Differentiating between left and right shift key

Question

I have a bad habit of using the shift key of the same side of the keyboard as the letter when tying uppercase letters. To type a D, for example, I press the left shift with my left pinky and d with my left index finger. It is better to use the right shift in combination with keys on the left hand side of the keyboard, and vise versa.

To get rid of this habit I would like to disable the combinations of either shift key with keys on the same side of the keyboard. I can map shift-d with <S-d>, but this applies to both shift keys. Is there a to apply only to the right hand shift key?

Answer 1

From the Vim FAQ 20.4. "I am not able to create a mapping for the key. What is wrong?":

1) First make sure, the key is passed correctly to Vim. To determine if this is the case, put Vim in Insert mode and then hit Ctrl-V (or Ctrl-Q if your Ctrl-V is remapped to the paste operation (e.g. on Windows if you are using the mswin.vim script file) followed by your key.

If nothing appears in the buffer (and assuming that you have 'showcmd' on, ^V remains displayed near the bottom right of the Vim screen), then Vim doesn't get your key correctly and there is nothing to be done, other than selecting a different key for your mapping or using GVim, which should recognise the key correctly.

On my setup issuing Ctrl-q+Left Shfit-d displays 'D', and issuing Ctrl-q+Right Shfit-d leads to the same result. So at least here Vim is unable to detect the difference.

But maybe you could use some other tool to aid you on this; for instance, on Windows you could try AutoHotkey with something like this:

#ifWinActive ahk_class Vim
LShift & d::MsgBox You pressed the wrong 'Shift'!
#ifWinActive

or to simple ignore the combination:

#ifWinActive ahk_class Vim
LShift & d::
#ifWinActive