What Vim command(s) can be used to quote/unquote words?

Question

How can I quickly quote/unquote words and change quoting (e.g. from \' to \") in Vim? I know about the surround.vim plugin, but I would like to use

Answer 1

Adding Quotes

I started using this quick and dirty function in my .vimrc:

vnoremap q :call QuickWrap("'")
vnoremap Q :call QuickWrap('"')

function! QuickWrap(wrapper)
  let l:w = a:wrapper
  let l:inside_or_around = (&selection == 'exclusive') ? ('i') : ('a')
  normal `>
  execute "normal " . inside_or_around . escape(w, '\')
  normal `<
  execute "normal i" . escape(w, '\')
  normal `<
endfunction

So now, I visually select whatever I want (typically via viw - visually select inside word) in quotes and press Q for double quotes, or press q for single quotes.

Removing Quotes

vnoremap s :call StripWrap()

function! StripWrap()
  normal `>x`

I use vim-textobj-quotes so that vim treats quotes as a text objects. This means I can do vaq (visually select around quotes. This finds the nearest quotes and visually selects them. (This is optional, you can just do something like f"vww). Then I press s to strip the quotes from the selection.

Changing Quotes

KISS. I remove quotes then add quotes. For example, to replace single quotes with double quotes, I would perform the steps: 1. remove single quotes: vaqs, 2. add new quotes: vwQ.

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• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Wrap_a_visual_selection_in_an_HTML_tag code from here was modified and used as part of my answer
• https://github.com/beloglazov/vim-textobj-quotes vim-text-obj-quotes