Vim: Remapping `d` to always delete to black-hole

[romandecker]

I used to have the following in my .vimrc:

" Redirect all delete-operations to black-hole
" Use 'm' ("move") for all cut-operations
nnoremap d "_d
nnoremap m d

What would be the VSCodeVim equivalent? I can't seem to make it work, I already tried the following:

    "vim.otherModesKeyBindings": [
        { "before": ["d"], "after": ["\"", "_", "d"] }
    ],
    "vim.otherModesKeyBindingsNonRecursive": [
        { "before": ["m"], "after": ["d"] },
        { "before": ["m", "m"], "after": ["d", "d"] }
    ]

This makes the bindings for m work, but breaks d...

• Extension (VsCodeVim) version: v0.12.0
• VSCode version: 1.23.1
• OS version: Mac OS 10.13.4

[xconverge]

Your mapping seems to work for me, did you restart vscode after adding the mapping?

[romandecker]

Hm that's weird. Yes I did reload (also tried restart) vscode. I have removed everything from my config except the described mapping. Having even just the mapping for d:

    "vim.otherModesKeyBindings": [
        { "before": ["d"], "after": ["\"", "_", "d"] }
    ],

will break d for me completely (it turns dd into a no-op for example, when it should make it delete to black-hole).

I've already tried disabling all other mappings & settings, but the issue persists, on two different machines.

[romandecker]

Hm, I just noticed that SOME things (like dw) seem to work as expected. However, dd remains broken. Also adding an explicit mapping for dd doesn't help.

[xconverge]

Ah yes, I was testing with dw, and not dd

Sorry, I cannot figure out any combination to get dd and d to blackhole correctly

[YourFin]

I thought that this would be an issue with difference between recursive remaps and not, but putting this under "otherModesKeyBindingsNonRecursive" also doesn't work. Interestingly, after mapping "d" as above, I can't map "dd" to "editor.action.deleteLine" either.

[snide]

Anyone else figure this out? Unfortunately this is what's keeping me from moving over to this excellent plugin.

[snide]

Still somewhat stumped on this one. Haven't found a good workaround.

[ZackMFleischman]

This has been driving me nuts for like a year.

[shawnaxsom]

I'm taking a look at this. I have a possible simple fix, but I'll have to do some testing to make sure it works with different mappings as expected in vanilla Vim.

[shawnaxsom]

PR is up! I found that our remapper has other issues mentioned in the PR. I don't think any of those are regressions, so I think we can move forward with this solution.

When the PR is merged, the following vscode setting should allow e.g. dd and dw to become "_dd and "_dw, which work correctly now with our remapper.

{
     "vim.normalModeKeyBindingsNonRecursive": [
        {
            "before": ["d"],
            "after": [ "\"", "_", "d" ]
        }
    ]
}

[snide]

Hey @shawnaxsom. Thank you for jumping on this. I'm one of those rare designers who fell in love with Vim because of how custom i could make it. As primarily a designer this patch was not something I could have contributed myself and it's great to see this plugin being so well maintained.

I just wanted to say thanks. I do some open source work myself and know it can sometimes be rough dealing with issues. Know that your work helps me be more productive in the editor I prefer and I appreciate the contribution.

[shawnaxsom]

@snide Thank you for the kind words! Knowing that it helps users like you makes it more than worth the time and effort.

[shadoath]

Thank you, thank you, I use the black hole register all the time and have mapped x to be my nuke button. So glad to find this working. I ran into an issue that was the difference in my settings between only having vim.normalModeKeyBindingsNonRecursive and forgetting to also have a map for vim.visualModeKeyBindingsNonRecursive. Wanted to leave this note here for others who might think it doesn't work only because they are doing something with a visual select.