spacemacs/layers/+vim/evil-snipe/README.org

Evil-snipe layer

• Description
  • Features:
• Install
  • Layer
  • Improved f and t search behavior
  • Two-character search with s
  • More scopes
  • Symbol groups
• Key bindings

Description

This layer adds various replacements for vim’s default search functions.

Features:

• Alternative implementation of vim’s default search operations.
• Replacement of evil-surround with a two-character search.
• Support for alternative scopes for default search operations.
• Support for alternative motions based on configurable regexps.

Install

Layer

To use this configuration layer, add it to your ~/.spacemacs. You will need to add evil-snipe to the existing dotspacemacs-configuration-layers list in this file.

Improved f and t search behavior

With evil-snipe you can define your own search scope for f and t searches which means that you won’t have to jump to the correct line before searching with f / t / F / T. And after you have found a match, you can just press f or t again afterwards to continue the search. No need to use ; / ​,​.

This alternate behavior is disabled by default, to enable it set the layer variable evil-snipe-enable-alternate-f-and-t-behaviors to t:

  (setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
    '((evil-snipe :variables evil-snipe-enable-alternate-f-and-t-behaviors t)))

Two-character search with s

With the s~/~S keys you can do a simple search like f~/~t, but instead of searching for one character, you search for two. This makes the search a lot more precise than regular f~/~t searches. While you can search forward or backwards in the buffer with / and ?, s / S are much easier to reach, don’t require you to press enter and they are precise enough for many common purposes.

More scopes

Evil-snipe also adds several scope options for searches (set evil-snipe-scope and evil-snipe-repeat-scope to one of these, the default value is buffer):

Value	Description
buffer	search in the rest of the buffer after the cursor (vim-sneak behavior)
line	search in the current line after the cursor (vim-seek behavior)
visible	search in the rest of the visible buffer only
whole-line	same as line, but highlight matches on either side of cursor
whole-buffer	same as buffer, but highlight all matches in buffer
whole-visible	same as visible, but highlight all visible matches in buffer

If you do not want to replace the regular f / F / t / T behavior, just remove this line from evil-snipe/packages.el: (evil-snipe-replace-evil)

Symbol groups

With symbol groups you can let a character stand for a regex, for example a group of characters. By adding a pair of (CHAR REGEX) to the list evil-snipe-aliases you can search for a regex very simply:

• Here we set the [ character to mean all characters [({ in all modes so a search with sa[ would find a[, a{ or a(.

    ;; Alias [ and ] to all types of brackets
    (push '(?\[ "[[{(]") evil-snipe-aliases)
    (push '(?\] "[]})]") evil-snipe-aliases)

• Here we set the char : to mean “a regex matching python function definitions” (but only in python-mode), so by searching with f:fff you can quickly cycle through all function definitions in a buffer!

    ;; For python style functions
    (add-hook 'python-mode-hook
              (lambda ()
                (make-variable-buffer-local 'evil-snipe-aliases)
                (push '(?: "def .+:") evil-snipe-aliases)))

Key bindings

Key binding	Description
f	search forward for the next entered character and set the cursor to it’s position
F	search backward for the next entered character and set the cursor to it’s position
t	search forward for the next entered character and set the cursor before it’s position
T	search backward for the next entered character and set the cursor before it’s position
s	search forward for the next entered two characters and set the cursor to it’s position
S	search backward for the next entered two characters and set the cursor to it’s position