Unexpected surround match when cursor is on quote character (not inside)

[kylesnowschwartz]

Contributing guidelines

• I have read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Module(s)

mini.surround

Question

Hi! I’m encountering a confusing edge case with mini.surround related to how it matches quotes when using the change surrounding functionality.

💡 The scenario:

Given this line of Lua code:

vim.keymap.set('n', '<ESC><ESC>', ':q<CR>', { })

I want to change the surrounding quotes around '<ESC><ESC>'.

When my cursor is inside the quotes, everything works as expected:
'<ESC><ESC>' is correctly identified as the surround region and replaced.

However, when my cursor is on one of the quote characters (either the opening ' or the closing '), the match behaves unexpectedly:
• The plugin matches the first ' after 'n' as the opening delimiter
• And the ' before :q as the closing one
→ resulting in an invalid and unintended selection

Video below helps demonstrate using surround-find '

mini-surround-help.mp4

🔍 What I’ve tried:

I’ve experimented with the following search_method settings:
• 'cover'
• 'cover_or_next'
• 'cover_or_nearest'

But none of these change this behavior when the cursor is on the quote character. It’s only when the cursor is inside the quoted string that the behavior works correctly.

❓ Expected behavior:

Ideally, I’d expect the plugin to treat being on a quote the same way as being inside the surrounded region — i.e., to detect and operate on the closest enclosing pair, not jump to earlier or later matches.

Is this intended behavior? Is there a way to ensure that when the cursor is on a quote, the plugin still finds the enclosing pair instead of looking elsewhere?

Thanks for the great work on all these amazing plugins!

[echasnovski]

Yes, this behavior is expected, albeit not mighty intuitive. This is a result of a combination of the following:

• Quotes are not special surroundings in 'mini.surround' (unlike 'mini.ai'), which means that they match without balancing. For example, in the situation 'a' b 'c' with cursor on b the surrounding would be from right ' in 'a' to left in 'c'. This has always been the case in 'mini.surround'. I remember thinking about changing it by default and deciding not to do it, but to be perfectly honest I don't remember the reason (beside obvious "this is a breaking change"). It is probably due to ' being frequently used in plain English and having it balanced is problematic; while also having only some quotes balanced feels wrong.
• When cursor is exactly on the identifier and it has to choose between left or right, the one with the smallest width is chosen.

The solution that works here is to create a custom surrounding for ' identifier that matches balanced quotes. Like this:

require('mini.surround').setup({
  custom_surroundings = {
    ["'"] = { input = { "%b''", '^.().*().$' } },
  }
})