Question

I have a shared library (in binary form; I have the source) that I use to invert/cycle between symbols in source files in Visual Studio.

I would like to be able to use the same functionality in vi and/or Vim.

Specifically, what I’d like to do is the following scenario:

• the cursor is on a word
• I press a key-sequence, e.g. CTRL-I
• vi/Vim works out the whole of the word I’m on
• vi/Vim invokes my shared library, passing the word, and receiving the invert/cycle replacement
• vi/Wim replaces the original word with the new word

I don’t have any clue if/how to get vi/Vim to do this, and I’m not having any luck searching.

Any advice gratefully received …

Answer 1

Try

inoremap <C-i> <esc>'hciw<C-R>=libcall('path/to/your.dll', 'func', @h)<CR> 

What it does:

• create map for insert mode <Ctrl+i>
• <esc> switch to normal mode ‘hciw move word under cursor into the register h
• <C-r>= insert into cursor position result of the next expression
• libcall(…) calls function in the run-time library.
• @h is the value of the ‘h’ register.

In case you want to use simple binary that can be ran from the command line you can use

inoremap <C-i> <esc>'hciw<C-R>=substitute(system('mybin --word='.@h), '\n', '', 'g')<CR>