How to have w,e,b-based motions handle underscores without using iskeyword?

Question

Using Neovim 0.6.1.

I use a lot of snake_case_variable_names and have a frequent need to navigate within their individual components instead of treating these names as a single word.

Right now, the only trick I've found is to put this line in my config: set iskeyword-=_

However this poses several problems:

1. When using the native completion engine, the individual components are registered in a list of available words. This tends to bloat completion lists with useless symbols (some_integer, some, integer).

   • For instance, if I declare some_integer in python, the jedi completion engine will recognise some_integer as a symbol available for completion. Which is good.
   • The native nvim completion engine, on the other hand, will recognise some and word as symbols available for completion. Which is bad.

2. The ability to navigate around full_names with w,e,b motions is either removed or severely impaired.

   • I can sometimes use W,E,B to select an entire_name, but it doesn't behave as w,e,b used to behave before using set iskeyword-=_. It usually overshoots and selects special characters such as parentheses, punctuation, brackets, etc.

3. * and # do not select the whole_name, but whatever word is delimited by underscores.

Does anyone know how I could get around either (hopefully both) of these problems?

Ideally, I'd like a setup that would function as follows:

• w,e,b to navigate within snake_case_names
• W,E,B behaving exactly as the default w,e,b

Answer 1

Right before submitting this question I dove into a rabbit hole and emerged with a solution mentioned in this post: https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/677/31358

The provided answer was to install this plugin: https://github.com/bkad/CamelCaseMotion

And with the following config, it seems that my wishes have been granted:

map <silent> b <Plug>CamelCaseMotion_b
map <silent> e <Plug>CamelCaseMotion_e
sunmap w
sunmap b
sunmap e