Working with Vim

Text Object Selection

See :help text-object Vim can operate on text based on its objects and structure. The inner object i is quite useful to select chunks of text inside parentheses, brackets, quotes, tags and other pairs, use a to also select the delimiters.

An example might help illustrate. To select text inside an html tag you can use the tag text object t. With your cursor between the tags, use v to enter visual mode, i for inner, t for tag. So vit will select interior content between two tags. Use vat to select content with tags.

Selection Commands

( : Parentheses

{ [ > : Brackets

' " ` : Quotes and Ticks

t : Tag block

w : Words

s : Sentences

p : Paragraphs

Combine the text objects with operators. For example, to copy the arguments in a function use yi(

If you want delete a block of code in a { ... } with your cursor inside the block, type di{

For text in quotes, type yi" to copy the word without the quotes. If you want copy to include the quotes use a instead of i.