Question

Few days ago I decided to use the Vim text editor… playing around with the vimtutor I found something very rare with the d operator; Vim session:

Case 1

before: The Quick Red Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Brown Dog
after :    The Quick Red F Jumps Over the Lazy Brown Dog

results: as expected.

Case 2

Placing the cursor in the last character of a word.

before: The Quick Red Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Brown Dog
after :    The Quick Red Fo Over the Lazy Brown Dog

results: de deletes the "x Jumps" substring.

Case 3

Placing the cursor in the last character of the last word.

before: The Quick Red Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Brown Dog
after :    The Quick Red Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Brown Do

results: as expected.

---

Please note that:

• In both cases I’m using the de command.
• after: reflects the changes after applying the de command.
• The highlighted part represent the cursor position in the editor.

Questions:

1. Is this a bug?
2. Am I doing something wrong?
3. What is happening?

Vim version: version 7.3.50; Modified by Gentoo-7.3.50

Answer 1

When pressing e, vim takes you to the end of the word. If the cursor is on the x in fox, you are already there, so e takes to the next end of a word.

Thus, de will delete jumps as well.