Vim’s built-in abbreviations feature can provide auto-correct functionality. For example, we could make Vim auto-correct ‘colour’ (the British spelling) to ‘color’ (the American spelling) by running this command:
:iabbrev colour color
However, abbreviations are case sensitive, so if we wanted to trigger the auto-correction on ‘Colour’, we’d have to create another abbreviation. The same goes for ‘COLOUR’, as well as for ‘colours’, ‘coloured’, ‘colouring’, and so on.
The abolish plugin, by Tim Pope, provides a solution for this. It includes a smart command called :Abolish, which has a similar form to the built-in iabbrev command.
This single command:
:Abolish {hon,col}our{,s,ed,ing} {}or{}
Generates all of these abbreviations in one go:
:iabbrev honours honors :iabbrev honoured honored :iabbrev HONOURS HONORS :iabbrev Honoured Honored :iabbrev HONOUR HONOR :iabbrev honouring honoring :iabbrev Honours Honors :iabbrev honour honor :iabbrev HONOURED HONORED :iabbrev Honour Honor :iabbrev HONOURING HONORING :iabbrev Honouring Honoring :iabbrev COLOURING COLORING :iabbrev colouring coloring :iabbrev COLOURED COLORED :iabbrev Colouring Coloring :iabbrev Coloured Colored :iabbrev coloured colored :iabbrev COLOURS COLORS :iabbrev Colours Colors :iabbrev colours colors :iabbrev Colour Color :iabbrev colour color :iabbrev COLOUR COLOR
The :Abolish command is really handy if you want to auto-correct the words that you frequently mis-spell. Check out Tim Pope’s abbreviations for ideas.
I’ve created an Americanize plugin, which uses the :Abolish command to auto-“correct” lots of British words to their American equivalents.
Further reading
:help Abbreviations- abolish on github
- Americanize on github
- Tim Pope’s abbreviations
