How do I change one type of surrounding delimiter to another with vim-surround?

Explanation

The cs command from the vim-surround plugin lets you swap one type of surrounding delimiter for another in a single motion. It reads two characters: the delimiter to find and the one to replace it with. This eliminates the tedious delete-then-retype workflow when refactoring code.

How it works

• c means change, s means surrounding
• The first character is the delimiter to remove (what currently wraps the text)
• The second character is the delimiter to insert (the new wrapper)
• For closing delimiters like ), ], }, the replacement has no spaces inside
• For opening delimiters like (, [, {, the replacement adds spaces inside
• Use t as the {to} to wrap with an HTML/XML tag (you'll be prompted to type the tag name)

Example

Given the cursor anywhere inside "hello":

print("hello")

• cs"' → print('hello') — double to single quotes
• cs'( → print( hello ) — single quotes to parentheses with spaces
• cs') → print(hello) — single quotes to parentheses without spaces
• cs(<q> → print(<q>hello</q>) — parentheses to an HTML tag
• cst" → print("hello") — HTML tag back to double quotes

Tips

• Works with any of Vim's built-in surrounding pairs: (, ), [, ], {, }, <, >, ", ', `
• Use ds{char} to delete surroundings entirely without a replacement
• Use ys{motion}{char} to add new surroundings to text that doesn't have any
• Available as tpope/vim-surround (Vim) or kylechui/nvim-surround (Neovim)