I created a couple scripts for BBEdit and TextWrangler that mimic some behaviors from the Vim editor, namely the “o” and “O” commands, which insert a new line below and above the current line, and include the correct indentation. For creating the new line below, I also added some intelligence that determines what else to add in and whether or not to indent further. The scripts will work no matter where you are at on the current line, which can be handy too.

The script will work on any line, but has special meaning on lines ending in {, (, /**, *, -, #, 4., :, and ({. The script can fairly easily be added to if you find the need. Below shows some examples of how these special cases output.

Indention control in BBEdit is painful. Whether tabs or spaces are used is in the Edit > Text Options sheet (confusingly named “Auto-expand tabs”) and the amount of spaces inserted in space-indention mode in stuck to the bottom of the Fonts panel (accessible via View > Text Display > Show Fonts).
This script makes it one action to figure out the current mode and modify it if necessary.

I’ve been learning new things about BBEdit ever since I started using it but this article pointed out something called Clippings and it is magical. I love TextExpander just as much as BBEdit but it doesn’t work well with text selections.

Here’s a great use-case for Clippings: I’m writing in Markdown (as always) and go back to something that I want to add a link to. In apps like Byword (which I also love) you can easily select the text and hit ⌘ + K. This will wrap the selected text in standard Markdown link syntax and put your cursor right where you need it to be. I wanted to do this just as easily in BBEdit. Sure, BBEdit supports scripting but I want something as easy to create and manage as TextExpander snippets and AppleScript is clunky. With Clippings, you use commands like #SELECTION#, #INSERTION#, #CLIPBOARD#, and whatever snippet text or code you want to build your clippings.

There are a couple of meanings to Markers in BBEdit. This post is about bookmark markers. BBEdit provides a mechanism for creating custom bookmarks from search expressions. For example, the following grep expression matches all Markdown end references.


The “Mark with” expression simply says, mark with whatever is inside the first (i.e. 01) parentheses. When the Find and Mark is run, the Bookmark list is populated with all of the URL’s in my end references. Note that I have selected the “Clear Existing Markers” option. Unchecking that allows me to append bookmarks to the list.

The program is available directly from Bare Bones or on the Mac App Store. Due to Apple’s App Store restrictions, there are a few BBEdit features you won’t find in the App Store version. BBEdit has the ability to edit and save files for which you might normally not have permission (for example, files owned by root). Apple doesn’t allow that, so if you need that ability, it’s better to purchase BBEdit from Bare Bones. The App Store version also lacks tools that allow you to use BBEdit’s functions from the command line; a package that adds this ability is downloadable from Bare Bones.

A BBEdit package to make working with Git easier
The great thing about BBEdit packages in BBEdit 10 is the fact that everything is gathered together in one place. This package contains useful tools for BBEdit & Git.

This package is part "code you can find elsewhere on the internet" (the Git Blame and diff language modules, for example), and new stuff that I just wrote.

I can't seem to find any documentation on the "~/.bbedit" options
available or how I might find an example of one (one doesn't exist on
in my home directory). Any pointers to documentation would be helpful.
In case there isn't good documentation, my particular goal is to leave
my tab-width at 4 spaces and use tabs as my default (my current
settings), but for a particular project directory only (a Drupal
directory) to use a tab-width of 2 spaces and auto-expand tabs. What
should I put in the .bbeditSettings file for this project to achieve
these results?