mrkkrp / zzz-to-char

Fancy replacement for zap-to-char in Emacs

Zzz to Char

This package provides two new commands: zzz-to-char and zzz-up-to-char which work like the built-ins zap-to-char and zap-up-to-char, but allow the user to quickly select the exact character they want to zzz to. The commands work like the built-ins when there is only one occurrence of the target character, excepting that they automatically work in the backward direction, too. One can specify how many characters to scan from each side of the point, see zzz-to-char-reach.

Installation

The package is available via MELPA, so you can just type M-x package-install RET zzz-to-char RET.

If you would like to install the package manually, download or clone it and put on Emacs' load-path. Then you can require it in your init file like this:

(require 'zzz-to-char)

Usage

Just bind zzz-to-char or zzz-to-char-up-to-char (depends on your taste, the latter doesn't include the target char into the killed text):

(global-set-key (kbd "M-z") #'zzz-to-char)

License

Copyright © 2015–present Mark Karpov

Distributed under GNU GPL, version 3.

zzz-to-char's Issues

Don't offer targets that would do nothing, i.e. adjacent chars

One use case for zapping is to delete the text between delimiters, e.g.

"|here is a string"

With point at | I can zap up to the closing ". With zzz-to-char-up-to-char it offers both the start and end quotes as possible targets, even though zapping backwards would do nothing here.

Can you ignore targets adjacent to point?

The package chokes with an older avy version

tl;dr when using this package with an older version of avy the package does not work

See how I stumbled upon this issue:

M-x package-install RET zzz-to-char RET
Then in a buffer with some text:

foo█ x x x x bar

M-x zzz-up-to-char RET

In minibuffer:

Zzz up to char:

b
I get back (in minibuffer):

Symbol’s function definition is void: avy-jump

Mind you I had avy at version 20180514.1100.

Installed the newest version from MELPA.
And voila, it worked.

At first I thought:

Maybe you'd like to specify the minimum avy version to something higher that 0.3.0 in order to prevent this?

But then looking at avy at version 20180514.1100, even that package is at version 0.4.0. So it won't be a fix.

Figured you might wanna know about this...

Thanks for the package :)