How to map command in vim that maintains mode when invoked?

Posted by Phoenix on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Phoenix
Published on 2011-06-20T20:10:21Z Indexed on 2011/06/22 8:25 UTC
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vim

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remapping

I'm configuring vim in Mac OS X's Terminal app to do useful things with my arrow keys (among others).

For example, I want option-left to move the cursor back one word, similarly to how it works in other Mac applications.

In normal mode, this is easy enough; I can simply map the sequence to b. But when I'm in insert mode, I want to stay in insert mode (i.e., map the sequence to <c-o>b.

In my .vimrc` file, I have these lines:

nmap ^[[xol~ b
imap ^[[xol~ <c-o>b

Where ^[[xol~ is the character sequence that I've configured Terminal to send when I press option-left.

This works, but it gets pretty tedious, especially when I've got nearly two dozen commands that I want to map.

Is there a better way to do this?

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