Enclosing curly braces in parenthesis with Vim?

Question

How to enclose curly braces in parenthesis in vim? Initial string:

{a: b}

Final string:

({a: b})

The string possibly span multilines:

{
  a: b
}

Answer 1

Assuming you are in normal mode and on any curly bracket character (opening or closing). The manual/vanilla version (without any bracketing plugin) would be

c%(^R")

With:

• ^R meaning CTRL+R
• the default register (") being filled with the content of the dictionary.
• ca{ that should be used instead of c% if you're anywhere within the dictionary.

With my lh-brackets plugin, I would use v%( or vi{( -- unlike the vanilla version, will leave the default register unmodified.

With the popular surround plugin, I guess (I may be wrong as I've been using my plugin for decades) it would be something like ys%( or ysa{(.

PS: the fact your dictionary spans on several lines doesn't make any difference here.