It's mostly a matter of taste.
I do use multiple cursors quite often in Sublime Text when needing to edit some CSV or JSON file. It's probably the feature of Sublime Text, why i'm still having the editor around.
It work's extremely well.
I could type ":.,.+5s/findtext/replacetext/g" in vim (and remember the syntax!) or i just could do "ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, replacetext" and have a visual, immediate confirmation on what i am doing.
But i bet you, that i'll press ctrl-d 5 times faster than you entering ":.,.+5s/".
You do not have to remember the syntax; you can use Vimscript and you can create a custom keybinding that prompts you for the "findtext" and "replacetext" strings, then apply the search-and-replace operation over the next 5 lines (number of lines is easily adjustable and can be prompted for it, too; it does not have to be hard-coded either).
Vim users don't have to choose between precision and ease of use as you can build macros or mappings that match ANY workflow, creating powerful, customized processes that minimize the need to remember exact syntax or type it all out, for example achieving results similar to multiple cursors but with Vim's inherent efficiency and scalability. So, while Sublime Text's multiple cursors are handy, Vim can match - and even exceed - this functionality with very little setup (emphasis: one time setup!).
(I use VSCodium (which I really enjoy) for Go, PHP, and Elixir; IntelliJ IDEA for Java and Kotlin, and I use both Emacs and Vim for everything else).
What about holding down the shift arrow, pressing the down arrow five times, then ctrl-r? In most IDEs replace with an active selection will default to replacing only in the selection.
I speak vim, but vastly prefer multiple cursors when the editing is less trivial. Say you want to turn
"foo bar" # For the 1st line
"baz qux" # For the 2nd line
into
"bar" # For the foo key
"qux" # For the baz key
With multi cursors, you could select foo and baz and then interactively edit the rest of the line. I'm capable of doing that with vim, but by the time I'd even settled on an approach for it, I'd already be done in the other editor.
I could use Emacs macros to do the same kind of thing, and I've probably used `C-x (` a zillion times to build procedures I could then run 30 more times on the following lines. For quick interaction, I still prefer multi cursors.
For this specific example it's a visual block select of <foo > / <baz > cut and then visual select of <1st > / <2nd > and paste. But that's relying on things being the right width.
This is two lines, if everything was a different length, I think by the time I got multiple cursors to do this, I would have long managed by just doing the same editing task twice (cut overwrite-paste then cut overwrite-paste).
If I had to do this for many more lines I would have just used a substitution:
And yes, that's 100% unreadable, but it was easy to write with the preview mode on modern neovim.
Although in this case I think a macro would probably be what I would settle on. This macro would look like:
^wdw/the<ret>wvawpwciwkey<esc>j (<ret> and <esc> are ^M and ^[ but I replaced them to avoid confusion)
But these are already the motions you would need to use to keep the multiple cursors in alignment. The thing is though that if you screw up it's usually easier to unscrew yourself when it's just one line than when you've gone ahead and screwed up 20 times. Yes it's still just an undo but when I've used multiple cursors, especially when you're trying to break up lines, you're forced to deal with that breaking up happening in all cursors. Things quickly get overwhelming.
Multiple cursors are effectively (in my experience) just macro recording with automatic playback simultaneously at all the positions you care about. Whereas if you just record a macro and apply it wherever you would otherwise place your cursors, you get the same result without having the visual mess of dealing with multiple cursors. And it's just as error prone as macros.
Vim, and I'm sure neovim, allow visually selecting an area by lines. If you then type ":" to initiate a search and replace, it will apply only to those lines.
Say I want to change "foo" to "bar" in a single function in my file. I hit "V" to enter by-line visual mode at the top of the function, go to the end of the function and type ":s/foo/bar/g". If there are other words in the function that contain foo as a substring, then ":s/\<foo\>/bar/g".
> If there are other words in the function that contain foo
How would you know that???
So that's the first roundabout eliminated:
- set word selection by default not to have to worry about substrings
But otherwise you're describing a different workflow: while there is no semantic meaning in the "next 5 lines", you actually don't know whether that would be 5 of 7, that's the whole point/benefit of incrementalism, there is in "this function", so block operations are a valid contender and I could also select the function and search&replace within the selection instead of doing word-by-word.
But then the original also works in a more direct way (maybe you actually don't want to replace all "foo" in a function, but skip some of them):
So you would skip your two roundabouts:
- go to the beginning of a function
- go+select to the end of a function
Then proceed with the "direct" way:
- go to your desired word anywhere within the function
- invoke select forward/backward commands until visually reaching the beginning/end of said function (the candidates will all be highlighted)
Thank you for your detailed reply. So let me address the points.
> How would you know that???
Typically I'm working on code that I wrote, or I've been studying it enough that I've gotten to the point that I'm refactoring and editing it. It isn't like a gameshow where I have a blinder on and then the blinder is removed and I'm given a task to perform.
> - set word selection by default not to have to worry about substrings
So you have to do another step? I can pick word selection or not dynamically on a case by case basis without having to go somewhere else and turn word mode on or off. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding how your editor works. At any rate, I don't see how my approach is roundabout -- I directly express if I want complete word matching or not, and I can even mix both types in a single search/replace operation.
I don't understand your next point -- I can select the body of a function without knowing how many lines it has. It isn't clear to me what your approach is, "incrementalism". Are you doing a word search and replace one at a time? I thought we were discussing multi-cursor editing.
> Then proceed with the "direct" way:
> - go to your desired word anywhere within the function
> - invoke select forward/backward commands until visually reaching the beginning/end of said function (the candidates will all be highlighted)
What you've described is just another way of doing it, not fewer steps.
I hate to break it to you but you don't. I know that because there have been studies trying to show how using the keyboard is more efficient than the mouse. Every time, even when people swear they don't use the mouse to navigate text files, they do, and they do it a lot, nearly as much as anyone else. It's a great demonstration to how you just can't trust people's testimonies as they lie while actually believing their own lies (i.e. the really believe to be telling the truth which is fascinating).
I am proficient in emacs and don't need the mouse to do anything, but I am conscious I still reach for the mouse when more complex movements are required because it would be extremely dogmatic and unproductive to do otherwise, as it's just so much easier, and there's absolutely no shame in using the right tool for the job.
I could type ":.,.+5s/findtext/replacetext/g" in vim (and remember the syntax!) or i just could do "ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d, replacetext" and have a visual, immediate confirmation on what i am doing. But i bet you, that i'll press ctrl-d 5 times faster than you entering ":.,.+5s/".