Is there any way to change the default S binding?

[sriramkswamy]

I am an amateur at elisp and with what I know, I could not change the S binding (bound to evil-sp-change-whole-line function. I use S for other purposes and wanted to know if there is a way to change this binding.

I use a use-package definition for evil-smartparens and its bind is not evil friendly, so I use general.el for consistent bindings. After that didn't work, I tried to just use the normal evil-define-key bindings. Those didn't work either. I tried to set the default binding to nil and set these bindings again inside (with-eval-after-load 'evil-smartparens) block but that didn't make any difference either. Finally, I created a function with just binding definitions and created a hook based on (add-hook 'evil-smartparens-mode-hook #'my-function) but that also didn't work.

I just want to know if I'm doing something wrong. If so, it would be very helpful if you can correct it. Thanks!

[expez]

Keybindings with evil is a bit tricky because it really wants its keybindings to be at the top of the stack. For that reason evil-smartparens adds keybindings using a function. When evil-smartparens-mode is enabled, this function runs:

(defun evil-sp--add-bindings ()
  (when smartparens-strict-mode
    (evil-define-key 'normal evil-smartparens-mode-map
      (kbd "d") #'evil-sp-delete
      (kbd "c") #'evil-sp-change
      (kbd "y") #'evil-sp-yank
      (kbd "S") #'evil-sp-change-whole-line
      (kbd "X") #'evil-sp-backward-delete-char
      (kbd "x") #'evil-sp-delete-char)
    (evil-define-key 'visual evil-smartparens-mode-map
      (kbd "X") #'evil-sp-delete
      (kbd "x") #'evil-sp-delete))
  (evil-define-key 'normal evil-smartparens-mode-map
    (kbd "D") #'evil-sp-delete-line
    (kbd "Y") #'evil-sp-yank-line
    (kbd "C") #'evil-sp-change-line)
  (evil-define-key 'insert evil-smartparens-mode-map
    (kbd "DEL") 'sp-backward-delete-char)
  (evil-define-key 'visual evil-smartparens-mode-map
    (kbd "o") #'evil-sp-override)
  (evil-normalize-keymaps))

So instead of worrying about keymap precedence the easiest thing is probably to just redefine that function, with your preferred changes, in a (with-eval-after-load 'evil-smartparens) block.

I'm sorry this is kind of convoluted, but I hope this is an acceptable solution.

[sriramkswamy]

Ah, I see. I thought that I might have to tweak the source itself but this is very helpful. Thank you!

As a follow up I have another question. Manually evaluating (C-x C-e) the keybinding nil statement and the new keybinding statement makes sure my keybinding prevails over that of evil-smartparens'. Is there a particular reason for this?

I will leave it to you as to whether this question needs to be closed or not.

[expez]

Is there a particular reason for this?

Yes, when you do this you add your bindings to the top of the stack.

In a new buffer they won't be, and if you do e.g. M-x revert-buffer they'll get shadowed by evil and evil-smartparens again.

Glad your problem got solved. I'll close this for now and if someone else runs into this I'll see about adding a better way of adding new keybindings.

[braham-snyder]

For what it's worth, I also ran into this problem. I remember being really confused that my keybindings weren't working--IMO, even just a warning in the readme, or something along those lines, would go a long ways.