3. Tutorial: Surround

Manan Gupta edited this page 2025-06-29 09:49:35 +05:30

Table of Contents

• Surround selection with character
• Replace surrounding character
• Delete surrounding character
• List of surrounds
• Use any character

Surrounds are another useful feature of Helix which allow you to perform common actions such as:

• Surround selection with character
• Replace surrounding character
• Delete surrounding character

You can use any character for a surround add, replace or delete operation -- such as x.

Some surround characters are more advanced. For example, having a selection and surrounding it with ( will add ( at the beginning of the selection and ) at the end.

Surround selection with character

You can surround selections with specific characters with ms for make surrounding. For example, with the whole hello word selected:

hello world

Pressing ms(, you surround the selection with (:

(hello) world

Replace surrounding character

But what if we actually meant to surround it with { instead? That's fine! We can make replace the surrounding character with mr

For instance, place your cursor anywhere in hello. mr({ replaces the surrounding ( with a {:

{hello} world

Delete surrounding character

If we wanted to delete the surrounding character, we could also use md for make delete. For example to delete the nearest surrounding pair of {, use md{.

hello world

List of surrounds

Helix has support for the following pairs of surrounds:

• { and }
• ( and )
• [ and ]
• < and >

Use any character

You can also use any other character which will act on the literal characters. With cursor on the w in world:

hello *world*

• Pressing md* will delete the nearest *.

  hello world
  

• Using mro{ will replace the nearest pairs of o character with a pair of {:

  hell{ *w}rld*