How do I add a keymap into fish vi keybindings?

Question

I've just started using fish and I'm loving using the vi keybindings it provides.

I wanted though to add a custom keymap that I use in vi. I usually map space+c in visual mode to yank to "* (system clipboard). How can I add such keymap in fish?

I'm using fish 3.3.1 on MacOS 12.

Edit: I've tried this

bind -M visual \x20c '"*y'

And got the following error

fish: Unexpected end of string, quotes are not balanced

Also tried with a modifier instead of space and got the same result.

Answer 1

A couple of possibilities:

• First, if you are currently using "*y to yank to the system clipboard, then you can see via bind in Fish that the default binding is:

  bind -M visual -m default '"*y' 'commandline -s | xsel -p; commandline -f end-selection repaint-mode'
  

  So you should be able to recreate that for SPACEc by:

  bind -M visual -m default \x20c 'commandline -s | xsel -p; commandline -f end-selection repaint-mode'
  

• There's also the fish_clipboard_copy function listed in the docs for bind, so another possibility might be:

  bind -M visual -m default \20c fish_clipboard_copy
  

  ... but I assume you'll need to use the converse fish_clipboard_paste as well, rather than xsel.

Answer 2

The error is because the binding is setting a command that is not valid. You cannot run "*y at the command line (and if you try with fish -c '"*y', you'll get the same error).

The command to bind needs to be just that - a command. That's why using fish_clipboard_copy works fine. There's no way to execute another keybinding, at least in fish 3.3.1 and before.

Answer 3

I don't think it's possible to put a binding on two "plain" characters. When the documentation for bind refers to a "sequence of characters", I think it means zero or more modifiers (ctrl, alt, shift) followed by a "regular" character.

I have bindings for !! and !$ to mimic what bash does with those, and it looks like this:

function bind_bang
    switch (commandline -t)[-1]
    case "!"
        commandline -t $history[1]; commandline -f repaint
    case "*"
        commandline -i !
    end
end

function bind_dollar
    switch (commandline -t)[-1]
    case "!"
        commandline -t ""
        commandline -f history-token-search-backward
    case "*"
        commandline -i '$'
    end
end

bind ! bind_bang
bind '$' bind_dollar

Each binding function has to look for the previous character in the command line.

I don't use vi-mode in fish (I started using fish before it had a vi-mode, so my fingers got trained) -- I'm not sure how you're going to have to implement paste.