Different movment selection

[N4tus]

Using helix for my current project, the selection from movement commands are usually not what I want. Most of the time, when stepping with w through the words, there is too much white-space selected. What I really want is to jump from word to word and only select the current word, and have a way to extent the selection to include white-space when needed.

E.g. pressing w moves to the beginning of the next word and selects the current word (so the cursor is on the start and the word is selected to the end). Using i and a I now can edit at the beginning and end of the word. With this system moving with e is not really useful so I would replace it with an action that extends the selection to include the surrounding white-space and to remove if it is already selected.

[alexokten]

I agree, I am often using * to add the word to the register so I can jump to it's next/previous instance. w and e select the word plus white-space. Anyway to just select the next word without white-space?

[askreet]

You can use _ to trim whitespace from selections, so the flow would be w, _, *.

[askreet]

I think the main motivation for it being the way it is is how d and c react with moving word-wise. If you selected only the whole words by default you would delete a word leaving two whitespaces in the middle of a sentence, for example. Adding a keybind that extends the selection to include surrounding whitespace creates the opposite problem, as you'd then have no whitespace left if you delete the selection.

The _ keybind exists to trim the whitespace from your current selection. In my work, I tend to feel like that's the edge case versus being bothered by the additional selected whitespace.