How do I change existing surrounding quotes to parentheses with vim-surround?

Explanation

The cs operator in vim-surround (change surrounding) swaps one pair of delimiters for another without touching the content inside. It is one of the most-used operations in the plugin: position the cursor anywhere inside the delimited region, type cs followed by the old delimiter character then the new one.

How it works

• cs — the "change surrounding" operator
• First character — the existing delimiter to replace (e.g. ", ', (, [, `)
• Second character — the new delimiter to use

Open vs close bracket behavior: when the new delimiter is an opening bracket ((, [, {), vim-surround adds a space on each side of the content. Using the closing bracket (), ], }) omits the spaces.

Example

"Hello, world"

• cs"' → 'Hello, world' (double to single quotes)
• cs"( → ( Hello, world ) (quotes to spaced parens)
• cs") → (Hello, world) (quotes to tight parens)
• cs"[ → [ Hello, world ] (quotes to spaced brackets)

For HTML tags, use t as the old delimiter: cst<p> changes any enclosing tag to <p>...</p>.

Tips

• ds" (delete surrounding) removes the delimiters without replacing them
• ysiw" (you surround inner word) wraps the word under the cursor in double quotes
• ySiw" like ysiw but places the content on its own indented line with the delimiters above and below
• S" in visual mode wraps the selection in double quotes