[mini.ai] Using delete or change motions with existing keymaps

[devansh08]

Contributing guidelines

• I have read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Module(s)

mini.ai

Question

Hey, so I have existing keymaps defined for most delete or change motions like da or ci to map to ""da or ""ci respectively. If I have these defined, motions from mini.ai like dab or ciq do not work at all.
In a clean config I can see they are working, but not if I have the keymaps I mentioned defined. I'm assuming there is some conflict in calling the right functions, but any idea on how this can be sorted ?
Thanks!

[echasnovski]

In order to have a and i mappings from 'mini.ai' work in other mappings, the mappings have to be "remapping" once. I.e. something like vim.keymap.set('n', 'da', '""da', { remap = true }). The problem here is that this results in an infinite recursion. If there is no "a" in the left hand side of the mapping (like 'dx', for example), it works.

Could you describe the rationale of having these mappings in the first place? Right now I don't see the benefit.

[devansh08]

I have these setup as I don't want delete or change motions to copy to the register my clipboard uses. So I had a bunch of these created and its what I use in my workflow.

Now funny thing is, I see that da on a clean neovim instance already stores it to " register! Which I could swear it did not used to... I don't know if this was changed sometime back, but yeah I guess if delete motions anyways save to " register I don't really have any use of the mappings I mentioned ?

[echasnovski]

Now funny thing is, I see that da on a clean neovim instance already stores it to " register! Which I could swear it did not used to... I don't know if this was changed sometime back, but yeah I guess if delete motions anyways save to " register I don't really have any use of the mappings I mentioned ?

Yes, the " register is a special unnamed register. Here is an excerpt from :h quote_quote:

Vim fills this register with text deleted with the "d", "c", "s", "x" commands
or copied with the yank "y" command, regardless of whether or not a specific
register was used (e.g.  "xdd).

I have these setup as I don't want delete or change motions to copy to the register my clipboard uses. So I had a bunch of these created and its what I use in my workflow.

This describes the behavior of set :h 'clipboard' option. If it is non-default and is something like 'unnamed', then ... Vim will use the clipboard register "*" for all yank, delete, change and put operations which would normally go to the unnamed register..

So it seems to be that your desired behavior is to ensure that vim.o.clipboard is set to '' (empty string). I'd recommend this approach and have special mappings (like gy and gp) to yank into and paste from system clipboard. This is what 'mini.basics' does.

[devansh08]

I see, I'll need to read through this stuff once again. Thanks a lot for the detailed and quick answer!