Make { and } ignore lines containing only whitespace

Question

When you navigate by paragraph in vim using { and } it skips lines that contain nothing but whitespace though they are otherwise \'blank\'.

How can I convince vim to tre

Answer 1

This is something that's bothered me for a long time. Probably the "right" solution would be to submit a patch to vim itself that would allow you to customize paragraph boundaries with a regex (like :set paragraphs, but actually useful).

In the meantime, I've made a function and a couple of mappings that almost do the right thing:

function! ParagraphMove(delta, visual)
    normal m'
    normal |
    if a:visual
        normal gv
    endif

    if a:delta > 0
        " first whitespace-only line following a non-whitespace character
        let pos1 = search("\\S", "W")
        let pos2 = search("^\\s*$", "W")
        if pos1 == 0 || pos2 == 0
            let pos = search("\\%$", "W")
        endif
    elseif a:delta < 0
        " first whitespace-only line preceding a non-whitespace character
        let pos1 = search("\\S", "bW")
        let pos2 = search("^\\s*$", "bW")
        if pos1 == 0 || pos2 == 0
            let pos = search("\\%^", "bW")
        endif
    endif
    normal |
endfunction

nnoremap  } :call ParagraphMove( 1, 0)
onoremap  } :call ParagraphMove( 1, 0)
" vnoremap  } :call ParagraphMove( 1, 1)
nnoremap  { :call ParagraphMove(-1, 0)
onoremap  { :call ParagraphMove(-1, 0)
" vnoremap  { :call ParagraphMove(-1, 1)

This doesn't correctly handle counts like '4}' or visual mode correctly (uncomment the vnoremap lines at your peril), but seems ok for things like not clobbering the current search pattern and not flickering. Also, 'd}', 'y}', etc. seem to work ok. If anyone has ideas for making counts work or fixing visual mode, please let me know.