edvin / surround.el

Wrap text with brackets and quotes - Emacs Surround

Surround.el

Surrounds the current selection with brackets or quotes. It can also remove bracket pairs from the end of the selected region and it provides some convenience functions for selecting and expanding the selection region.

Installation

(straight-use-package
 '(surround :type git :host github :repo "edvin/surround.el"))
(surround-mode 1)

Updating

Surround is not hosted in MELPA so you have to pull it from GitHub. If you use Straight.el you can update the dependency with M-x straight-pull-package and selecting surround.

Usage

• C-c C-s s (surround-region) Prompts for a bracket-char to wrap around the currently selected region. If the bracket-char has a counterpart in surround-bracket-alist, the corresponding end bracket char is added to the end of the region. Selecting quotes like ' or " will add the same char to the end of the region, while (, [ and { will add the corresponding end bracket instead.

• C-C C-s r (surround-replace-wrap) will replace the bracket-char at the ends of the currently selected region with the newly selected bracket-char. Counterparts are looked up the same way as for surround-region.

• C-c C-s e (surround-expand-region) will expand the selection region to the next matching bracket-char. Repeat to expand further. You can pass C-u first to exclude the bracket-char pair from the selected area. (Passing the optional exclusive parameter to the function). After expanding the region you can keep pressing 'e' to further expand the region using the same 'bracket-char' or chose one of the other transient menu options available. Typing C-u after expanding works the same way as typing it before the original command, removing the bracket-chars from the selected region.

• C-c C-s x (surround-auto-expand-region) will automatically expand the selection region to the next matching registered bracket-chars. It will consult surround-auto-expand-alist to look for matches and find the opposing bracket by looking up surround-bracket-alist. You can pass C-u first to exclude the matched bracket pair from the selected area. (Passing the optional exclusive parameter to the function). After auto-expanding the region you can keep pressing 'x' to further expand the region or chose one of the other transient menu options available. C-u can be typed before or after the command to remove the surrounding bracket-chars from the selected region.

• C-c C-s u (surround-unwrap) will unwrap/remove the brackets at the end of the currently selected region. Typically you'd select the region with surround-expand-region first, then either unwrap or replace the bracket-char pair.

• C-c C-s l (surround-select-line) is a convenience function to select the whole line. It does the same as C-a C-SPC C-e, but additionally allow you to press d to duplicate the line by way of the transient menu that appears after selecting the line. Keep hitting d to add more copies of the same line.