How does the . "Repeat last change" command work

[palango]

Coming from vim, I wonder how the dot command is supposed to work.

For example, when having the following text and the cursor at the beginning.

word1 word2 word3 word4

When I type wd, word1 gets deleted. I expect that when I now press ., that word2 would be deleted as well, but this is not what happens.

[chrsmth]

I've been using Helix for about a week, and this behaviour surprised me as well. Also came from vim.

It seems to repeat the last change, but not the last selection. So I think . treats your wd command as delete selection. It repeats the delete, but on your current selection and not on a new word selection relative your cursor position. Kakoune has the same behaviour.

I think it would be helpful if the previous selection was repeated. I can see that being difficult if the selection was generated in extend mode (v).