How can I make w and b act like W and B to navigate big words (space delimited words)?

Question

I navigate by big words much more often would like to just type w and b instead of W and B every time. I wonder if Vim has a setting for this.

BTW, "big words" are called WORDS in Vim's :help (as opposed to regular words). — Friedrich, Commented May 20 at 8:58
I thought the wording didn't matter that much for something like this post, and that by big words I meant WORDS. — Oneechan69, Commented May 20 at 9:24
Wording always matters. More so when discussing technical topics. — romainl, Commented May 20 at 10:46
It didn't matter in the sense that everybody understood what you meant, I does matter as there's an established term used within this domain. I didn't mean to point out a mistake as much as I wanted to hint to the correct word (or WORD). — Friedrich, Commented May 20 at 11:14

husB · Accepted Answer · 2024-05-21 17:05:18Z

3

Vim is very customizable. You can customize the behavior of every key. For normal mode w and b, you could do

nnoremap w W
nnoremap b B

To replicate this behavior in a visual selection, and after an operator (such as d, c, y), you could do

xnoremap w W
onoremap w W
xnoremap b B
onoremap b B

In the above, the x and o refer to visual and operator-pending modes respectively.

You could extend these, to include

Have a look at :h usr_05.txt (notably, sections 5.1 and 5.3) for more information.

answered May 20 at 5:54

husB

2,1435 silver badges22 bronze badges

This answers the question as it was asked: it will work for navigation. Note that this will not affect visual and operator-pending modes. You would also have to define the same mappings as vnoremap and onoremap to have consistency across modes.
– Friedrich
Commented May 20 at 8:54
@Friedrich means xnoremap, not vnoremap. It would also be good to suggest the "swap" (nnoremap W w) so that you can still navigate by words as needed.
– D. Ben Knoble ♦
Commented May 21 at 16:18
Thanks Friedrich and Ben, have edited these into my answer
– husB
Commented May 21 at 17:05
@D.BenKnoble I see no reason to exclude select mode (although I never use it). That's probably why I'm not aware why to prefer :xnoremap to :vnoremap. Would you care to elaborate?
– Friedrich
Commented May 21 at 18:16
1

@Friedrich in select mode (which I admittedly rarely use), the “printable” keys delete the selected text and start inserting (like a traditional editor: highlight with mouse, type to wipe away and insert new content). So mapping characters like w, b in select mode doesn’t make sense, usually.
– D. Ben Knoble ♦
Commented May 21 at 20:02

Add a comment |

1 Answer 1