Surround

vim-surround operators for working with surrounding pairs — delete, change, or add brackets, quotes, and other paired characters around text. Always active on document buffers; no toggle needed.

Status: native built-in (not WASM). Full ys{motion}{char}, ds{char}, cs{char1}{char2}, and visual S{char} supported. HTML/XML tag targets (cst<div>, dst, ysiwt<div>) deferred to a future release.

Quick reference

Three operators

ds — delete surrounding

Type ds followed by a pair character to delete the nearest enclosing pair.

Before:  "hello world"         cursor on 'w'
Type:    ds"
After:   hello world

Any bracket or quote works:

Before:  (some text)           cursor inside parens
Type:    ds(
After:   some text

Before:  [list item]           cursor inside brackets
Type:    ds]
After:   list item

If the cursor is not inside a matching pair, nothing happens.

cs — change surrounding

Type cs followed by the OLD pair character, then the NEW pair character. The surrounding pair is replaced in place.

Before:  "hello"               cursor in "hello"
Type:    cs"'
After:   'hello'

Before:  (some text)           cursor inside parens
Type:    cs(]
After:   [some text]

Before:  {key: value}          cursor inside braces
Type:    cs}]
After:   [key: value]

The operator also handles symmetric pairs (" → ", ' → '):

Before:  "quoted text"         cursor in "quoted"
Type:    cs"`                  double → backtick
After:   `quoted text`

ys — add surrounding (wrap)

Wrap text in a pair. The general form is ys{motion}{char}:

Before:  hello world           cursor on 'h'
Type:    ysw"                  "yank-surround word with double-quotes"
After:   "hello" world

Before:  hello world           cursor on 'l' (in hello)
Type:    ysiw(                 "inner word with parens"
After:   (hello) world

yss — wrap the current line

Doubling the s wraps the entire current line:

Before:  some text              cursor anywhere on the line
Type:    yss"
After:   "some text"

Works with any pair character:

Before:  fn main() {            cursor on this line
Type:    yss{
After:   {fn main() {}}

Visual S — wrap the selection

In Visual mode, press S then a pair character to wrap the selection:

1. Select text in Visual mode:  v   (or V for linewise)
2. Press S followed by the pair char

Visual selection: hello
Type:             S"
Result:           "hello"

Supported pairs

Both the opening and closing character can be used as the target in ds and cs. ds) and ds( both delete the nearest () pair.

Pair detection

The cursor must be inside (or between) the pair characters. Nested pairs are handled correctly — ds( inside (outer (inner) tail) deletes the innermost () pair. Symmetric pairs (", ', `) are balanced by alternating open/close semantics as the scanner walks outward from the cursor.

If no matching pair encloses the cursor, the operator silently does nothing (vim's "no surrounding" beep-equivalent is a no-op).

Dot-repeat and registers

All three operators participate in dot-repeat (.):

ds"   → deletes "..."       on "hello"
.     → deletes "..."       on the next pair you're inside

The yanked content from ds and cs goes to the unnamed register and the "0 register. Use "ads" to delete a surrounding pair into register a:

"ads"  → delete the surround, yank it into register a
"ap    → paste the deleted surround text somewhere else

Compared with vim-surround

Activation

surround-mode uses ActivationPolicy::Global — it activates automatically on every document buffer. There is no toggle command (:surround-mode) in this release; the mode is always active. A future update may add a typed-option gate (surround.enabled).