VIM_COMPARISON.org

Vim Comparison

Intro

Despite being another modal editing scheme, meow is not very similar to Vim, but instead tends to be more like kakoune.

The primary difference to Vim are that there is no dedicated visual mode in meow, since it’s essentially built into normal mode. Almost every movement in normal mode creates a visual selection on which some command can act on.

The other main difference is that the language grammar you use in Vim is flipped in meow.

In Vim, you might use something like 4w to move 4 words forward. 4 acts as a quantifier, and w is the so called “verb.” In meow, we think about commands the opposite way. We’d first select a single word, with meow-next-word (which, critically, both moves the point and creates a selection), and then press 3 to select three more words. This process can be indefinitely extended. For example, if you say 2 and 6 afterwards you select another 8 words forward.

Once you have a selection, you can decide to execute an action (“verb”) representing what you want to do on this selection.

In vim, to change (delete and enter insert mode) 3 words, you might press c3w. In meow, this would be e3c since the grammar is inverted.

Meow has the clear advantage that when you create the selection, you get visual feedback on what your target selection is, and then can decide which verb to execute. You can choose to abort if you selected something wrong, or better, revert your selection to make a new one. In Vim on the other hand, you commit on the verb right away, then guess at your selection target (which is harder the more things you want to act on). If you mess up, you have no choice but to undo everything and try again.

Since many people who want to give meow a try, come from a Vim / Evil background, here is an overview of typical Vim keybindings for common actions and how they can be achieved in meow.

Note:

We provide only command names here, this is because meow has no built-in keybind set (yet?). If you decide to use the suggested QWERTY keybindings, you can look up the default binding to each command there.

For ease of reading, all meow- prefixes are stripped.

Italic (e.g. negative-argument) represents a builtin command.

Brackets (e.g. [reverse]) represents an optional step. You don’t always replicate the same cursor movement, the selection does the job sometimes.

Movement

Vim	Meow	Description ; Tips
h	left	character left
j	next	next line
k	prev	previous line
l	right	character right
w	next-word	next word
W	next-symbol	next symbol (as determined by the syntax table)
b	back-word	last word
B	back-symbol	last symbol
e	mark-word	end of word
E	mark-symbol	end of symbol
ge	back-word back-word [reverse]	end of previous word; no need to reverse before append
gE	back-symbol back-symbol [reverse]	end of previous symbol; no need to reverse before append
0	line [reverse] OR C-a	beginning of line; no need to reverse before insert
^​	join	first none whitespace character
$​	line	EOL
f <char>	find <char>	forward to next char
F <char>	negative-argument find <char>	backward to last char
t <char>	till <char>	till next char
T <char>	negative-argument till <char>	backward till next char
%	block OR to-block	jump to matching paren; not one to one replacement can jump from anywhere inside the block to end
;	repeat	repeat last f or t movement; builtin repeat works with any command
C-u	page-up OR M-v	page up; depends on whether to select or not
C-d	page-down OR C-v	page down
gg	beginning-of-thing b OR M-<	beginning of file
G	end-of-thing OR M->	end of file
:<num>	goto-line	go to line number
C-o	meow-pop-to-mark	last position in jumplist; mark-ring based, only in current buffer
C-i	meow-unpop-to-mark	next position in jumplist; mark-ring based, only in current buffer

Search

Vim	Meow	Description
/	visit OR C-s OR C-M-s	forward search; depends on whether you need incremental search
?	negative-argument visit OR C-r OR C-M-r	backward search
n	search	next match
p	negative-argument search	last match; the direction preserves, you only need negative argument for the first time

Switch into insert mode

Vim	Meow	Description
i	insert	insert
a	append	append (needs (setq meow-use-cursor-position-hack t))
I	join append	insert before first character in line
A	line append	append end of line
o	open-below	insert into line beneath
O	open-above	insert into line above

Delete and go to insert mode

Vim	Meow	Description
c <num> <noun>	<noun> <num> change	change
r <char>		replace a single character and go back to normal mode

Normal mode modifications

Vim	Meow	Description
~	M-l & M-u & M-c	toggle case under cursor; not one to one replacement
C-x	Not implemented see here	decrement number under cursor.
C-a	Not implemented see here	increment number under cursor
gUw	word C-x C-u	uppercase word (works with all nouns)
guw	word C-x C-l	lowercase word (works with all nouns)
x	delete	delete under cursor
D	kill	delete to end of line
dd	kill OR kill-whole-line	delete line
d <num> <noun>	<noun> <num> kill
u	undo	undo
C-r	cancel undo	redo; Emacs has a different undo system with a stack, so to undo the undo, you do some action which has no effect and afterwards meow-undo works in the other way

Macros

Vim uses registers to store macros. Meow only has a key to start a macro and afterwards play it. When a new macro is recorded the old one will be overridden. The reason is that meow just wraps the default Emacs Macro behavior.

If you want to store the last recorded macro, you can give it a name with kmacro-name-last-macro or give it a key with kmacro-to-register. You can afterwards execute that command from the M-x menu.

Vim	Meow	Description
q <register>	start-kmacro-or-insert-counter	start a macro recording
q	end-or-call-kmacro	finish a macro recording
@ <register>	end-or-call-kmacro	play a macro

Adjectives

Except for some cases, namely meow-word, meow-line and meow-block, meow generalizes the idea of selection in and around “things”. You may select inside any “thing” by first calling meow-inner-of-thing and then following the onscreen prompts. Meow makes it easy to define your own “things” as well, all it takes is a pair of regular expressions!

Vim	Meow	Description
<action> iw	mark-word <action>	current word
<action> iW	mark-symbol <action>	current symbol
<action> i[	inner-of-thing <action>	inside square brackets)
<action> ci[	bounds-of-thing <action>	around square brackets)

Command Mode Operations

Generally there is no mode in meow similar to command mode. But there is Keypad Mode (entered with space) which let’s you execute normal emacs commands without holding modifier keys. Many things done in command mode can be achieved via this mode and some common and useful examples are given here.

Vim	Meow	Description
:w	SPC x s	(save buffer)
:qa	SPC m x “kill-emacs”	close vim / emacs
:wq	SPC x c	save and close emacs

Vim Plugin

Vim	Meow	Description
commentary.vim	M-;
vim-surround	Not implemented	See https://github.com/mkleehammer/surround