Chapter 5: Text Objects

Basic Usage

Text objects are Vim’s representation of groups of text.

These are some of the text objects you’ll use the most:

w represents a word

s represents a sentence

p represents a paragraph

You specify how you want an action to be applied with a or i:

a means all, and the action will be applied to the text object and succeeding white space

i means in, and the action will be applied only to the text

You can use text objects with the following pattern:

<action><specifier><text object>

Examples:

dap will delete an entire paragraph

ciw will change a word

String-based Text objects

You can also use delimiters to specify text objects.

Available delimiters:

"

'

) or (

] or [

} or {

Examples:

ci" Change inside closest double quote

ci' Change inside closest single quote

ci) Change inside closest parentheses

ci] Change inside closest brackets

ci} Change inside closest braces

Note that if you do ca) instead of ci) then the parentheses will be deleted.