Can you grab or delete between parentheses in vi/vim?

Question

Given this line of code in C:

printf(\"%3.0f\\t%6.1f\\n\", fahr, ((5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32)));

Answer 1

To delete all that is inside a pair of parentheses, you can always issue di( and its derivatives.

Note :

As @porglezomb suggested in his comment, you can use a ("along with") instead of i ("inside") to include the parentheses. So, using da( deletes everything inside ( and ) including ( and ).

Deleting text inside the immediate outer pair of parentheses :

So, for this line of code

printf("%3.0f\t%6.1f\n", fahr, ((5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32)));
                                ^       ^
                                |       |
                                 \_______\___---> Cursor range

assuming that your cursor is inside the above mentioned cursor range, you can issue the following commands :

di(   --> Deletes '5.0/9.0'
ci(   --> Substitutes '5.0/9.0'
yi(   --> Yanks '5.0/9.0'

Deleting text inside the n-th outer pair of parentheses :

To grab everything inside the n-th outer pair of parentheses, just add n before the above command. So, with the same cursor position as above,

2di(   --> Deletes '(5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32)'
2ci(   --> Substitutes '(5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32)'
2yi(   --> Yanks '(5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32)'

3di(   --> Deletes '"%3.0f\t%6.1f\n", fahr, ((5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32))'
3ci(   --> Substitutes '"%3.0f\t%6.1f\n", fahr, ((5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32))'
3yi(   --> Yanks '"%3.0f\t%6.1f\n", fahr, ((5.0/9.0) * (fahr-32))'