zsh line editor: Can I navigate and edit by argument?

Question

I have a common situation in the shell when a command is attempted

command "/some/complex/and terrible/path" -vf --various --flags --and -- things --config-file="/some other/annoyingly/large/path/to/somewhere"

and it turns out that I'm mostly there but need to move some stuff around. Suppose I have to move the last argument all the way to the front to attempt this next.

command --config-file="/some other/annoyingly/large/path/to/somewhere" "/some/complex/and terrible/path" -vf --various --flags --and -- things

Trying to take a keystroke golf look at this, it's a dire situation. This is actually a nightmare shell command entry scenario where you kind of have to re-type (or copy&paste) almost half the command. The best hope of sanity might be to use an external editor [like this].

Even still, Vim isn't smart enough to do arg parsing (so there is no quick way to slurp out the last arg there using e.g. daW, though it should be possible to complete the job within 8 keystrokes or so given the power of vim).

I think that this can be a decent workaround, because I do bring a lot of software to bear on editing text in vim since I use it to do all of my coding.

But what I want is if Zsh (or even Bash!) line editor could be programmed somehow to let me shove an arg around. Kind of like this: https://github.com/AndrewRadev/sideways.vim But of course, this plugin won't work on space delimited shell arguments either. And it requires vim.

I'd be happy with either a directional hop (so that I can put my cursor somewhere on the --config-file arg and then mash HopLeft to hop the arg to the left) or a yank & paste (so i can put my cursor somewhere on the --config-file arg, yank it out, hit home to go to the front and paste it after it).

This way we can rapidly recompose shell arguments by navigating the args as a unit rather than navigating individual characters as a unit. It would speed up general command editing a lot. I care about this a lot because I do an unusually large amount of coding directly in the shell.

If we are to take the idea further this would be implemented as an editor mode, let's call it Argument Edit Mode, where the cursor moves across args instead of characters and a more developed set of actions can be performed on args as a unit.

Let's come back down to earth now. The question is this: can I programmatically cause zsh to delete the shell arg that i'm currently on? And then paste it back in? Can I bind a key to let me hop based on actual args instead of just hopping words?

There doesn't seem to be ready-to-use binds for use with bindkey, but it feels like there might be a way to do it if i can programmatically control the position of the cursor. I do use a plugin that can live syntax highlight my command after all. https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Answer 1

You may be looking for the select-word-style framework and in particular its shell word style. See

info zsh select-word-style

For instance, add to your ~/.zshrc:

autoload -U select-word-style
zle -N select-word-style
bindkey '\ez' select-word-style

Then (assuming you use the emacs mode)

• press Alt+Z to invoke select-word-style
• you'll get a menu where you can select the word style. Press S for the shell word style.
• then Ctrl+W will delete the previous word as a full argument (a shell word).
• Ctrl+A or Home to go to the beginning of the line
• Alt+F to move one word to the right
• Ctrl+Y to yank the previously killed word.
• Alt+ZN if you want to go back to the normal word style.

Answer 2

The question is this: can I programmatically cause zsh to delete the shell arg that i'm currently on? And then paste it back in? Can I bind a key to let me hop based on actual args instead of just hopping words?

Yes, you can. Just use my Zsh Edit plugin. It includes keybindings for skipping and cutting entire shell words.