*UltiSnips.txt* The Ultimate Plugin for snippets in Vim. UltiSnips *snippet* *snippets* *UltiSnips* 1. Description |UltiSnips-description| 2. Installation and Updating |UltiSnips-installnupgrade| 2.1 Installation |UltiSnips-installation| 2.2 Deinstallation |UltiSnips-deinstallation| 2.3 Updating |UltiSnips-updating| 3. Settings |UltiSnips-settings| 4. Syntax |UltiSnips-syntax| 4.1 Adding Snippets |UltiSnips-adding-snippets| 4.2 Plaintext snippets |UltiSnips-plaintext-snippets| 4.3 Interpolation |UltiSnips-integration| 4.3.1 Shellcode |UltiSnips-shellcode| 4.3.2 VimScript |UltiSnips-vimscript| 4.3.3 Python |UltiSnips-python| 4.4 Tab Stops and Placeholders |UltiSnips-tabstops| 4.6 Mirrors |UltiSnips-mirrors| 4.7 Transformations |UltiSnips-transformations| 4.7.1 Replacement String |UltiSnips-replacement-string| 4.7.2 Demos |UltiSnips-demos| 5. Roadmap |UltiSnips-roadmap| 6. Helping out |UltiSnips-helping| 7. Contact |UltiSnips-contact| For Vim version 7.0 or later. This plugin only works if 'compatible' is not set. {Vi does not have any of these features} This plugin needs Python support compiled into Vim. ============================================================================= DESCRIPTION *UltiSnips-description* UltiSnips aims to provide a snippets solution that users came to expect from editors. A Snippet is a short piece of text which is either typed very often or which contains a lot of redundant text. Such snippets are very often encountered in structured text like Source Code but I also use them for email signatures and to insert the current date or time into the text while typing. UltiSnips is an implementation that is developed with in the philosophy of TDD (Test driven development). This guarantees that features do not disappear and bugs do not reappear after they have been fixed once. Acknowledgments: *UltiSnips-acknowledgments* UltiSnips is inspired by the snippets solution implemented in TextMate (http://macromates.com/). The idea of implementing snippets for vim is not new and I want to thank Michael Sander (Author of snipMate) for some implementation details I stole from him and for the permission to use some of his snippets. ============================================================================= 2. INSTALLATION AND UPDATING *UltiSnips-installnupdate* 2.1 Installation *UltiSnips-installation* ---------------- UltiSnips has only been tested on Mac OS X and Linux. Like TextMates Snippets it also relies heavily on shell integration, therefore Windows users will have only a part of the functionality. To use UltiSnips, you need a python enabled Vim 7. You have python if :echo has("python") yields '1'. If you have Python, you only need to install UltiSnips. The recommended way to do so is by using bzr (http://bazaar-vcs.org/). It is in all major linux distribution (either package bzr or bazaar) and can be easily installed under Mac OS X: > $ easy_install bzr To get UltiSnips, check it out into a directory of your choice. Then add this directory to your Vim runtime path: > $ cd ~/.vim/ $ bzr get lp:ultisnips ultisnips_rep $ vim ~/.vimrc add the line: > set runtimepath+=~/.vim/ultisnips_rep Restart vim. UltiSnips should work now. To access the help, use > :helptags ~/.vim/ultisnips_rep/doc :help UltiSnips 2.2 Deinstallation *UltiSnips-deinstallation* ------------------ To Uninstall UltiSnips, remove the directory you installed it to and remove the path from your vim runtimepath: > $ rm -rf ~/.vim/ultisnips_rep $ vim ~/.vimrc remove the line: > set runtimepath+=~/.vim/ultisnips_rep 2.3 Updating *UltiSnips-updating* ------------ To Update an installation, simply pull the latest revision: > $ cd ~/.vim/ultisnips_rep $ bzr pull ============================================================================= 3. SETTINGS *UltiSnips-settings* You can freely define the keys used to expand a snippet and jump forward and backwards in it. The variables with the default values are: > g:UltiSnipsExpandTrigger g:UltiSnipsJumpForwardTrigger g:UltiSnipsJumpBackwardTrigger It is possible to set the Expand and Forward trigger to the same value. You can get a more TextMate like configuration by adding the next three lines to you vimrc: > let g:UltiSnipsExpandTrigger="" let g:UltiSnipsJumpForwardTrigger="" let g:UltiSnipsJumpBackwardTrigger="" ============================================================================= 4. SYNTAX *UltiSnips-syntax* This chapter describes where to add new snippets and how to write them. I'll provide many examples to make things clearer. 4.1 Adding Snippets *UltiSnips-adding-snippets* ------------------- Snippets are searched in *runtimepath* . In each directory, a directory called "UltiSnips" (case matters) is looked for. Inside these directories, files are looked for called ft.snippets, for example: > ruby.snippets c.snippets perl.snippets These files contain the snippet definitions for the various file types. A special file is > all.snippets which contains snippets that are always expanded, no matter what file type is defined. For example, I keep mail signatures and date insertion snippets here. The dotted file type syntax of vim is supported. For example, for my cpp or CUDA files, i keep the file type set to ":set ft=cpp.c" or ":set ft=cuda.cpp.c". This activates all snippets for each file type in the order specified. As an alternative, the first line of each snippet file can look like this: > extends ft1, ft2, ft3 For example, the first line in cpp.snippets looks like this: > extends c This means, first check all triggers for c, then add the triggers from this file. This is a convenient way to add more special cases to more general ones. The snippets file format is simple. A line starting with # is a comment, each snippet starts with a line in the form of: > snippet tab_trigger [ "description" [ options ] ] The following lines are the snippets definition; a line starting with > endsnippet marks the end of the snippet. The trailing newline is chopped from the definition. In the starting line, the description and options are optional. The description is only needed when more than one snippet is defined with the same tab trigger. The user is then given a choice and the description is displayed for the user as helper. The options is a word of characters, each turning a specific option for this snippet on. The options currently supported are > ! Overwrite - This snippet will overwrite all previously defined snippets with this tab trigger. Default is to let the user choose at expansion which snippet to expand. This option is useful to overwrite bundled tab stops with user defined ones. b Beginning of line - This snippet will only be expanded if you are at the beginning of a line (that is if there are only whitespaces in front of the cursor). Default is to expand snippets at every position, even mitten in the line. Most of my snippets have this option set, it keeps UltiSnips out of the way. 4.2 Plaintext snippets *UltiSnips-plaintext-snippets* ---------------------- Lets start with a simple example. Add this to your all snippets file: > ~/.vim/UltiSnips/all.snippets ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet bye "My mail signature" Good bye, Sir. Hope to talk to you soon. - Arthur, King of Britain endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- Now, restart vim or reset UltiSnips by typing > :py UltiSnips_Manager.reset() now try it in insert mode: bye --> Good bye, Sir. Hope to talk to you soon. - Arthur, King of Britain 4.3 Interpolation *UltiSnips-interpolation* ----------------- 4.3.1 Shellcode: *UltiSnips-shellcode* You can enter shellcode in your snippets in nearly all places. Shell code is written to a script and then executed. The output is inserted into the snippet instead of the shell code itself. Since the code is executed as a shell script, you can use #!/bin/ notation to feed the input of your code to every program you like. Let's consider an example that inserts the current date. ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet today Today is the `date +%d.%m.%y`. endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- today -> Today is the 15.07.09. Another example doing the same using perl ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet today Today is `#!/usr/bin/perl @a = localtime(); print $a[3] . '.' . $a[4] . '.' . ($a[5]+1900);`. endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- today -> Today is 15.6.2009. 4.3.2 VimScript: *UltiSnips-vimscript* You can also use VimScript (also sometimes called VimL) in interpolation. This works very much the same as interpolation of shellcode, expect that it must be started by using `!v `. Let's consider a simple example, that counts the indent of the current line: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet indent Indent is: `!v indent(".")`. endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- (note the 4 spaces in front): indent -> (note the 4 spaces in front): Indent is: 4. 4.3.3 Python: *UltiSnips-python* By far the most powerful interpolation is by using python code. The syntax is similar to the one for Vimscript, but in python code the value of the python variable "res" is inserting at the position of the code. Also, the code is inside a `!p ` block. Python code gets some special variables defined which can be used: > fn - The current filename path - The complete path to the current file t - The values of the placeholders, t[1] -> current text of ${1} and so on cur - The current text of the placeholder. You can check if this is != "" to make sure that the interpolation is only done once Also, the vim, re, os, string and random modules are already imported inside the snippet code. This allows for very flexible snippets. For example, the following snippet mirrors the first Tab Stops value on the same line in uppercase and right aligned: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet wow ${1:Text}`!p res = (75-2*len(t[1]))*' '+t[1].upper()` endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- wowHello World -> Hello World HELLO WORLD 4.4 Tab Stops and Placeholders *UltiSnips-tabstops* *UltiSnips-placeholders* ------------------------------ Very often, it is convenient to quickly add some text snippet and jump on to the next point of interest. This is were tabstops come in: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet jump I $1 I was a $2. $0 endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- jumpwishhuntermore text -> I wish I was a hunter. more text You can use and to jump to the next tab or the previous. was not used for jumping forward because many people (like myself) use also for completion. $0 is a special tab: This is the last tab in the snippet, no matter how many tabs were defined before. Most of the time it is more useful to have some default text for a tabstop and sometimes it is also useful to have a tab stop in a tab stop. Consider the next example which could be a real life scenario from a HTML snippet: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet a $0 endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- Here, $1 marks the first tabstop; it is assumed that you always want to add a url as href. After entering it you jump to $2 which has the default text ' class="link"'. Now, you can either hit backspace, because you do not want to enter a class attribute for this tag or you hit to change the class name (which is tab stop $3). When you are satisfied with the first line you hit again to finish this snippet and contiue inside the anchor. ahttp://www.google.comhi -> hi ahttp://www.google.comvisitedhi -> hi Default tab stop text can also contain mirrors, transformations or interpolation. 4.6 Mirrors *UltiSnips-mirrors* ----------- Mirrors simply repeat the content of a tabstop. A classical example would be a TeX Environment which needs a \begin{} and an \end{} tag: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet env \begin{${1:enumerate}} $0 \end{$1} endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- envitemize -> \begin{itemize} \end{itemize} Another typical example is #ifndef block in C code: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet ifndef #ifndef ${1:SOME_DEFINE} #define $1 $0 #endif /* $1 */ endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- ifndefWIN32 -> #ifndef WIN32 #define WIN32 #endif /* WIN32 */ 4.7 Transformations *UltiSnips-transformations* ------------------- A complete description of the features follows, the chapter closes with some demos, because this feature is rather mighty and hard to understand. Transformations are like mirrors. But instead of just verbatim copying text from the original tab stop, a regular expression is matched to the content of the referenced tab stop and a transformation is then applied to the matched pattern. UltiSnips follows the syntax and features of TextMate very closely here. A Transformation has the syntax > ${ tab stop no - The number of the tab stop to reference regular expression - The regular expression to match to the value of the tab stop replacement - The replacement string, see below options - options for the regular expression The options can be any combination of > g - global replace, replaces all matches of the regular expression, not just the first Regular expressions are not handled here. Python regular expressions are used internally, so the reference for matching is the re module of python: http://docs.python.org/library/re.html The replacement string is using a own syntax and is handled in the next paragraph. 4.7.1 Replacement String: *UltiSnips-replacement-string* The replacement string can contain $no variables to reference matched groups in the regular expression, $0 is special and yields the whole match. The replacement string can also contain special escape sequences: > \u - Uppercase next letter; \l - Lowercase next letter \U - Uppercase everything till the next \E \L - Lowercase everything till the next \E \E - End upper or lowercase started with \L or \U \n - A newline \t - A literal tab Last, but not least the replacement string might contain conditional replacements with the following syntax (?no:text:other text). This reads as follows: if the group $no has matched, insert "text", otherwise insert "other text". "other text" could be skipped and would default to "", that is the empty string. This is a very powerful feature to add optional text into snippets. 4.7.2 Demos: *UltiSnips-demos* The transformations are very powerful but yield often a convoluted snippet syntax. Therefore I offer for each feature a simple example below. This shows uppercasing one character ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet title "Titelize in the Transformation" ${1:a text} ${1/\w+\s*/\u$0/} endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- titlebig small -> big small Big small This shows uppercasing one character and global replace: ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet title "Titelize in the Transformation" ${1:a text} ${1/\w+\s*/\u$0/g} endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- titlethis is a title -> this is a title This Is A Title This is a clever c-like printf snippet, the second tabstop is only shown when there is a format (%) character in the first tab stop. ------------------- SNIP ------------------- snippet printf printf("${1:%s}\n"${1/([^%]|%%)*(%.)?.*/(?2:, :\);)/}$2${1/([^%]|%%)*(%.)?.*/(?2:\);)/} endsnippet ------------------- SNAP ------------------- printfHello // End of line -> printf("Hello\n"); // End of line But printfA is: %sA // End of line -> printf("A is: %s\n", A); // End of line There are many more examples of what can be done with transformations in the bundled snippets. ============================================================================= 5. ROADMAP *UltiSnips-roadmap* UltiSnips is useful as it is now; but I plan to add more features. I use this section as a brain storming of what should come in the future to provide some insight into which direction development is headed. Please feel free to comment on any feature here or if you have any good ideas what is missing contact me. Cursor key movement: *UltiSnips-cursor-key-movement* Currently, cursor key movement is not possible in snippets. When you use the cursors, you need to use or to jump to the next tab stop again before anything gets updated. This is a bit annoying and I want to make cursor keys work. Escaping: *UltiSnips-escaping* Leaving to normal mode leaves snippet expansion currently. This shouldn't happen. This is related to Cursor key movement. Jumping back from TS zero: *UltiSnips-jumping-back-from-ts-zero* Currently, jumping back from $0 with doesn't work. This is really not necessary and should be fixed. ============================================================================= 6. HELPING OUT *UltiSnips-helping* UltiSnips needs the help of a vibrant vim community to make it more useful tomorrow than it is today. Please consider joining this effort by providing new snippets, new features or bug reports. If you like this plugin, please also vote for it on its vim script page. It is life changing for me, maybe it is for you too. You can find the page here: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2715 ============================================================================= 7. CONTACT *UltiSnips-contact* You can reach me at SirVer -AT- gmx -ADOT- de. You can find the launchpad project for UltiSnips at https://launchpad.net/ultisnips/, there is also the bug tracker. This project aims to be the one-for-all solution for Snippets for Vim. If you miss a feature or find a bug, please contact me or file a support ticket. vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: