Vim tip of the day: C-a and C-x

They say that in Ruby if you think “I’m wondering if there is a function that does X” then it probably exists. More and more I find that is true about Vim too.

In Vim, if I have the cursor on a number and press ^a, the number is incremented. If I press ^x it is decremented. Although it may not seem to be extremely useful, I find myself using it often enough that I don’t forget it.

One neat trick about ^a and ^x is that it works even if you’re not on exactly the number, but somewhere on that line, before the number. For example if I have this:

var style = {
  paddingLeft: '2px'
};

if I’m anywhere on the second line before the “2”, ^a will increment it. Vim knows what I want to do! 8-)

Today I was writing a mock:

function handler1() {
  handler1.calls = handler1.calls || [];
  handler1.calls.push({ args: arguments });
}

and a few minutes later I wanted the second one, similar to this, but with “2” everywhere instead of “1.” OK, so I selected the handler1 function, copy-pasted it and intuitively, selected the copied code and pressed ^a. What do you think happened? All the “1”s in the selection got incremented! Wow! 8-)

Well, almost: it turns out it applied the ^a command to every line, which increments the first number on that line, so I was left with a “1” on the second line, where I have two of them.

Nevertheless it’s still awesome UX.

* * *

After writing this I have cheched the documentation of ^a and found another neat trick:

*v_g_CTRL-A*
{Visual}g CTRL-A    Add [count] to the number or alphabetic
  character in the highlighted text. If several lines are
  highlighted, each one will be incremented by an
  additional [count] (so effectively creating a
  [count] incrementing sequence).  {not in Vi}
  For Example, if you have this list of numbers:
    1.
    1.
    1.
    1.
  Move to the second "1." and Visually select three
  lines, pressing g CTRL-A results in:
    1.
    2.
    3.
    4.

They say that even after years of Vim usage, it can still surprise you with new tricks, and today is another of those days when I understand how true this can be. :)

Tags