How to increment in vim under windows (where CTRL-A does not work…)

Question

While CtrlX works fine in vim under windows, CtrlA selects all (duh).

Is there a way to increment a number with a keystroke under windows?

Answer 1

Try Ctrl-NumPad + ?

(from here)

Answer 2

You can make CtrlA to increment in windows by opening up the 'mswin.vim' file in your vim directory and finding the section that looks like:

" CTRL-A is Select all
noremap <C-A> gggH<C-O>G
inoremap <C-A> <C-O>gg<C-O>gH<C-O>G
cnoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
onoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
snoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
xnoremap <C-A> <C-C>ggVG

Comment out all of these lines as follows:

" CTRL-A is Select all
"noremap <C-A> gggH<C-O>G
"inoremap <C-A> <C-O>gg<C-O>gH<C-O>G
"cnoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
"onoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
"snoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
"xnoremap <C-A> <C-C>ggVG

and the CtrlA keystroke will increment.

This is a pretty nice option when your keyboard doesn't have a real number pad.

Answer 3

I realize that this is an old question, but I ran across another option today based on the following question. Making gvim act like it does on linux will allow CTRL-A to work as you expect it to:

how to make gvim on windows behave exacly like linux console vim?

There is a section of the _vimrc that has the following items. These cause many of the control characters to act like they do on Windows.

set nocompatible
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin

I commented out (with ") the mswin lines and the set nocompatible line. From there, I added set compatible. This causes gvim to act like it does on linux. Thus, mine looks something like:

set compatible
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
"set nocompatible
"source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
"behave mswin

I just learned this trick today, so if I'm not completely correct in my information, please let me know.

Answer 4

I modified TMealy's solution so that CtrlA still selects all (I find this useful), while CtrlI increments (also useful).

noremap <C-I> <C-A>

" CTRL-A is Select all
noremap <C-A> gggH<C-O>G
inoremap <C-A> <C-O>gg<C-O>gH<C-O>G
cnoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
onoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
snoremap <C-A> <C-C>gggH<C-O>G
xnoremap <C-A> <C-C>ggVG

Answer 5

A similar problem occurs under GNU/Linux when using Vim with mswin.vim. Remapping Alt+X to Ctrl+A prior to evoking mswin.vim solved my issue.

execute "set <A-x>=\ex"
noremap <A-x> <C-A>
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin

Now, Alt+X and Ctrl+X respectively increase and decrease numbers in Vim.

Mapping to Alt key combinations is often not evident in Vim; read more about this here.

Answer 6

I am using cygwin terminal + screen, so <c-a> is captured by the terminal multiplexer. I used this mapping:

:noremap <c-i> <c-a>

Answer 7

It seems that the CtrlA got mapped somewhere in startup. As suggested before, use:

unmap <c-x>

I would use unmap, not nunmap.