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Vim: Remap key to move to the next non-blank line (and vice versa)

I'm looking for a way to remap a key to move the cursor down to the next line, skipping any lines that only contain \n and a way to do the same only going up to the next line.

Essentially, I want to do the opposite of the { and } motions.

Solution

  • Here are alternatives to DJ's mappings that play well with hlsearch:

    • jump to next non-empty line

      nnoremap <key> :<C-u>call search('^.\+')<CR>

    • jump to previous non-empty line

      nnoremap <otherkey> :<C-u>call search('^.\+', 'b')<CR>

    • extend visual selection to next non-empty line

      xnoremap <key> :<C-u>k`\|call search('^.\+')\|normal! <C-r>=visualmode()<CR>``o<CR>

    • extend visual selection to previous non-empty line

      xnoremap <otherkey> :<C-u>k`\|call search('^.\+', 'b')\|normal! <C-r>=visualmode()<CR>``o<CR>

    • operate to next non-empty line

      omap <key> :<C-u>normal! v<key><CR>

    • operate to previous non-empty line

      omap <otherkey> :<C-u>normal! v<otherkey><CR>

    Explanation…

    With hlsearch enabled, /anything will highlight every match. Since we are not actively searching for non-empty lines but merely moving to them, the resulting highlighting is pointlessly noisy.

    By using :help search(), we bypass hlsearchand thus make the mappings a lot less noisy.

    <C-u> is used to remove any accidental range before calling our function.

    The visual mode mappings work like this:

    1. we define the "previous mark" with :help :k,
    2. we perform the search,
    3. we run the following normal mode commands with :help :normal,
    4. we retrieve the previous visual mode with :help i_ctrl-r, :help "=, and :help visualmode(),
    5. we extend the visual selection to the location of the "previous mark" with :help '',
    6. and finally we move the cursor to the other end of the visual selection with :help v_o.

    The operator pending mappings simply reuse the visual mode mappings.