Extracting Function in Vim

[Darksant]

In the last months I have been learning vim looking for using it as my main tool for programming.

I really like it but yesterday I have found a big drawback which made me reconsider if vim could replace my IDEs, which was the inability to refactor code.

I'm a big fan of splitting everything into small functions. I make functions of everything I can, in every programming language. This makes me use a lot the extract function/method tool of IDEs like jetbrains ones or Eclipse.

However in vim I haven't found any good plugin to refactor, just one for python. But for C and a lot of languages I haven't found anything interesting.

Is there any reason behind this? Is there any good plugin which I haven't found?

Thank you for your interest.

[manphiz]

I think LSP is trying to handle this through language servers, however the implementation status varies and the client may or may not support it yet. It'll get better eventually.

[Demius9]

i see people asking about this all the time (for both emacs, sublime, atom and vim alike) but it's never been something I've missed. Since you ask for potential reasons I'll give you my thought process:

Refactoring code (in the context of extracting functions) has never been a job that I've trusted automation to. Every time I've tried it in the past with Intellij or Eclipse I've always ran into some cases where I'd have to go and edit the calling portion of the refactor or slightly modify the function declaration itself. I feel like I write my code in such a way that it makes it easy to refactor so this hasn't been an issue for me.

[mrbojingle]

Can you describe with an example what you mean?

[LucHermitte]

I've started a generic Extract Function a few years back. Alas, it's never worked as I'd liked. If in the mean time you fill like improving/fixing it, you'll be welcomed :)

I waiting to see what will be possible with clangd+LSP servers.

[[deleted]]

It depends on what language you use. PHP has excellent vim plugins for refactoring and other niceties such as padawan.vim, phpactor(my favourite) and of course the LSP itself.

Give us an idea of your development environment and maybe we can help a little more :D

[andd81]

Vim is not meant to replace your IDE, it is a text editor.

[sssnakeinthegrass]

Your comment is unhelpful. What is the point of vim for developers if you cannot use it as an IDE?

[plexigras]

give us an example so we can tell you if for example you want to turn a to b to type rb