I'm trying to navigate to next dot in a file using windows version of vim:
f.
but it doesn't do anything as well as all other similar commands:
F.
d.
D.
What is correct way to do it?
2 Answers
The f command only works within the current line. But you can use the sentence motions ( "one sentence back" and ) "next sentence" to navigate across multiple lines.
Although this only works if the dot is followed by a space, tab or linebreak as mentioned in the help :h (
A sentence is defined as ending at a '.', '!' or '?' followed by either the end of a line, or by a space or tab. Any number of closing ')', ']', '"' and ''' characters may appear after the '.', '!' or '?' before the spaces, tabs or end of line. A paragraph and section boundary is also a sentence boundary.
If you can't hit your dot this way you should use the search function /\. Remember to escape the dot character because it has a special meaning in the search function. Otherwise you would search for every character.
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how can I rebind all
fandtto use this kind of search instead of default behavior?– d3dayCommented Nov 18, 2015 at 13:20 -
you can create your own operator pending mapping. however, since the
/and?are working out of box, why not just use them?– KentCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 12:31 -
@Kent because it's too many keystrokes I guess.
f.is 2 keys and?\.<CR>is 4; not that efficient to me. Unless I'm missing something here.– d3dayCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 17:22 -
1@d3day, you know about
nandN, right? Because if you type/\.<CR>once, you can usenany number of times after that. (You should also know the;and,commands if you don't already.)– WildcardCommented Nov 24, 2015 at 18:26
f.doesn't move the cursor to the next dot in the file but to the next dot on the line. If your dot is not on the same line as your cursor, it can't work. If you want to move to the next dot in the file, you can try/\.. Now, if your cursor is on the same line as the dot, then maybe the problem comes from a shadowing mapping, what's the output of:nmap f?fandF, you probably need to install additional plugins. I asked the same question a while ago (vi.stackexchange.com/questions/4486/…) and got a lot of good answers. Not onlyfandFget extended in most plugins mentioned in that thread, but alsotandT(till forwards and backwards). For example to delete a sentence, you would pressdf.(or if you wanna keep the full stopdt.).