Stuck on an issue?

I think I know what the issue is. First of all, to search backwards you should use dance.search.backwards with input \\w (the input is a RegExp). Second of all, you can use dance.selections.{backward,forward} to change the direction of the selections.

{
  "key": "b",
  "command": "dance.run",
  "args": {
    "code": [
      "        const editor = vscode.window.activeTextEditor,",
      "              prev = editor.selections,",
      "              commands = [['.objects.performSelection', { object: 'word', action: 'select', inner: true }],",
      "                          ['.selections.backward']];",
      "",
      "        try {",
      "          await dance.execute(...commands);",
      "        } catch (e) {",
      "          if ((e?.message ?? '') !== 'no selections remaining') throw e;",
      "        }",
      "",
      "        if (editor.selections.every((x, i) => x.isEqual(prev[i]))) {",
      "          try {",
      "            await dance.execute(['.search.backwards', { input: '\\\\w' }], ...commands);",
      "          } catch (e) {",
      "            if ((e?.message ?? '') !== 'no selections remaining') throw e;",
      "          }",
      "        }"
    ]
  },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
}

Unfortunately I did some debugging and no selections remaining still happens in that case and worse yet, it somehow prevents the code from working correctly. I have an idea of where the issue comes from (some off by one errors when handling selections that does not seem to happen in character mode) but I haven’t been able to fix it yet.

Looking at it, it looks like it’s implemented by invoking existing Kakoune commands. I spent some time trying to replicate this and some changes were needed, but in 0.4.2 you can have this kind of keybinding:

{
  "key": "w",
  "command": "dance.run",
  "args": {
    "code": [
      "const editor = vscode.window.activeTextEditor,",
      "      prev = editor.selections;",

      "try {",
      "  await dance.execute('.objects.performSelection', { object: 'word', action: 'select' });",
      "} catch (e) {",
      "  if ((e?.message ?? '') !== 'no selections remaining') throw e;",
      "}",

      "if (editor.selections.every((x, i) => x.isEqual(prev[i]))) {",
      "  await dance.execute(",
      "    ['.search', { input: '\\\\w' }],",
      "    ['.objects.performSelection', { object: 'word', action: 'select' }]);",
      "}",
    ],
  },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},

And similar keybindings with WbB (replacing the arguments of objects.performSelection as needed). Unfortunately there is a bug in the above code that will lead to “no selections remaining” being printed in some cases, but I haven’t found out why yet (and you can probably work around this).

In the future I’d like to make keybindings scriptable and to improve the scripting API, but for now this will have to do.