How do I surround a quoted string without including leading whitespace?

Question

I have a string like 'foobar', and I want to surround it with parentheses: ('foobar').

With vim-surround, I can do ysi'), which produces '(foobar)'... Not what I want

I can also ysa'), but that will include whitespace: ( 'foobar')... Meh, close.

In vim, I can 2yi', which yanks exactly what I need 'foobar', but I cannot seem to make it work with vim-surround

Answer 1

It's not specific to vim-surround - va' also selects the leading whitespace. From :h a':

a"                                                      v_aquote aquote
a'                                                      v_a' a'
a`                                                      v_a` a`
                        "a quoted string".  Selects the text from the previous
                        quote until the next quote.  The 'quoteescape' option
                        is used to skip escaped quotes.
                        Only works within one line.
                        When the cursor starts on a quote, Vim will figure out
                        which quote pairs form a string by searching from the
                        start of the line.
                        Any trailing white space is included, unless there is
                        none, then leading white space is included.

Reading on:

i"                                                      v_iquote iquote
i'                                                      v_i' i'
i`                                                      v_i` i`
                        Like a", a' and a`, but exclude the quotes and
                        repeating won't extend the Visual selection.
                        Special case: With a count of 2 the quotes are
                        included, but no extra white space as with a"/a'/a`.

So:

ys2i')

And with my tests, this worked as desired:

a   'aaa'

Changes to:

a   ('aaa')

Answer 2

I always visually select string before using surround plus I have a mapping

xmap s S

It saves me a key stroke while surrounding selected string so for me the sequence is:

va's)

[obvious explanation: "select visually everything within and with single quotes and surround selection with parentheses without adding white space"]

Alternative version: va'sb