Figuring out why keybinding is not working in vim

Question

I installed SpaceVim to test it out and ; (semicolon) is not working. :nmap ; says "No mapping found". The thing is I could not find where it is unmapped in the source. Are there different ways to re/un-map a key in vim and how should I go about finding those in general?

Answer 1

There seems to be some confusion here about the difference between the « standard » vim functionality and the effects of a mapping.

Note: One of the reasons I prefer a customized regular vim is that it forced me to learn real vim and its philosophy, then to build tools on top of that. This may be the purist in me, but distros like SpaceVim make it remarkably hard to see what’s going on under the hood when you need them to do something different, whereas vim is ready-made for that. I write this because I suspect those who start with SpaceVim do not read :help and therefore lack a complete grasp of the fundamentals.

Standard vim keys are not mappings. n to jump to next search match, J to join, q to record a macro, ; to repeat the last fFtT—all are implemented in the source. Changing their default behavior would require an edit and recompile. This is why :normal! ; works no matter what—it ignores mappings and uses the source definition.

So, to answer your question, :map ; says there is no mapping because there is no mapping.

Note: I assume SpaceVim does not map ; because I could not find documentation that it did.

Of course, one can always create mappings shadowing this behavior, but it’s considered an anti-pattern to do so (esp. without at least having another sequence to do the old behavior). The reasoning goes that the original is actually considered useful, so why override it?

Note: from my glance at SpaceVim’s keybindings, SV does this a lot. They remapped q, which created macros, requiring me to type 2 extra characters to access one of my favorite—and one of the most awesome—features!