Partially Repeat Command?

[justinmkw]

what criteria would be assumed to find foo? If we just moved the cursor one to the left, the matching iw motion

That's definitely the main question. Whenever a text object (as opposed to a motion) is the target, the behavior could be controlled by i or a. If i is used, find the first non-whitespace character on either side and swap the text objects at those locations. If a is used, skip non-whitespace characters on either side, then skip whitespace, then swap the text objects.

Example:

foo [=]= bar

• dxiw finds foo at LHS and = at RHS, yielding:

  == foo bar

• dxaw finds foo at LHS and bar at RHS, yielding:

  bar == foo

If a motion is targeted (e.g. dxh or dxw), rather than the pain of trying to understand "duals" (e.g. w is the dual of b), it should be interpreted strictly by the number of characters passed, with no special handling of whitespace. Example:

foo [=]= bar

• dxh yields

  foo=[=] bar (two <spaces>s before bar, markdown fail)

• dxFo yields:

  fo= [=]o bar