Text objects are textual patterns like a line, a top level definition, a word,a sentence or any other unit of text. Whenobjed-mode orobjed-local-modeis enabled, certain editing commands (configurable) will activateobjed andenable its modal editing features. When active, keys which would usually inserta character are mapped to objed commands. Other keys and commands will continueto work as they normally would and exit this editing state again.

By default important editing keys likeSpace,DEL orReturnare not bound to modal commands and will execute the regular command and exitobjed. Character movement exitsobjed, as well. This makes it convenientto move around and continue by adding/deleting text.

With activationobjed shows the current object type in themode-line. Thetextual content of the object is highlighted visually in the buffer and thecursor color is changed, too. The user can now navigate by units of thisobject, change the object state or switch to other object types.

The object state is eitherinner orwhole and is indicated in the modelineby(i) or(w) after the object type. With inner state, anything that wouldbe considered delimiters or padding around an object is excluded.

The user can apply operations to objects. By marking objects before applyingan operation, s?he can even operate on multiple objects at once. This workssimilar to the way you interact with files indired. When marking an object,the point moves on to the next object of this type.

The object type used for initialization is determined by theentry command (seeobjed-cmd-alist). For example, usingbeginning-of-defunwill activateobjed using thedefun object as an initial object type. Withthe commandnext-line,objed would initialize with theline object. Toactivateobjed without movement you can useobjed-activate, bound toM-SPC by default. Objed uses the last command and its mapping inobjed-command-alist to choose the initial object.

Objed’s modal state provides basic movement commands which move by line, sexpword or character. Those commands automatically activate the corresponding objecttype. Other commands only activate the part between the initial position andthe new position moved to. By repeating commands you can often expand/proceedto other objects. This way you can compose movement and editing operationsvery efficiently.

The expansion commands distinguish between block objects (objects built out oflines of text like paragraphs or text blocks with the same level ofindentation and also comment blocks) and context objects (programmingconstructs like strings, brackets, comments or functions). This way you canquickly expand to the desired objects.

For example to move to the end of the paragraph, the user would first move tothe end of the line withCtrl - e. This would activateobjed using theline object with the text moved over. The user can now continue to the end ofthe paragraph by pressinge again. Now s?he is able to proceed evenfurther by pressinge again OR to continue by adding new text to the endof the paragraph OR to continue by acting on the text moved over, for examplekilling it by pressingk.

As often with text editing, the explanation sounds more complicated than usingit. To get a better impression of the editing workflow withobjed I haveadded some animated demos below.

To learn more about available features and commands have a look at thedescriptions below, the commentary section or the docstrings and bindingsdefined inobjed-map. To define your own operations and text objects seeobjed-define-op andobjed-define-object.

Note that the key bindings shown in the screencasts below aren’t up to date.

Although some features are still experimental the basic user interface willstay the same. The following gives an overview of available keys and commands.If commands allow for numeric arguments you can input them without the use ofCtrl orMeta.0 can be used as an alternative for theuniversal argument (C-u). To add custom commands to the modal state youcan useobjed-user-map which is available under prefix key' andobjed-other-user-map bound to-. It’s recommended to use one of thesemap for custom object bindings and the other one for additional operations.

You can customize the default bindings for object keys usingobjed-define-global-object-keys and also define major mode specific bindingsusingobjed-define-local-object-keys.

In addition to the commands configured inobjed-cmd-alist you can use thefollowing commands to enter objed (those bindings are only active if you areusingobjed-mode, if you choose to activate objed always manually you haveto bind those commands in yourglobal-map):

[objed-mode-map]

Basic movement commands (switch the object type on movement):

[objed-map]

Commands for block objects (objects built out of lines of text):

[objed-map]

Commands for context objects. Those objects are common programming constructslike defuns, strings, parentheses but also sentences inside comments forexample. Any whitespace after point is skipped before determining the context:

[objed-map]

Commands to switch objects (and move point to its start, repeating an objectcommand mark all instances in current defun/buffer):

[objed-map]

Indent/Move objects around:

[objed-map]

Commands to edit objects (applying operations to them). When the region isactive the operation acts on the current region. To act on multiple objects atonce you can mark them first (see the "Misc commands" below):

[objed-map]

Misc commands:

[objed-map]

Dispatch keys (dispatch to any object defined inobjed-object-map).You can add your own prefix bindings usingobjed-define-dispatch.

[objed-map]

Objed is on MELPA and GNU ELPA, for installation use:

For manual installation:

Add this to your init file:

In case you don’t want to enableobjed globally, useobjed-local-mode:

I’m happy to receive pull requests or ideas to improve this package. Someparts suffer from the bottom up approach of developing it, but this alsoallowed me to experiment a lot and try ideas while working on them, somethingthat Emacs is especially good at. Most of the features are tested usingemacs-lisp-mode but hopefully there aren’t to many problems using modes forother languages. Before submitting a PR please check your code compilescleanly and all tests are passing: