s in Visual mode works differently from Vim

[dniku]

Description

s in Visual mode works differently from Vim.

Reproduction guide 🪲

• Start Emacs
• Open any buffer
• Type some words, like type some words
• Place your cursor at the beginning of some word, like some
• Press ves

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔
Status bar says s-; the selection remains in place. Typing another character surrounds the selection with that character.

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
The selected word should be removed and the mode should be switched to Insert, like in Vim. In Spacemacs, this can be achieved with the c command instead of s.

System Info 💻

• OS: gnu/linux
• Emacs: 24.5.1
• Spacemacs: 0.200.9
• Spacemacs branch: master (rev. 8e1af14)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(purescript
 (haskell :variables haskell-enable-hindent-style "fundamental")
 yaml helm auto-completion
 (haskell :variables haskell-completion-backend 'company-ghci)
 emacs-lisp git markdown org)

---

I admit that surrounding the selection with a character might be something someone would need, and c and s are (completely?) equivalent in Visual mode. However, muscle memory from Vim is still there, and it's inconvenient that the defaults are different.

[bmag]

We use evil-surround, which mimics Vim's surround plugin. It does work differently than vanilla Vim, but that's intentional. You can try excluding the evil-surround package and see what happens.

[duianto]

This seems to be why it was decided to use s for surround:
emacs-evil/evil-surround#48 (comment)