Poor man's Surround

The following shows how to replicate some of Surround's features if you don't happen to have it installed.

NOTE: We only dealt with the simplest cases, here, and the convoluted nature of some of these commands shows how well designed and useful that plugin is. And let's not talk about all the corner cases it handles.

Install it, it's worth it.

The list

Surround

ys<motion><thing>

Surround current word with parentheses

With surround:
```
ysiw)
```
Native:
```
ciw(<C-r>")<Esc>
```
vS<thing>

Surround current visual selection with square brackets

With surround:
```
S]
```
Native:
```
c[<C-r>"]<Esc>
```

Delete

ds', ds", and ds`

Delete surrounding single quotes

With surround:
```
ds'
```
Native:
```
di'vhP
```
ds< with <:> added to :help matchpairs, ds(, ds{, and ds[

Delete surrounding parentheses

With surround:
```
ds)
```
Native:
```
di(v%P
```
dst

Delete surrounding *ML tag

With surround:
```
dst
```
Native:
```
ditvatP
```

Change

cs'<thing>, cs"<thing>, and cs`<thing>

Change surrounding single quotes to double quotes

With surround:
```
cs'"
```
Native:
```
di'vh"_c"<C-r>""<Esc>
```
cs<<thing> with <:> added to :help matchpairs, cs(<thing>, cs{<thing>, and cs[<thing>

Change surrounding parentheses to braces

With surround:
```
cs)}
```
Native:
```
di("_c%{<C-r>"}<Esc>
```
cst<new>

Change surrounding *ML tag to <new>…</new>

With surround:
```
cst<new<CR>
```
Native:
```
dit"_cat<new><C-r>"</new><Esc>
```

My Vim-related gists.

romainl/vanilla-surround.md

Poor man's Surround

The list

Surround

Delete

Change

nyngwang commented Sep 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Uh oh!

romainl/vanilla-surround.md

Poor man's Surround

The list

Surround

Delete

Change

nyngwang commented Sep 23, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

nyngwang commented Sep 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading