Question

Say I have this line of text in Vim:

(foo bar (baz) qux)
    ^

and my cursor is on the space between the words foo and bar, as indicated. I often find that, in situations like this, I want to delete the entire right-hand side of the outer parenthesized expression (that is, to the right of my cursor), while leaving the left-hand side intact. That is, I’d like to end up with:

(foo)

Usually, I’d accomplish this with dt) (“delete until )”), but the addition of a nested parenthetical complicates things: That command would leave me with (foo) qux). I could also use d2t), but I’d prefer not to have to manually count the number of nested parentheses. I could also use di), but that deletes the entire text inside of the parentheses, leaving me with ().

Is there a Vim motion with the balance-awareness of the i– and a-modified motions that is also relative to the current cursor position?

Answer 1

You can use the ]) motion with d.

d])