Gallery

Here's a gallery of snippets that illustrate the awesome power of this fully operational snippet plugin.

Vim plugin boilerplate

The following snippet inserts boilerplate for a Vim plugin. Note that $1 is specified twice—the value you enter for the first occurence of $1 is reused for all other $1. $0 is the last position.

pluginboilerplate = [[
" Author: Foo Bar <[email protected]>
" Description: $2

if exists('g:loaded_$1')
	return
endif
let g:loaded_$1 = 1

let s:save_cpo = &cpoptions
set cpoptions&vim

$0

let &cpoptions = s:save_cpo
unlet s:save_cpo]],

Lua function support in snippets

The following snippet can be used to insert the current date:

 ["ymd"]   = "${=os.date('%Y-%m-%d')},

Matching indentation

To have a multi-line snippet automatically match the surrounding indentation, you can use, e.g.,

["for"] = require'snippets'.u.match_indentation "for ${1:i} = 0, $2 do\n  $0\nend",

If you want to apply the indentation at expansion time (e.g., since you want to overload expansion to apply indentation to all snippets by default), you have to do

require'snippets'.expand_at_cursor((require'snippets'.u.match_indentation(S)))

(where S is the snippet string), since match_indentation actually returns multiple values.

Random color

This gives a random color in hex format:

randcolor = function()
  return format("#%06X", math.floor(math.random() * 0xFFFFFF))
end;

Copyright comment line

This uses the force_comment() utility function to turn this line into a filetype-specific comment:

copyright = require'snippets.utils'.force_comment [Copyright (C) Foo Bar ${=os.date("%Y")}](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/Copyright-(C)-Foo-Bar-${=os.date("%Y")});

Applying transformations to placeholders

This takes the text entered for $1, strips everything before the final . (if there is one), and uses the result as the default text for $2:

req = [local ${2:${1](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/S.v:match"([^.()]+)[()]*$"}}-=-require-'$1');

Note the use of S.v for the text entered for $1.

Here's an example that uses a lua function to autogenerate a numbered list up to a specified number (e.g., for Markdown):

function snippet_make_list(n)
  n = tonumber(n) or 0
  if n == 0 then
    return ""
  end
  local r = {}
  for i = 1, n do
    r[i] = format("%d. ", i)
  end
  return concat(r, '\n')
end

list = [${1](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/snippet_make_list(S.v)});

A more practical example (courtesy of @sunjon_) is the following, which generates a Markdown table head from a comma-delimited list of headings (entered as a single placeholder text):

function make_table(csv)
  local str = "|"
  local headers_complete = false
  local headers = {}

  for cell in csv:gmatch('([^,]+)') do
    -- match and remove EOL char
    if cell:sub(-1) == '.' then
      cell = cell:sub(1, -2)
      headers_complete = true
    end

    -- capitalize each word
    cell = string.gsub(" "..cell, "%W%l", string.upper):sub(2)

    str = str .. string.format(" %s |", cell)
    headers[#headers+1] = cell:len()

    -- build the header separator
    if headers_complete then
      str = str .. '\n|'
      for i=1, #headers do
        str = str .. string.format(" %s |", string.rep('-', headers[i]))
      end
      str = str .. '\n|'
    end
  end
  return str
end

tbl = [${1](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/make_table(S.v)});

The following snippet (courtesy @smolck) inserts a list of strings:

function create_list_of_strings(input)
  local str = ''
  local function wrap_quotes(x) return "'" .. x .. "'" end
  for item, _ in input:gmatch('([%s%w%.%_]+),') do
    local str_end = (' '):rep(vim.bo.shiftwidth) .. wrap_quotes(item)
    if str == '' then
      str = str .. str_end
    else
      str = str .. ',\n' .. str_end
    end
  end

  return str
end

slist = [[
local $1 = {
${2|create_list_of_strings(S.v)}
}
]]

Similarly, for generating enums or lists of arguments:

function snippets_ngen(pattern, count, sep)
  local start, finish = count:match("(%d)%s*,%s*(%d+)")
  if start then
    start = tonumber(start)
    finish = tonumber(finish)
  else
    start = 1
    finish = tonumber(count) or 1
  end
  local R = {}
  for i = start, finish do
    insert(R, pattern:format(i))
  end
  return concat(R, sep)
end

```lua
ngen = [${1](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/""}${2|""}${3:,|""}${|snippets_ngen(S[1],-S[2],-S[3])});

You can of course call neovim API functions. The following snippet inserts the current line number at the cursor:

line = [${=tostring(vim.api.nvim_win_get_cursor(0)[1])}](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/${=tostring(vim.api.nvim_win_get_cursor(0)[1])});

And this one expands a value using the unamed register's (where a yank goes) contents:

cljv = [JSON.stringify(${=vim.fn.getreg('"')}, null, 2);](/norcalli/snippets.nvim/wiki/JSON.stringify(${=vim.fn.getreg('"')},-null,-2););