MULTI WORD COMPLETE

by Ingo Karkat

DESCRIPTION

The built-in insert mode completion completes single words, and one can copy the words following the previous expansion one-by-one. (But that is cumbersome and doesn't scale when there are many alternatives.) This plugin offers completion of sequences of words, i.e. everything separated by whitespace, non-keyword characters or the start / end of line, based on the typed first letter of each word. With this, one can quickly complete entire phrases; for example, "imc" completes to "insert mode completion", and "/ulb" completes to "/usr/local/bin".

SEE ALSO

• CamelCaseComplete.vim (vimscript #3915) provides a similar completion, but the anchor characters must be the start fragments of CamelCaseWords or underscore_words.
• Check out the CompleteHelper.vim plugin page (vimscript #3914) for a full list of insert mode completions powered by it.

USAGE

In insert mode, type all initial letters of the requested phrase, and invoke
the multi-word completion via CTRL-X w.
You can then search forward and backward via CTRL-N / CTRL-P, as usual.

CTRL-X w                Find matches for multiple words which begin with the
                        typed letters in front of the cursor. The 'ignorecase'
                        and 'smartcase' settings apply. If no matches were
                        found that way, a case-insensitive search is tried as
                        a fallback. (So, unless you care about a minimum
                        number of matches and search speed, you can be sloppy
                        with the case of the typed letters.)
                        The sequence of words can span multiple lines;
                        newlines are removed in the completion results.

                        Non-alphabetic keyword characters (e.g. numbers, "_"
                        in the default 'iskeyword' setting) can be inserted
                        into the completion base to force inclusion of these,
                        e.g. both "mf" and "mf_b" complete to "my foo_bar",
                        but the latter excludes "my foobar" and "my foo_quux".
                        An alphabetic anchor following a non-alphabetic anchor
                        must match immediately after the non-alphabetic
                        letter, not in the next word. Thus, mentally parse the
                        base "mf_b" as "m", "f", "_b".
                        In addition, non-alphabetic keyword characters match
                        at a start of a word, too. For example, "f2s" matches
                        both "foobar 2000 system" ("2" matching like an
                        alphabetic character) and "foo2sam" ("2" matching
                        according to the special rule for non-alphabetic
                        characters).

INSTALLATION

The code is hosted in a Git repo at https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-MultiWordComplete You can use your favorite plugin manager, or "git clone" into a directory used for Vim packages. Releases are on the "stable" branch, the latest unstable development snapshot on "master".

This script is also packaged as a vimball. If you have the "gunzip" decompressor in your PATH, simply edit the *.vmb.gz package in Vim; otherwise, decompress the archive first, e.g. using WinZip. Inside Vim, install by sourcing the vimball or via the :UseVimball command.

vim MultiWordComplete*.vmb.gz
:so %

To uninstall, use the :RmVimball command.

DEPENDENCIES

• Requires Vim 7.0 or higher.
• Requires the ingo-library.vim plugin (vimscript #4433), version 1.037 or higher.
• Requires the CompleteHelper.vim plugin (vimscript #3914), version 1.40 or higher.

CONFIGURATION

For a permanent configuration, put the following commands into your vimrc:

By default, the 'complete' option controls which buffers will be scanned for completion candidates. You can override that either for the entire plugin, or only for particular buffers; see CompleteHelper_complete for supported values.

let g:MultiWordComplete_complete = '.,w,b,u'

To disable the removal of the (mostly useless) completion base when aborting with <Esc> while there are no matches:

let g:MultiWordComplete_FindStartMark = ''

If you want to use a different mapping, map your keys to the <Plug>(MultiWordComplete) mapping target before sourcing the script (e.g. in your vimrc):

imap <C-x>w <Plug>(MultiWordComplete)<Plug>(MultiWordPostComplete)

IDEAS

• Allow '.' wildcard for a single and '*' for multiple words.
• When whitespace before base, include trailing non-keywords in matches, else when non-keywords before base, stop at last keyword character in matches?

CONTRIBUTING

Report any bugs, send patches, or suggest features via the issue tracker at https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-MultiWordComplete/issues or email (address below).

HISTORY

1.02 RELEASEME

You need to update to ingo-library (vimscript #4433) version 1.037!

1.01 17-Mar-2019

• Make repeat across lines work.
• FIX: Avoid "E121: Undefined variable: s:isNoMatches" when triggering the completion for the first time without a valid base.
• Remove default g:MultiWordComplete_complete configuration and default to 'complete' option value instead.
• Remove superfluous duplicate :imap for default mapping.

You need to update to CompleteHelper.vim (vimscript #3914) version 1.40!

1.00 19-Dec-2013

• First published version.

0.01 26-Feb-2010

• Started development.

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Copyright: (C) 2010-2019 Ingo Karkat - The VIM LICENSE applies to this plugin.

Maintainer: Ingo Karkat <ingo@karkat.de>