editor: Add rotation commands for selections and lines by scorphus · Pull Request #41236 · zed-industries/zed

scorphus · 2025-10-26T17:24:33Z

Introduces RotateSelectionsForward and RotateSelectionsBackward actions that rotate content in a circular fashion across multiple cursors.

Behavior based on context:

With selections: rotates the selected text at each cursor position (e.g., x=1, y=2, z=3 becomes x=3, y=1, z=2)
With just cursors: rotates entire lines at cursor positions (e.g., three lines cycle to line3, line1, line2)

Selections are preserved after rotation, allowing repeated cycling. Useful for quickly rearranging values, lines, or arguments.

For more examples and use cases, please refer to #5315.

I'm eager to read your thoughts and make any adjustments or improvements to any aspect of this change.

Closes #5315

Release Notes:

Added RotateSelectionsForward and RotateSelectionsBackward actions that rotate content in a circular fashion across multiple cursors

Introduces RotateSelectionsForward and RotateSelectionsBackward actions that rotate content in a circular fashion across multiple cursors. Behavior based on context: - With selections: rotates the selected text at each cursor position (e.g., x=1, y=2, z=3 becomes x=3, y=1, z=2) - With just cursors: rotates entire lines at cursor positions (e.g., three lines cycle to line3, line1, line2) Selections are preserved after rotation, allowing repeated cycling. Useful for quickly rearranging values, lines, or arguments. Fixes zed-industries#5315

JosephTLyons · 2025-12-04T02:59:33Z

Wow, super sorry about this PR hanging around @scorphus, I'm just now noticing it was assigned to me. I'll look over this in the next few days and try to get back on it. Again, sorry for the hold up.

scorphus · 2025-12-04T10:38:59Z

YAY! That's great, @JosephTLyons!! And no worries, I'm glad you're seeing it now. I've been wondering if I should have pinged you or not.

I've got a few other cool (to me at least) PRs ready to submit! I'm more than happy to work together and pick which ones are interesting to ship.

I'm happy to go at whatever pace works for you ☺️

JosephTLyons · 2025-12-04T16:43:57Z

crates/editor/src/actions.rs

+        /// Rotates selections or lines backward.
+        RotateBackward,
+        /// Rotates selections or lines forward.
+        RotateForward,


I think we could make these a little more verbose to make it a bit more self-documenting about what is being rotated: RotateSelectionsForward / RotateSelectionsBackward

My thinking here is for readability, but also, we might want to, in the future, add editor: rotate lines {forward,backward} commands that work to rotate all lines within a single selection, that are implemented more like the other line manipulation commands (editor: shuffle lines, editor: sort lines case insensitive). Not something I'd want to see introduced in this PR, but thinking ahead of the possibility.

I think we could make these a little more verbose to make it a bit more self-documenting about what is being rotated: RotateSelectionsForward / RotateSelectionsBackward

I renamed the actions a couple of times before evolving the feature as a whole and forgot to revisit those names. Good catch! Thanks

My thinking here is for readability, but also, we might want to, in the future, add editor: rotate lines {forward,backward} commands that work to rotate all lines within a single selection, that are implemented more like the other line manipulation commands (editor: shuffle lines, editor: sort lines case insensitive). Not something I'd want to see introduced in this PR, but thinking ahead of the possibility.

Gotcha! I'd happily submit a follow-up PR.

crates/editor/src/editor.rs

crates/editor/src/editor_tests.rs

JosephTLyons · 2025-12-04T16:54:04Z

crates/editor/src/editor_tests.rs

+                DisplayPoint::new(DisplayRow(1), 2)..DisplayPoint::new(DisplayRow(1), 3),
+                DisplayPoint::new(DisplayRow(2), 2)..DisplayPoint::new(DisplayRow(2), 3),
+            ]
+        );


After updating to the more modern testing, the last thing I will mention is that, it would be nice if in the case of empty selections, the case where we expand and use the whole row, if we could maintain the same cursor positions, however, I think many of our text manipulation commands end up mutating cursor positions when running them, so if its too challenging to keep the cursors in the position with respect to the text in the selection they are in, it isn't a dealbreaker to getting this merged.

Thank you for yet another great catch! After a few iterations with different approaches, I think I got to a fairly good implementation using a hash map. Please, LMK if you see space for improvement.

JosephTLyons · 2025-12-04T16:56:51Z

Hey @scorphus, I think this would be cool to land. You'll need to git rebase main and force push your changes / update your code to work with whatever might've changed in the repo since this PR is open (sorry, I'll try to be more timely on my reviews). I also added some inline comments for a few things I think would improve the changes here.

crates/editor/src/editor.rs

scorphus · 2025-12-09T11:14:18Z

Hey @scorphus, I think this would be cool to land. You'll need to git rebase main and force push your changes / update your code to work with whatever might've changed in the repo since this PR is open (sorry, I'll try to be more timely on my reviews). I also added some inline comments for a few things I think would improve the changes here.

The bulk of the conflict was related to the introduction of MultiBufferOffset, which IMO, was a very nice API refinement for type safety 🤩 Happy to fix those conflicts (with a little help from mergiraf ❤️ 🦒 )

Thanks for your comments and insights! I'm ready for more

JosephTLyons · 2025-12-09T16:15:09Z

Thanks for all the updates @scorphus - this is looking good! Thanks for helping us bring more functionality to Zed!

…s#41236) Introduces RotateSelectionsForward and RotateSelectionsBackward actions that rotate content in a circular fashion across multiple cursors. Behavior based on context: - With selections: rotates the selected text at each cursor position (e.g., x=1, y=2, z=3 becomes x=3, y=1, z=2) - With just cursors: rotates entire lines at cursor positions (e.g., three lines cycle to line3, line1, line2) Selections are preserved after rotation, allowing repeated cycling. Useful for quickly rearranging values, lines, or arguments. For more examples and use cases, please refer to zed-industries#5315. I'm eager to read your thoughts and make any adjustments or improvements to any aspect of this change. Closes zed-industries#5315 Release Notes: - Added `RotateSelectionsForward` and `RotateSelectionsBackward` actions that rotate content in a circular fashion across multiple cursors

cla-bot bot added the cla-signed The user has signed the Contributor License Agreement label Oct 26, 2025

scorphus force-pushed the editor-rotate branch 2 times, most recently from f560730 to cb7aacf Compare October 31, 2025 20:05

SomeoneToIgnore assigned JosephTLyons Nov 10, 2025

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github-project-automation bot moved this to Community PRs in Quality Week – December 2025 Nov 27, 2025