This is a mirror of http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=143

A tip would have been more accurate regarding what I am presenting here. But as some functions proposed are needed by another script of mine, here is a script file containing the definitions of three functions that can be used instead of expand("").

expand("") is a nice feature in VIM, but it is not very helpful when we have to deal with automatic completion -- you know : when you hit within VIM's command line or your favourite shell. Indeed, "" refers to the word under/after the cursor, while we need the word under/before the cursor.

So, here is three functions :

• GetPreviousWord() that returns the word preceding the cursor ; the word is either truncated at the cursor's position or completed by as many spaces as needed to reach this position. I call a word, a sequence of keyword characters ('k', see :h isk). It is handy, in C programming, to test what precedes the cursor when we hit '(', and then expand C control-structures (for, if, else, elif, switch, etc.) to anything desired.

• GetCurrentWord() returns the word which is either stricly under the cursor or just before -- if the cursor is preceded by a space, an empty string is returned. Here, a word is a sequence of non white space characters : 'S' -- in order to expand regular expressions. Cf. http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=46 v2.2

• GetNearestWord() returns the word ('S') either under, just before or just after the cursor.

You can take a look at a table showing the different returned values by this functions in equivalent contexts : http://hermitte.free.fr/vim/general.php3#expl_words_tools

As I said before, a tip would have been more appropriate. These functions are just examples of want could be done on this topic. They fulfill some specific needs I had.