21 votes

In Neovim, C-a and C-x will increment/decrement a number under the cursor in Normal mode

Posted by hungariantoast (edited )
Tags: vim, neovim, text editors, emacs

Also works in Vim.

Thought this was neat. Wanted to share.

Thanks @spicyq. It turns out Emacs does have this feature built-in (via Org-mode) with the commands org-increase-number-at-point and org-decrease-number-at-point.

The commands:

  • Work in any mode, not just org-mode
  • Support prefix arguments with C-u
  • Do not have a default keybind

I bound the commands to C-z <up> and C-z <down>, since I had previously unbound suspend-frame from C-z:

(keymap-global-unset "C-z" 'remove) ; suspend-frame

Keep in mind you can repeat your last executed command with C-x z (and then just keep pressing z to repeat the command however many times you want).

Of course, now that I've got this far, I'm realizing that typing out either C-u 10 C-z <up> or C-z <up> C-x z + z * 9 is probably a lot more keystrokes than just changing the number myself. (At least for a single number at a single point in the buffer.)

I don't think there is a built-in Emacs feature that does the same thing. You can find several custom Emacs Lisp solutions by searching online though.

9 comments

  1. [2]
    fxgn
    Link
    There's also g<C-a>, which increments a visual block in an order. For example, if you have 0 0 0 You can block select it, press g<C-a> and get 1 2 3 It also works with a count, so for example...

    There's also g<C-a>, which increments a visual block in an order. For example, if you have

    0
0
0

    You can block select it, press g<C-a> and get

    1
2
3

    It also works with a count, so for example 3g<C-a> will give you

    3
6
9
    12 votes
  2. [2]
    zazowoo
    Link
    It's even better than that! You don't need to position your cursor on the number you want to increment/decrement. It'll apply to whatever the first number to the right of your cursor is. Most of...

    It's even better than that! You don't need to position your cursor on the number you want to increment/decrement. It'll apply to whatever the first number to the right of your cursor is. Most of the time it means you can just keep your cursor on the beginning of the line or wherever it happens to be.

    7 votes
    1. Banazir
      Link Parent
      Note that this will trip you up if trying to increment IP addresses. In my earlier days I resorted to removing the first three octets, incrementing the last one, then pasting the first three back...

      Note that this will trip you up if trying to increment IP addresses. In my earlier days I resorted to removing the first three octets, incrementing the last one, then pasting the first three back in with a column block edit.

      5 votes
  3. [2]
    zenen
    Link
    funky interactions when you've got stuff like classname-section-1 because it reads -1 as a negative. generally one of my more frequently used vim commands tho

    funky interactions when you've got stuff like classname-section-1 because it reads -1 as a negative. generally one of my more frequently used vim commands tho

    6 votes
    1. tauon
      Link Parent
      In helix, which has this feature by default as well (and with the same key binds too I’m just realizing), this is just selection-dependent, and by default the selection is only one character wide,...

      In helix, which has this feature by default as well (and with the same key binds too I’m just realizing), this is just selection-dependent, and by default the selection is only one character wide, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

      Edit; just checked and it seemingly doesn’t de- or increment anything if your selection contains letters, so you can’t even trip it if you were to apply it on the whole classname-section-1 word.

      1 vote
  4. [2]
    Boojum
    Link
    Not quite the same, but using only built-in stuff in Emacs you can increment every number with an interactive regexp search and replace: C-M-% -?[0-9]+ RET \,(1+ \#0) RET The \,(...) in the...

    Not quite the same, but using only built-in stuff in Emacs you can increment every number with an interactive regexp search and replace:

    C-M-% -?[0-9]+ RET \,(1+ \#0) RET

    The \,(...) in the replacement takes an arbitrary Elisp expression to evaluate to get the replacement, and the \#0 means the full match interpreted as a number. (\#1 would be the first capture as a number, etc., while just \# is the replacement index: 0, 1, 2, ...). The 1+ is the Elisp function to add one. You can change that to 1- to decrement instead.

    I tend to use this capability for doing simple math like that, rounding numbers, changing bases, changing capitalization selectively, renumbering indices, etc.

    I never really got into Vim, but from what I can tell, it seems to have a lot of nice touches for micro-edits like this, whereas I feel that Emacs often requires more keystrokes of overhead but then favors flexible bulk edits.

    5 votes
    1. spicyq
      Link Parent
      also #'org-{increase,decrease}-number-at-point are build in, but they don't have global bindings

      also #'org-{increase,decrease}-number-at-point are build in, but they don't have global bindings

      4 votes
  5. bugsmith
    Link
    This also works in Helix :)

    This also works in Helix :)

    1 vote