Find commands

[donaldcallen]

I am a very experienced vi and vim user. In the last year or two, I've gotten interested in Kakoune and have used it a fair amount. I've also read the arguments in favor of select first, operate second. I want to mention something here that I have not seen discussed.

In vim, I use the find (f and t) commands for two purposes:

1. I want to perform an operation on everything between where the cursor is currently and the character to be found, e.g., 'dt,'.
2. I simply want to navigate to the found character and once there, do a local operation, e.g., an insert or a replace.

To do 2. in Kakoune, I need to be very careful. If, for example, after a find I press 'i' with the intention of inserting at the target character, the insertion takes place where I came from, not where I'm at. I have to remember to collapse the selection that I didn't want in this case. So it's more mental effort and an extra keystroke than the same situation in vim.

In vim, I can run the find command by itself, not preceded by an operator, which gets me to my target character, where I can do whatever operation I want at that site. If I want 1. above, then I can precede the find with an operator. I have not found a way to separate these two cases easily in Kakoune. It would help if there were non-selecting versions of the find commands. I haven't figured out a way to achieve that myself.

[krobelus]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 10:23:55AM -0800, Don Allen wrote: I am a very experienced vi and vim user. In the last year or two, I've gotten interested in Kakoune and have used it a fair amount. I've also read the arguments in favor of select first, operate second. I want to mention something here that I have not seen discussed. In vim, I use the find (f and t) commands for two purposes: 1. I want to perform an operation on everything between where the cursor is currently and the character to be found, e.g., 'dt,'. 2. I simply want to navigate to the found character and once there, do a local operation, e.g., an insert or a replace.

interesting. I also use both, probably 2 is more frequent.

To do 2. in Kakoune, I need to be very careful. If, for example, after a find I press 'i' with the intention of inserting at the target character, the insertion takes place where I came from, not where I'm at. I have to remember to collapse the selection that I didn't want in this case. So it's more mental effort and an extra keystroke than the same situation in vim. In vim, I can run the find command by itself, not preceded by an operator, which gets me to my target characer, where I can do whatever operation I want at that site. If I want 1. above, then I can precede the find with an operator. I have not found a way to separate these two cases easily in Kakoune. It would help if there were non-selecting versions of the find commands. I haven't figured out a way to achieve that myself.

Here's a quick version that binds the nonselecting version to <space>f (though it's perfectly fine to do "map global normal f" to) define-command my-find-nonselecting %{ on-key %{ execute-keys "f%val{key};" } } map global user f :my-find-nonselecting<ret>

[donaldcallen]

Thanks -- that works.

[donaldcallen]

Though there is an issue. After using the non-selecting find, alt-. repeats the selecting find.

[krobelus]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 11:48:34AM -0800, Don Allen wrote: Though there is an issue. After using the non-selecting find, alt-. repeats the selecting find.

Right. OTTOMH, a quick fix is to add another override for "<a-.>", declare-option str my_maybe_reduce_selection define-command my-repeat-last-movement %{ execute-keys "<a-.>%opt{my_maybe_reduce_selection}" } map global normal <semicolon> :my-repeat-last-movement<ret> and then any f/t/F/T commands need to be updated to set "my_reduce_selection" to ";" or clear it (probably in window scope).