Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 3

Take One Step Back, Then Three Forward

We can pad a single character with two spaces (one in front, the other behind) by using an idiomatic Vim solution. At first it might look slightly odd, but the solution has the benefit of being repeatable, which allows us to complete the task effortlessly.

Suppose that we have a line of code that looks like this:

the_vim_way/3_concat.js

var foo = "method("+argument1+","+argument2+")";

Concatenating strings in JavaScript never looks pretty, but we could make this a little easier on the eye by padding each + sign with spaces to make it look like this:

var foo = "method(" + argument1 + "," + argument2 + ")";

Make the Change Repeatable

This idiomatic approach solves the problem: ...