really see that case covered in the manual).

Is there a way to visual-select around two words? I tried 2vaW, but of course (as the manual says) that does something else (something... complicated). va2W seems to ignore the count (while da2W seems to quit the action at 2 and start a new one).

Answer 1

You can of course use v2aw, v3aw and so on as described in the :h text-objects where aw is a text object that accepts count.

You can also compose viw and e. Like viwe for 2 words, viw2e for 3 words etc...

So what is the difference with daw, caw and vaw? Why can't you 2vaw but 2daw works?

• d and c are operators (:h operator) -- they accept count + motion and delete or change text accordingly. So for 2daw you pass 2 for a d operator and a motion (a word text object).
• v is a mode change -- you switch from normal to visual. Yes it also accepts a count but it does completly different thing compared to operators -- select the same number of characters/lines as used for the previous visual selection and multiply it by count. So you have selected what you didn't expect and then also made a single motion aw.