💾 Archived View for g.codelearn.me › 2023-01-17-emacs-change-inner.gmi captured on 2023-07-22 at 16:19:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Emacs. Change inner/outer like in Vim

If you're a former Vim user there is one feature I couldn't find in any other editors.

Not sure what is the proper name of it but let's call it **change inside something**.

Example (`|` - is a cursor):

function() {
  return 'hello |world'
}

If I press `ci'` the result is going to be:

function() {
  return '|'
}

or `ci{`:

function() {|}

That's incredibly useful feature because I don't really need to think where my cursor is. I just place it somewhere around the place I need to remove and press that magical keybinding.

There is no such built-in function in Emacs. And this one is probably the only feature I miss the most.

For some time I've been using

expand-region

by **Magnar Sveen** which is a different thing really. It just expands a selection by some logical semantic blocks and can be used as a replacement to that `ci'`. But still I need to think how many times I should call that `expand-region` function before the thing I need is selected.

So today I discovered

change-inner.el

by already mentioned **Magnar Sveen**. It uses **expand-region** internally and does exactly what `ci<symbol>` does.

Bindings suggested in the package readme, `M-i` / `M-o`, are pretty easy to used to.

So if you ever missed that **change inner/outer** Vim feature give this lib a shot.