textobj-before.nvim

Neovim plugin that adds text objects to select the left part of a line before a separator (forward-seeking).

Usage

ib= selects the left part of a one-line assignment, excluding leading whitespace and the =.
ab: selects the left part of a line up to and including :, excluding leading whitespace.
The text objects are forward-seeking, and start their search at the first column of the current line.

Mappings

No default mappings, create some explicitly:

require('textobj-before.nvim').create_mappings({
    prefix_i = 'ib',
    prefix_a = 'ab',
    separators = { '=', ':', '/', [[\]], '|' },
    create_mark_on_jump_larger_than = 25,
})

This creates text-objects ib=, ab=, ib:, ab:, ib/, ab/, ib\, ab\, ib|, ab| in visual and operator-pending mode.
This shadows the builtin ib and ab text-objects, but I prefer using i( anyway.
As an intermediate step, <Plug>(textobj-before-i=) items are created to ensure that the output of :omap ib= is intelligible.
The text objects are forward seeking, and if they skip more than create_mark_on_jump_larger_than lines, the ' mark is set before the jump. Set the parameter to nil (or omit it) to disable this feature.

Related Plugins

• vim-textobj-before: My first attempt at this. A vimscript version of the same functionality, based on the textobj-user plugin. Works pretty good, but has a high startup time.
• vim-after-object: Select the right hand side of a line after a separator.

Requirements

Developed and tested on Neovim 0.8.1.

Alternatives

If you don't need or want the forward-seeking functionality, consider creating very simple mappings instead, for example:

vim.keymap.set('o', 'ib=', ':exec "normal! ^vf=ge"<CR>')
vim.keymap.set('x', 'ib=', '<Esc>^vf=ge')
vim.keymap.set('o', 'ab=', ':exec "normal! ^vf="<CR>') 
vim.keymap.set('x', 'ab=', '<Esc>^vf=')