How do I wrap a word or text object with quotes, brackets, or tags in Vim?

Explanation

The vim-surround plugin provides the ys (you surround) operator to wrap any Vim text object or motion with a delimiter pair. Combined with Vim's powerful text objects, this lets you add surroundings with surgical precision.

How it works

• ys triggers the surround operator
• The next part is any motion or text object (e.g., iw, iW, it, ap, f,)
• The final character is the delimiter to wrap with

So ysiw) means: surround the inner word with parentheses.

Example

Given the text with the cursor on name:

return name;

Pressing ysiw) results in:

return (name);

Common combinations

ysiw"    " wrap word in double quotes
ysiw'    " wrap word in single quotes
ysiw)    " wrap word in parentheses (no space)
ysiw(    " wrap word in parentheses (with space)
ysiw]    " wrap word in square brackets
ysiw}    " wrap word in curly braces
ysiw<em> " wrap word in <em> tag
yss)     " wrap entire line in parentheses
ysi")    " wrap everything inside quotes with parens

Wrapping with tags

You can wrap text in HTML or XML tags by specifying the full tag:

" With cursor on Hello:
" ysiw<span class="bold"> gives:
<span class="bold">Hello</span>

Visual mode alternative

Select text in visual mode, then press S followed by the delimiter:

viw     " select inner word
S"      " wrap selection in double quotes

For linewise visual mode (V), the surroundings are placed on separate lines with proper indentation.

Tips

• Use yss to surround the entire current line, ignoring leading whitespace
• Opening brackets (, {, [ add inner spaces; closing brackets ), }, ] do not
• Combine with any motion: ysf,) surrounds from cursor to the next comma with parentheses
• Install vim-repeat to make ys commands repeatable with .