How to select between brackets (or quotes or …) in Vim?

Question

I\'m sure there used to be a plugin for this kinda stuff, but now that I need it, I can\'t seem to find it (naturally), so I\'ll just ask nice and simple.

What is th

Answer 1

For selecting within single quotes use vi'.

For selecting within parenthesis use vi(.

Answer 2

To select between the single quotes I usually do a vi' ("select inner single quotes").

Inside a parenthesis block, I use vib ("select inner block")

Inside a curly braces block you can use viB ("capital B")

To make the selections "inclusive" (select also the quotes, parenthesis or braces) you can use a instead of i.

You can read more about the Text object selections on the manual, or :help text-objects within vim.

Answer 3

Use arrows or hjkl to get to one of the bracketing expressions, then v to select visual (i.e. selecting) mode, then % to jump to the other bracket.

Answer 4

Write a Vim function in .vimrc using the searchpair built-in function:

searchpair({start}, {middle}, {end} [, {flags} [, {skip}
            [, {stopline} [, {timeout}]]]])
    Search for the match of a nested start-end pair.  This can be
    used to find the "endif" that matches an "if", while other
    if/endif pairs in between are ignored.
    [...]

(http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/eval.html)

Answer 5

A simple keymap in vim would solve this issue. map viq F”lvf”hh This above command maps viq to the keys to search between quotes. Replace " with any character and create your keymaps. Stick this in vimrc during startup and you should be able to use it everytime.

Answer 6

This method of selection is built-in and well covered in the Vim help. It covers XML tags and more.

See :help text-objects.