Evil-snipe layer

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1. Description
2. Install
3. TODO Key bindings

1 Description

enables more efficient searches with f / F / t / T.
adds a new, more precise search with s/S

Evil-snipe allows you to search more quickly and precisely in the buffer. It does so by improving on the built in f / F / t / T searches and adding another search command, namely s / S.

evil-snipe changes s/S behavior in order to search forward/backwards in the buffer with two chars.

2 Install

2.1 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.

2.2 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)))

2.3 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.

2.4 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)

2.5 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)))

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