Swaps two characters, lines, words, reverses a selection, or swaps two selections, depending on cursor location and selection(s).
Using Package Control, install "TransposeCharacter" or clone this repo in your packages folder.
I recommended you add key bindings for the commands. I've included my preferred bindings below. Copy them to your key bindings file (⌘⇧,).
transpose_character: Swaps two characters, reverses a selection (moves the cursor from the front to back and vice versa), moves text up/down to the next line, or swaps multiple selections.
The behavior of transpose_character changes depending on the location of the cursor and the selection.
If the cursor (|) is in between two letters (anything other than a newline), it will swap them:
te|h => the| (you can reverse the direction, too, I have ⌃T move the cursor to the right, and ⇧⌃T move it to the left)
At the beginning or end of a line, the behavior is to move the line up/down:
# Cursor at the end of the line moves that line down
1 klmno| 1 abcde 1 abcde
2 abcde => 2 klmno| => 2 fghij
3 fghij 3 fghij 3 klmno|
# Cursor at the beginning of the line moves that line up
1 fghij 1 fghij 1 |abcde
2 klmno => 2 |abcde => 2 fghij
3 |abcde 3 klmno 3 klmno
(If this seems like an unintuitive connection to "transpose", keep in mind that we are, in effect, transposing two lines)
If there is one selection, the selection cursor will be reversed in place. This means you can move the cursor to the beginning or end of the selection, which is very useful for extending line selections.
# []| represents the selection and cursor
1 [klmno]| => 1 |[klmno] => 1 [klmno]|
If there are multiple selections, the it swaps each pair of regions.
‹abc›-DEF-‹123›-‹456› => DEF-‹abc›-‹456›-‹123› => ‹abc›-DEF-‹123›-‹456›
Copy these to your user key bindings file.
{ "keys": ["ctrl+t"], "command": "transpose_character" },
{ "keys": ["ctrl+shift+t"], "command": "transpose_character", "args": {"reverse": true} },