Question

What is a good way to extend the functionality of the ~ (tilde) key in Vim to invert 1s and 0s in text in addition to toggling case?

That is to say, if my cursor is on a 0 or 1 in normal mode and I want ~ to transform it into a 1 or 0 (respectively), what is a good way to accomplish this without changing the normal behavior for alphabetic characters (uppercase/lowercase swap)?

Answer 1

A quick look at :help ~ says “no”. You’ll probably have to write a small function and map it to ~:

function! BinSwitch()
  let current_char = getline(".")[col(".") - 1]
  if current_char == "0"
    normal! r1
  elseif current_char == "1"
    normal! r0
  else
    normal! ~
  endif
endfunction

nnoremap ~ :silent call BinSwitch()<cr>