Adding parenthesis around highlighted text in Vim

Is there a functionality in Vim that allows parenthesis to be added around the highlighted text?

For instance, if I highlight n = getchar() in if (n = getchar() == '\n'), I would want to put parenthesis around that.

Solution 1:

You need an awesome and must-have plugin surround. Then, it will happily do what you want if you select text and type Sb (surround-braces), or S) (note the capital S !).

It actually can do a lot of surrounding: various quotes, tags, etc. It allows you to put cursor in the double-quoted word and change double quotes to single quotes by typing: cs"' (change-surround " to '). Or you can completely delete quotes by typing ds" (delete-surround ").

Read the docs by link, it is really awesome!

Solution 2:

In addtition to Dmitry's suggestion of the surround plugin, adding parenthesis around highlighted text can be done with the following command:

xi()<Esc>P

You can set a map in visual mode using (for example) \s by adding the following to your ~/.vimrc file:

xnoremap <leader>s xi()<Esc>P

Solution 3:

The comannd

c()<Esc>P

Explanation

If you want to put the word under the cursor in to brackets this is viwc()<Esc>P.

viw will visually select all charactrs in a word.

c() will cchange the selection and by dropping you into insert mode, where you type the characters ( ). c automatically copies the original content your yank buffer (clip board).

With <Esc>P you return Escback from insert to normal mode and Paste the previous content.

Solution 4:

Building on dotancohens answer, I put the following in my .vimrc:

xnoremap <leader>( <ESC>`>a)<ESC>`<i(<ESC>

You can easily make similar mappings for [], {}, etc. It works by jumping to the start and end markers implicitly set after ending visual mode. This way selecting whole lines will add the parens at the start/end of the first/last line; it won't overwrite your yank register; and it'll leave the cursor right before the opening paren.

Solution 5:

lh-brackets simply binds ( to surround the selection with the brackets. Unlike surround it doesn't follow the vim usual keybinding philosophy as does. Instead less keys are required.

Otherwise, there are many ways to proceed. If you don't mind messing the unnamed register, you also use s(^R")<esc> (^R like CTRL-R)