MetaWord

the Goal of MetaWord is providing different kinds of words based cursorMove/Select/Delete commands.

MetaWord is part of MetaGo extension

MetaWord as a free tool, currently is maintained and developed by me in my spare time🌙⏳, if you think has ever saved you time, boosted your efficiency, or even indispensable like some of our users, please support me 😊 Give me a github⭐, or even sponsor me at github🍻

MetaWord

• shift+backspace: delete all from the cursor to the line start.
• shift+del: delete all from the cursor to the line end.

Word commands to moveCursor/select/delete by word

we use the default vscode 'Word' commands

note: default vscode cursorWordEndRight command would do this:
console.log(err): '|console|.log|(err|)|'
a+= 3 +5-3 + 7:'|a|+=| 3| +5|-3| +| 7|'(from left) or 'a|+= |3 |+|5|-|3 |+ |7|'(from right)
(if there is only one symbol character before the next word, the cursor would not stop after the symbol)

default vscode cursorWordStartLeft command would do this: 'this|.|is|.|a|.|test' and ' text| a|+=| 3| +|5|-|3| +| 7|' (work as expected)

default deleteWordLeft command would do this: '|this.|is.|a.|test'(<=star from here, if there is only one symbol character after the previous word, the cursor would not stop and delete it with the previous word together) default deleteWordRight command would do this: '|this|.|is|.|a|.|test|' (work as expected)

• ctrl+left/right: left/right move cursor to word start/end.
• ctrl+shift+left/right: left/right select from cursor to word start/end.
• ctrl+backspace/delete: left/right delete from cursor to word start/end.

Note: one Mac, the cursorWord* commands are not mapped, you may need to map them by your self.

WordPart commands to moveCursor/select/delete by wordPart

Examples: ABCdef__ghIJKL

• when forward:
  • '|AB|Cdef|__gh|IJKL|'
  • '|AB|Cdef|__ghijkl|'
• when backward:
  • '|AB|Cdef__|gh|IJKL|' (<-start from end) character note: the difference at the word connector('_') dd dd

• ctrl+alt+left/right: move cursor left/right to the wordPart start/end.
• ctrl+alt+shift+left/right: left/right select from cursor to the wordPart start/end.
• ctrl+alt+backspace: left delete to the wordPart start.
• on windows ctrl+alt+shift+backspace: right delete to the wordPart end.(note: ctrl+alt+del on windows is a system shortcut, we could not use it)

  on Mac use ctrl+alt+delete

SpaceWord commands to moveCursor/select/delete word separated by space:

alt+; enter space mode, then:

• move: arrow: left/right/up/down to move between spaces;

  note: up/down also work: they skip empty/whitespace-only lines and jump to the nearest non-empty line — up lands like left from the end of that line, down lands like right from its start.

• select: shift + arrow keys to select; up/down same as move's logic.
• delete: backspace to delete backward; delete to delete to another direction.
• escape exits the mode.
• any other key(except: arrow, delete/backspace) escape the mode, and the key also take effect in editor.

⚠️ If some keys don't work in space mode (e.g. up/down or backspace do nothing or behave normally while left/right/delete are fine), the key is being captured by something with higher priority than this extension — check these in order:

1. Your own keybindings (Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)): a user keybinding for that key (e.g. up→cursorUp with a when like textInputFocus) always overrides extension keybindings. Remove it, or scope it with && !metaGoSpaceMode.
2. Other extensions: another extension may bind the same key (e.g. Markdown All in One claims backspace in .md files). One extension can't reliably out-prioritize another, so disable/uninstall the conflicting one, or add a user keybinding for that key → the matching metaGo.spaceMode.* command gated by metaGoSpaceMode (user keybindings win over everything).

These space-mode bindings ship in this extension's package.json and work out of the box on a clean setup; the above only matters when a higher-priority binding shadows them.

Additional commands (manual keybinding)

These are the original non-modal SpaceWord commands (same logic as SpaceMode), but no default shortcuts are assigned (because some historical shortcuts are taken by OS / other features, e.g. Win11).

Commands

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordLeft: move left by one space-word (cursor stops at the word boundary)

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordLeftSelect: select left by one space-word

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordLeftDelete: delete left by one space-word

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordRight: move right by one space-word

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordRightSelect: select right by one space-word

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordRightDelete: delete right by one space-word

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceLeft: move left by one space-word including surrounding spaces

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceLeftSelect: select left by one space-word including surrounding spaces

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceLeftDelete: delete left by one space-word including surrounding spaces

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceRight: move right by one space-word including surrounding spaces

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceRightSelect: select right by one space-word including surrounding spaces

• metaGo.cursorSpaceWordSpaceRightDelete: delete right by one space-word including surrounding spaces

Example keybindings

Add your preferred keys in Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON):

 {
    "command": "metaGo.cursorSpaceWordLeft",
    "key": "win+alt+left", // note: win11 already used this key, I don't know other reasonable key to use, so create space-mode.
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
    "mac": "cmd+alt+left",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
 },

Note

we modified several default command vscode command's shortcut, because we want to use it to do word based cursorMove/select/delete.

• ctrl+alt+left/right by default is used by "workbench.action.moveEditorToPreviousGroup/NextGroup", so we assign ctrl+k ctrl+left/right to do the editor movement.
• ctrl+alt+shift+left/right by default is used by "cursorColumnSelectLeft/Right" command, we think of a solution to do column based vertical selection:

  alt+v: toggle vertical column selection mode. alt+v to enter vertical column selection model, then press shift+left/right/up/down as needed to do column mode selection.

➭MetaGo Feature Summary⮵