~ / text-objects / wordslesson 1/6

Words: iw, aw, iW and aW

Act on the whole word under the cursor, wherever the cursor is in it.

?how it works

A motion says where to go; a text object says which thing to act on. You type one after an operator (or in Visual mode): i for "inner", a for "a" or "around", then the kind of thing. iw is the word under the cursor and aw is the word plus the white space next to it.

Because it is a thing and not a direction, the cursor can be anywhere in the word. Compare cw, which changes from the cursor to the end of the word, with ciw, which changes the whole word. daw is the cleanest way to cut a word out of a sentence: it takes one space with it, so you are not left with a double space.

Capital W means a WORD: everything between spaces, punctuation included. Reach for ciW and daW on URLs, file paths, flags like --force and chains like obj.user.name.

Text objects take counts too: d2aw deletes two words.

⌨keys

`iw`	inner word: the word under the cursor
`aw`	a word: the word plus the space after it (or before)
`iW`	inner WORD: everything up to the surrounding spaces
`aW`	a WORD plus its space
`ciw`	change the word under the cursor
`daw`	delete a word and one space

4 drills

Change the word you are in: Replace the word the cursor is in. The cursor is in the middle of it, so cw alone would miss the start.
Cut a word out of a sentence: Delete the word the cursor is in, along with one of the spaces around it, so no double space is left.
Change a whole URL or path: Replace the whole URL, path or dotted name under the cursor, punctuation and all.
Drop a command-line flag: Remove the flag the cursor is in, including the space next to it.

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