With this Vim plug-in, the key bindings <Ctrl-X/A> (and g<Ctrl-X/A>) additionally cycle through lists of keywords such as true/false, yes/no, yesterday/today/tomorrow or roman numerals I, II, III... Useful, for example,

• for toggling settings in a configuration file,
• for toggling language modifiers such as public/private,
• for switching between pick, squash, reword, ... a git commit when rebasing, ...

Keyword cycles are provided for common programming and natural languages (inspectable in the ftplugin respectively autoload/CtrlXA/langs folders).

Repetition of the last command by hitting . (see :help .) is achieved

• in normal mode by vim-repeat, and
• in visual mode by vim-visualrepeat.

Global Setup

These keywords are configurable by the variable g:CtrlXA_Toggles which is a long list of keyword lists in plugin/CtrlXA/toggles.vim

If you want to add a cycle, say the pair ['sweet', 'bitter'], to the default list of cycles, then

• either put

  let g:CtrlXA_Toggles = [
      \ ['sweet', 'bitter'],
      \ ] + g:CtrlXA_Toggles

  into a file ~/.vim/after/plugin/CtrlXA.vim on Linux (respectively %USERPROFILE%\vimfiles\after\plugin\CtrlXA.vim on Microsoft Windows), or

• put into your vimrc the lines

  augroup VimAfter
      autocmd!
      autocmd VimEnter * let g:CtrlXA_Toggles = [
      \ ['sweet', 'bitter'],
      \ ] + g:CtrlXA_Toggles
  augroup END

Keywords consist of the keyword characters determined by the global variable g:CtrlXA_iskeyword. By default, this variable takes the same value as &g:iskeyword (see :help iskeyword) with the exception of the underscore _ which is removed from g:CtrlXA_iskeyword.

If you want the cursor to move to the keyword (among g:CtrlXA_Toggles) that was changed after hitting a key (mapped to <Plug>(CtrlXA-CtrlA) or <Plug>(CtrlXA-CtrlX)), then set the global variable g:CtrlXA_move to 1. By default, the cursor only moves to a changed number, as Vim does by default.

If you prefer i, v and I, V to run through the letters of the Latin alphabet instead of the Roman numerals, move these letters from the pair of arrays containing the roman numerals to that containing the Latin alphabet.

There are also localized keyword cycle lists for common (spell) languages. Disable them by adding let g:CtrlXA_localization = 0 to your Vimrc. To customize them, put a file named after the corresponding (spell) language code, for example, ro.vim for Romanian into $VIMFILES/autoload/CtrlXA/langs/ (where $VIMFILES is ~/.vim on Linux and Mac OS and %USERPROFILE%/vimfiles on Microsoft Windows, see :help vimfiles).

Buffer-Local Setup

There is also the buffer-local list of keyword cycles b:CtrlXA_iskeyword, which allows for file-type specific keyword cycles. For example, as included by default:

autocmd FileType gitrebase
            \ let b:CtrlXA_Toggles = [
            \ ['pick', 'fixup', 'squash', 'break', 'reword', 'edit', 'drop'],
            \ ] + get(b:, 'CtrlXA_Toggles', g:CtrlXA_Toggles)

This will

• include all keyword cycles of the global variable, and
• add (buffer-)local keyword cycles which have precedence over the global cycles.

To add keyword cycles for other file types, add

• either the four lines above to ~/.vimrc on Linux or MacOS (respectively %USERPROFILE%\_vimrc on Microsoft Windows), or
• the last three lines above to ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/gitrebase.vim on Linux (respectively %USERPROFILE%\vimfiles\after\ftplugin\gitrebase.vim on Microsoft Windows).

Related Plug-ins

This plugin integrates with Tim Pope's vim-speeddating by adding to your .vimrc the lines

nmap <Plug>SpeedDatingFallbackUp   <Plug>(CtrlXA-CtrlA)
nmap <Plug>SpeedDatingFallbackDown <Plug>(CtrlXA-CtrlX)

Alternative Plug-ins

Vim plug-ins that provide similar functionality and more are

• Andrew Radev's switch.vim which can cycle between expressions containing spaces;

• @bootleq's vim-cycle which

  • supports pairs in LaTeX, for example, cycles between \big( a + b \big) and \Big( a +b \Big), and
  • preserves upper and lower case by options such as match_case, hard_case and match_word;

• M.J. Brownie's swapit

See @kiryph's compilation for further alternatives.