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I am using https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdcommenter/ plugin to comment the code. It's working fine, but I would like to do a modification.

Currently these are the default mappings:

  • <leader>cc comments the line
  • <leader>ci inverts the comment
  • <leader>cu undo last comment/uncomment action

I am looking to map <leader>cc to the action of invert comment i.e. <leader>ci. It's not a nerdcommenter question, but a question of vim mappings itself, hence asking here.

I tried

nnoremap <leader>cc <leader>ci

and also

nmap <leader>cc <leader>ci

But there doesn't seems to be any effect of these mapping. On pressing <leader>cc, I am seeing original action of it not the one I am trying to define.

EDIT: FYI, answer to this question https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/763/8092 doesn't help either. i.e. to define custom mappings in .vim/after/plugin/somefile.vim

Chris Stryczynski
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mtk
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    Does it work to put this in your .vim/after/plugin/somefile.vim: call s:CreateMaps('nx', 'Invert', 'Invert', 'cc') – DJMcMayhem Jun 20 '16 at 02:23
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    It is a nerdcommenter question, since the answer can be found in the manual: nmap <Leader>cc <Plug>NERDCommenterInvert. – Sato Katsura Jun 20 '16 at 03:46
  • @SatoKatsura Thanks That works. But this is a generic issue i.e. "how to map/override a shortcut of a plugin with something else/user defined". Hence posted here. – mtk Jun 20 '16 at 06:01
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    No, it's a plugin-specific question. Remove any reference to NERDCommenter and rework the title to make it a generic question. – romainl Jun 20 '16 at 06:23
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    nmap <leader>cc <leader>ci works here when I source my vimrc file manually (but not when vim opens). What I suspect is that your mapping gets overridden by the plugin. – nobe4 Jun 20 '16 at 08:04
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    You can use verbose nmap <leader>cc to see where the mapping was defined. – Karl Yngve Lervåg Jun 20 '16 at 08:33

2 Answers2

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Like many other plug-ins, NERDCommenter creates internal mappings using the <plug> virtual key as a prefix, that you can use to map your own key-bindings to.

See :help NERDCommenterMappings:

To change a mapping just map another key combo to the internal <plug> mapping.

For example, to remap the NERDCommenterComment mapping to ,omg you would put this line in your vimrc:

map ,omg NERDCommenterComment

This will stop the corresponding default mappings from being created.

See the help for the mapping in question to see which <plug> mapping to map to.

So:

  • You can find which <plug> mapping to use by looking it up at the help for the original mapping.

  • NERDCommenter will not add its default mapping if it finds another mapping pointing to the <plug> mapping already, so you can use that to prevent it from creating its own mappings (such as <leader>cc), potentially overwriting yours.

Note that these mappings need to be recursive, since the <plug> ones are mappings themselves.

In your case, I believe this is what you want:

nmap <leader>cc <plug>NERDCommenterInvert 
xmap <leader>cc <plug>NERDCommenterInvert

This mapping is relevant in Normal and Visual modes, therefore remapping it with nmap and xmap here.

Note also that since you're using a default mapping of NERDCommenter, you'll need to remap that <plug> mapping to some other key, in order to prevent NERDCommenter from overwriting your mapping. For example, to use <leader>ci for the Comment mapping (effectively swapping the two keys):

nmap <leader>ci <plug>NERDCommenterComment
xmap <leader>ci <plug>NERDCommenterComment

But note that you don't need to use <leader>ci here, you can use any other key combination.

If you would like to prevent NERDCommenter from adding all its mappings, you can use this in your vimrc:

let g:NERDCreateDefaultMappings = 0

See :help 'NERDCreateDefaultMappings'.

Unfortunately it seems there's no granular way to prevent it from adding one mapping only (if you wanted to leave one or a few functions without key-bindings), it's all or nothing.

filbranden
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0

Seems that plugins have "actions" that you can call with :call.

For example to map Alt+; to nerdcomment toggle:

nnoremap <M-;> :call NERDComment(0,"toggle")<CR>
vnoremap <M-;> :call NERDComment(0,"toggle")<CR>

Related answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30831547/1663462

Chris Stryczynski
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    Welcome to this site Chris! Just a clarification about vocabulary: something that you can call with call is a "function", see :h user-functions. And of course they exists only with the plugin author decides to expose them to the user :) – statox Mar 02 '20 at 16:45