How to wrap my visual selection with brackets using vnoremap?

Question

Suppose, I want to wrap a single word with braces in normal mode using keyboard map (say <F5>), I could add the following mapping

:nnoremap <F5> i{<Esc>ea}<Esc>

But, now I want to extend this for visual mode, where I can select some text and wrap it with braces the same way. How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

I would do:

vnoremap <F5> c{}<Esc>P

• c for change
• {} to insert the braces
• <Esc> to leave insert mode
• P to past the text before the closing brace

Answer 2

You could start by improving your normal mode mapping:

nnoremap <F5> ciw{<C-r>"}<C-c>

where we:

1. "change" the current word (which means "cut it into the unnamed register and enter insert mode") with ciw, see :help c and :help text-object,
2. insert a {,
3. insert the content of the unnamed register with <C-r>", see :help i_ctrl-r,
4. insert the closing },
5. and finally leave insert mode with <C-c>, which has fewer side effects than <Esc>.

Pros:

• fewer unnecessary mode changes,
• fewer side effects,
• cursor can be on any character of the word,
• more idiomatic.

Cons:

• none.

From there, it is easy to devise a visual mode mapping by simply removing the iw text object:

xnoremap <F5> c{<C-r>"}<C-c>