delete word after or around cursor in VIM

Question

I\'m now switching to VIM from TextMate. I found ^+W in INSERT mode very useful. However, I\'d like to delete not only the word before cursor, but

Answer 1

Since there are so many ways to delete a word, let's illustrate them.

Assuming you edit:

foo-bar quux

and invoke a command while the cursor is on the 'a' in 'bar':

foo-bquux  # dw:  letters then spaces right of cursor
foo-quux   # daw: letters on both sides of cursor then spaces on the right 
foo- quux  # diw: letters on both sides of cursor
foo-bquux  # dW:  non-whitespace then spaces right of cursor
quux       # daW: non-whitespace on both sides of cursor then spaces on the right
 quux      # diW: non-whitespace on both sides of cursor

Answer 2

It doesn't look like there's any built-in way to do it in insert mode, which was the question. Some of the other answers are correct for normal mode, as well as pointing out that a custom mapping could be created to add the functionality in insert mode.

Honestly, you should probably do most of your deleting in normal mode. ^W is neat to know about but I'm not sure I can think of a situation where I'd rather do it than esc to go into normal mode and have the more powerful deletion commands at my disposal.

Vim is very different from a number of other editors (including TextMate) in this way. If you're using it productively, you'll probably find that you don't spend very much time in insert mode.

Answer 3

To delete the entire word your cursor is on use diw
To delete the entire word your cursor is on and to put you in insert mode use ciw
if you dont want to delete the entire word but delete from where you are the dw/cw

Answer 4

For deleting a certain amount of characters before the cursor, you can use X. For deleting a certain number of words after the cursor, you can use dw (multiple words can be deleted using 3dw for 3 words for example). For deleting around the cursor in general, you can use daw.