Navigating HTML tags in Vim

Question

I would like to be able to navigate through HTML tag by tag. Is there a way I can move from HTML tag to tag. (i.e. *<div>hi</div><div>bye</div> ---> <div>hi</div>*<div>bye</div> I know about cit and cat, which is why I would imagine this is possible. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can jump between tags using visual operators, in example:

1. Place the cursor on the tag.
2. Enter visual mode by pressing v.
3. Select the outer tag block by pressing a+t or i+t for inner tag block.

Your cursor should jump forward to the matching closing html/xml tag. To jump backwards from closing tag, press o or O to jump to opposite tag.

Now you can either exit visual by pressing Esc, change it by c or copy by y.

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To record that action into register, press qq to start recording, perform tag jump as above (including Esc), press q to finish. Then to invoke jump, press @q (to repeat, hit @@).

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See more help at :help visual-operators or :help v_it:

at a <tag> </tag> block (with tags)

it inner <tag> </tag> block

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Alternatively use plugin such as matchit.vim (See: Using % in languages without curly braces).

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See also:

• How to jump between matching HTML/XML tags? at Vim SE
• Jump to matching XML tags in Vim at stackoverflow SE
• How can I find the close html tag quickly in vim? at stackoverflow SE
• How to navigate between begin and end html tag? at superuser SE
• VIM jump from one xml tag to the closing one at Unix SE
• How can I select an html tag's content in Vim? at superuser SE

Answer 2

The matchit.vim macro gets you most of the way there, allowing you to move to a closing tag with % as you would matching parens or braces. It's included in many Vim distributions including the standard download, but often not enabled by default.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=39