Refactor and expand special registers #6985

the-mikedavis · 2023-05-06T19:26:55Z

This implements some special registers from Kakoune:

#: index numbers for the current selections
.: contents of the current selections
%: name of the current file (Add % current file register #5577)

And adds special registers for the system and primary clipboards: * and + respectively. This also re-uses the trick from #6889 to store the selections yanked to clipboards so they can be re-used on paste if the clipboard hasn't changed.

The strategy here mirrors how Kakoune implements these special registers and should extend to the remaining special registers in Kakoune (1..9 for regex captures), but it's an unfortunately large refactor that adds complexity and allocations and needs updates for all register callsites. The overview is...

Register moves to helix-view
read functions now may return owned values. This is necessary because of the way some special registers produce their values. We use a Cow to prevent allocations in places where we don't need them.
read, first and last functions now take the Editor as a parameter. This is the main change that enables special registers and is what mirrors Kakoune.

Closes #5577
Closes #5242
Closes #5241

pascalkuthe

This looks great! Support for special register like this is something I have been missing. These can come kin quite handy when combined with other editing primitives. The code is very readable/well structured and seems like a good extensible solution. I left some minor comments

book/src/usage.md

helix-view/src/register.rs

edrex · 2023-05-22T00:06:34Z

#: index numbers for the current selections
.: contents of the current selections

Is the buffer save state exposed somehow? That would be useful.

Also, out of scope for this issue but is there any way to turn this into selection ranges?

the-mikedavis · 2023-05-26T06:57:19Z

I can't imagine use-cases for either of these, could you expand on that in a separate discussion? This is specifically about the Kakoune registers & clipboard registers

gibbz00 · 2023-07-02T11:03:32Z

When and how is the # ever used? I found this line, but I can't find where it set...

helix/helix-term/src/commands.rs

Line 5480 in a9849eb

let increase_by = if cx.register == Some('#') { sign } else { 0 };

gibbz00 · 2023-07-02T11:46:30Z

Is there a pipe register too?

helix/helix-term/src/commands.rs

Line 5204 in a9849eb

Some('|'),

pascalkuthe · 2023-07-02T14:05:54Z

When and how is the # ever used? I found this line, but I can't find where it set...

helix/helix-term/src/commands.rs

Line 5480 in a9849eb

let increase_by = if cx.register == Some('#') { sign } else { 0 };

that register was a special case for that command in the past this PR adds it as a general purpose register.

Is there a pipe register too?

helix/helix-term/src/commands.rs

Line 5204 in a9849eb

Some('|'),

Not in this PR. I don't think that makes too much sense for us given that we don't have an interactive shell yet

the-mikedavis · 2023-07-02T14:09:37Z

Yeah the existing line you linked is used for "#<C-a> or "#<C-x> so you can increment/decrement by selection number. With this PR you can use "#P to paste the selection numbers before each cursor.

gibbz00 · 2023-07-02T16:40:08Z

Huh, cool! ~~Where # set?~~ Got it.

helix-view/src/register.rs

pascalkuthe

I think this looks great! I have been daily driving this for a while and found no issues. I did another pass and this lgtm (although it has a couple of conflicts right now). This adds a bunch of (very) useful functionality while only adding 150LOC

This sets up a new Registers type that will allow us to expand support for special registers. (See the child commits.) We start simple with the regular (`Vec<String>`) registers and the simplest special register, the black hole. In the child commits we will expand these match arms with more special registers. The upcoming special registers will need a few things that aren't possible with the current Registers type in helix-core: * Access to the `Editor`. This is only necessary when reading from registers, so the `&Editor` parameter is only added to `Registers::read`. * Returning owned values. Registers in helix-core returns references to the values backed by the `Vec<String>` but future special registers will need to return owned values. We refactor the return value of the read operations to give `Cow<str>`s and iterators over those. * Returning a `Result` for write/push functions. This will be used by the clipboard special registers.

These come from Kakoune: * '#' is the selection index register. It's read-only and produces the selection index numbers, 1-indexed. * '.' is the selection contents register. It is also read-only and mirrors the contents of the current selections when read. We switch the iterators returned from Selection's `fragments` and `slices` methods to ExactSizeIterators because: * The selection contents register can simply return the fragments iterator. * ExactSizeIterator is already implemented for iterators over Vecs, so it's essentially free. * The `len` method can be useful on its own.

This register also comes from Kakoune. It's read-only and produces the current document's name, defaulting to the scratch buffer name constant. (Also see PR5577.) Co-authored-by: Ivan Tham <pickfire@riseup.net>

These special registers join and copy the values to the clipboards with '*' corresponding to the system clipboard and '+' to the primary as they are in Vim. This also uses the trick from PR6889 to save the values in the register and re-use them without joining into one value when pasting a value which was yanked and not changed. These registers are not implemented in Kakoune but Kakoune also does not have a built-in clipboard integration. Co-authored-by: CcydtN <51289140+CcydtN@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Pascal Kuthe <pascal.kuthe@semimod.de>

This is an unfortunately noisy change: we need to update virtually all callsites that access the registers. For reads this means passing in the Editor and for writes this means handling potential failure when we can't write to a clipboard register.

These snippets use hardcoded registers but it can be useful to be able to specify a register for these commands.

This fixes a discrepancy between regular registers which are used for yanking multiple values (for example via `"ay`) and regular registers that store a history of values (for example `"a*`). Previously, the preview shown in `select_register`'s infobox would show the oldest value in history. It's intuitive and useful to see the most recent value pushed to the history though. We cannot simply switch the preview line from `values.first()` to `values.last()`: that would fix the preview for registers used for history but break the preview for registers used to yank multiple values. We could push to the beginning of the values with `Registers::push` but this is wasteful from a performance perspective. Instead we can have `Registers::read` return an iterator that returns elements in the reverse order and reverse the values in `Register::write`. This effectively means that `push` adds elements to the beginning of the register's values. For the sake of the preview, we can switch to `values.last()` and that is then correct for both usage- styles. This also needs a change to call-sites that read the latest history value to switch from `last` to `first`.

Since the clipboard provider now lives on the Registers type, we want to eliminate it from the Editor. We can do that and clean up the commands that interact with the clipboard by calling regular yank, paste and replace impls on the clipboard special registers. Eventually the clipboard commands could be removed once macro keybinding is supported.

The clipboard special registers are able to retain multiple selections and also join the value when copying it to the clipboard. So by default we should yank regularly to the '*' and '+' registers. That will have the same behavior for the clipboards but will allow pasting multiple selections if the clipboard doesn't change between yanks.

the-mikedavis force-pushed the special-registers branch from 6742baf to df3f56d Compare May 6, 2023 19:30

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philipgiuliani mentioned this pull request May 21, 2023

term: Add % expansion for relative path to current file #7090

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pascalkuthe mentioned this pull request Jun 1, 2023

Add yank_joined command #7195

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univerz mentioned this pull request Jul 1, 2023

Move Registers to helix-view #7506

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gibbz00 mentioned this pull request Jul 2, 2023

Typeset registers #7512

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gibbz00 mentioned this pull request Jul 4, 2023

Register histories #7542

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gibbz00 reviewed Jul 7, 2023

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the-mikedavis marked this pull request as draft July 13, 2023 22:55

pascalkuthe mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2023

Always visible statusline (under prompt) #7635

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the-mikedavis and others added 7 commits July 30, 2023 10:28

Add the '%' (current filename) register

e3bab5b

This register also comes from Kakoune. It's read-only and produces the current document's name, defaulting to the scratch buffer name constant. (Also see PR5577.) Co-authored-by: Ivan Tham <pickfire@riseup.net>

Use refactored Registers type

d98e069

This is an unfortunately noisy change: we need to update virtually all callsites that access the registers. For reads this means passing in the Editor and for writes this means handling potential failure when we can't write to a clipboard register.

commands: Allow using selected register where hardcoded

695a0be

These snippets use hardcoded registers but it can be useful to be able to specify a register for these commands.

book: Document default and special registers

60c9b5c

the-mikedavis dismissed stale reviews from archseer and pascalkuthe via 23d4269 July 30, 2023 15:30

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archseer merged commit d4f9716 into master Jul 31, 2023

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philipgiuliani mentioned this pull request Jul 31, 2023

Configuration: Option to use only system clipboard for all yank & paste actions #2038

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pascalkuthe mentioned this pull request Jul 31, 2023

Allow clipboard paste with multiple selection #6889

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pascalkuthe mentioned this pull request Oct 24, 2023

Cannot paste multi line text from system clipboard in some cases #8600

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the-mikedavis mentioned this pull request Nov 2, 2023

Swapped special register keys #8702

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the-mikedavis mentioned this pull request Feb 10, 2024

Expand selection to whole word when pressing * #6046

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Refactor and expand special registers #6985

Refactor and expand special registers #6985

the-mikedavis commented May 6, 2023 •

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Refactor and expand special registers #6985

Refactor and expand special registers #6985

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