Vim inspired — Faster as in less keystrokes — Multiple selections — Orthogonal design
git clone http://github.com/mawww/kakoune.git cd kakoune/src make ./kak
See http://github.com/mawww/golf for kakoune solutions to vimgolf challenges, regularly beating the best vim solution.
See the design document for more information on Kakoune philosophy and design.
Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones, and it shares Vi’s "keystrokes as a text editing language" model.
Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.
Kakoune has a strong focus on interactivity, most commands provide immediate and incremental results, while still being competitive (as in keystroke count) with Vim.
Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around.
Join us on freenode IRC #Kakoune
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Multiple selections as a central way of interacting
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Powerful selection manipulation primitives
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Select all regex matches in current selections
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Keep selections containing/not containing a match for a given regex
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Split current selections with a regex
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Text objects (paragraph, sentence, nestable blocks)
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Powerful text manipulation primitives
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Align selections
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Rotate selection contents
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Case manipulation
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Indentation
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Piping each selection to external filter
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Client-Server architecture
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Multiple clients on the same editing session
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Use tmux or your X11 window manager to manage windows
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Simple interaction with external programs
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Automatic contextual help
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Automatic as you type completion
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Macros
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Hooks
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Syntax Highlighting
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Supports multiple languages in the same buffer
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Highlight a buffer differently in different windows
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Kakoune dependencies are:
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A C++11 compliant compiler (GCC >= 5 or clang >= 3.4)
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boost (>= 1.50)
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ncurses with wide-characters support (>= 5.3, generally referred to as libncursesw)
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asciidoc (for the
a2ktool), to generate man pages
To build, just type make in the src directory
Kakoune can be built on Linux, MacOS, and Cygwin. Due to Kakoune relying heavily on being in a Unix-like environment, no native Windows version is planned.
In order to install kak on your system, rather than running it directly from
its source directory, type make install, you can specify the PREFIX and
DESTDIR if needed.
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Homebrew (OSX)
brew tap homebrew/dupes brew install homebrew/dupes/ncurses Then, to install, brew install --HEAD https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mawww/kakoune/master/contrib/kakoune.rb To update kakoune, brew reinstall --HEAD https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mawww/kakoune/master/contrib/kakoune.rb |
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Fedora 22/23/24/Rawhide
Use the copr repository. dnf copr enable jkonecny/kakoune dnf install kakoune |
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Arch Linux
A PKGBUILD kakoune-git to install Kakoune is available in the AUR. # For example build and install Kakoune via yaourt yaourt -Sy kakoune-git |
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Gentoo
Kakoune is found in portage as app-editors/kakoune |
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Exherbo
cave resolve -x repository/mawww cave resolve -x kakoune |
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openSUSE
kakoune can be found in the editors devel project. Make sure to adjust the link below to point to the repository of your openSUSE version. #Example for Tumbleweed: sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/editors/openSUSE_Factory/editors.repo sudo zypper refresh sudo zypper install kakoune |
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Debian
There is a script in contrib/make_deb.bash that can be used to generate a debian package for kakoune. You can then install the generated .deb package with the dpkg tool. ./make_deb.bash -e "your_email" -f "your_username" sudo dpkg -i thePackageName.deb |
Just running kak launch a new kak session with a client on local terminal. kak accepts some switches:
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-c <session>: connect to given session, sessions are unix sockets/tmp/kak-<session> -
-e <commands>: execute commands on startup -
-n: ignore kakrc file -
-s <session>: set the session name, by default it will be the pid of the initial kak process. -
-d: run Kakoune in daemon mode, without user interface. This requires the session name to be specified with -s. In this mode, the Kakoune server will keep running even if there is no connected client, and will quit when receiving SIGTERM. -
-p <session>: read stdin, and then send its content to the given session acting as a remote control. -
-f <keys>: Work as a filter, read every file given on the command line and stdin if piped in, and apply given keys on each. -
-ui <userinterface>: use given user interface,<userinterface>can be-
ncurses: default terminal user interface -
dummy: empty user interface not displaying anything -
json: json-rpc based user interface that writes json on stdout and read keystrokes as json on stdin.
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-l: list existing sessions, and check the dead ones -
-clear: clear dead sessions socket files -
-ro: prevent modifications to all buffers from being saved to disk
At startup, if -n is not specified, Kakoune will try to source the file
../share/kak/kakrc relative to the kak binary. This kak file will then try
to recursively source any files in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kak/autoload (with
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaulting to $HOME/.config, and falling back to
../share/kak/autoload/ if that autoload directory does not exists), then
../share/kak/kakrc.local if it exists, and finally $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kak/kakrc.
That leads to the following behaviour: by default, with no user autoload directory, the system wide autoload directory is used, once the user wants control on autoloading, they can create an autoload directory and eventually symlink individual scripts, or the whole system wide autoload directory. They can as well add any new scripts not provided with Kakoune.
The main concept in Kakoune is the selection. A selection is an inclusive, directed range of character. A selection has two ends, the anchor and the cursor.
There is always at least one selection, and a selection is always at least one character (in which case the anchor and cursor of the selections are on the same character).
In normal mode, keys are not inserted directly inside the buffer, but are editing commands. These commands provides ways to manipulate either the selections themselves, or the selected text.
When entering insert mode, keys are now directly inserted before each selections cursor. Some additional keys are recognised in insert mode:
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<esc>: leave insert mode -
<backspace>: delete characters before cursors -
<del>: delete characters under cursors -
<left>, <right>, <up>, <down>: move the cursors in given direction -
<home>: move cursors to line begin -
<end>: move cursors to end of line -
<c-n>: select next completion candidate -
<c-p>: select previous completion candidate -
<c-x>: explicit insert completion query, followed by:-
f: explicit file completion -
w: explicit word completion -
l: explicit line completion
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<c-o>: disable automatic completion for this insert session -
<c-r>: insert contents of the register given by next key -
<c-v>: insert next keystroke directly into the buffer, without interpreting it. -
<c-u>: commit changes up to now as a single undo group. -
<a-;>: escape to normal mode for a single command
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h: select the character on the left of selection end -
j: select the character below the selection end -
k: select the character above the selection end -
l: select the character on the right of selection end -
w: select the word and following whitespaces on the right of selection end -
b: select preceding whitespaces and the word on the left of selection end -
e: select preceding whitespaces and the word on the right of selection end -
alt-[wbe]: same as [wbe] but select WORD instead of word -
f: select to the next occurence of given character -
t: select until the next occurence of given character -
<alt-[ft]>: same as [ft] but in the other direction -
m: select to matching character -
M: extend selection to matching character -
x: select line on which selection end lies (or next line when end lies on an end-of-line) -
alt-x: expand selections to contain full lines (including end-of-lines) -
alt-X: trim selections to only contain full lines (not including last end-of-line) -
%: select whole buffer -
alt-h: select to line begin -
alt-l: select to line end -
/: search (select next match) -
alt-/: search (select previous match) -
?: search (extend to next match) -
alt-?: search (extend to previous match) -
n: select next match -
N: add a new selection with next match -
alt-n: select previous match -
alt-N: add a new selection with previous match -
pageup: scroll up -
pagedown: scroll down -
': rotate selections (the main selection becomes the next one) -
;: reduce selections to their cursor -
alt-;: flip the selections direction -
alt-:: ensure selections are in forward direction (cursor after anchor)
A word is a sequence of alphanumeric characters or underscore, a WORD is a sequence of non whitespace characters.
for most selection commands, using shift permits to extend current selection
instead of replacing it. for example, wWW selects 3 consecutive words
Most selection commands also support counts, which are entered before the command itself.
for example, 3W selects 3 consecutive words and 3w select the third word on
the right of selection end.
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i: enter insert mode before current selection -
a: enter insert mode after current selection -
d: yank and delete current selection -
c: yank and delete current selection and enter insert mode -
.: repeat last insert mode change (i,a, orc, including the inserted text) -
I: enter insert mode at current selection begin line start -
A: enter insert mode at current selection end line end -
o: enter insert mode in one (or given count) new lines below current selection end -
O: enter insert mode in one (or given count) new lines above current selection begin -
y: yank selections -
p: paste after current selection end -
P: paste before current selection begin -
alt-p: paste all after current selection end, and select each pasted string. -
alt-P: paste all before current selection begin, and select each pasted string. -
R: replace current selection with yanked text -
r: replace each character with the next entered one -
alt-j: join selected lines -
alt-J: join selected lines and select spaces inserted in place of line breaks -
alt-m: merge contiguous selections together (works across lines as well) -
>: indent selected lines -
alt→: indent selected lines, including empty lines -
<: deindent selected lines -
alt-<: deindent selected lines, do not remove incomplete indent (3 leading spaces when indent is 4) -
|: pipe each selections through the given external filter program and replace the selection with it’s output. -
alt-|: pipe each selections through the given external filter program and ignore its output -
!: insert command output before selection -
a-!: append command output after selection -
u: undo last change -
a-u: move backward in history -
U: redo last change -
a-U: move forward in history -
&: align selection, align the cursor of selections by inserting spaces before the first character of the selection -
alt-&: copy indent, copy the indentation of the main selection (or the count one if a count is given) to all other ones -
`: to lower case -
~: to upper case -
alt-`: swap case -
@: convert tabs to spaces in current selections, uses the buffer tabstop option or the count parameter for tabstop. -
alt-@: convert spaces to tabs in current selections, uses the buffer tabstop option or the count parameter for tabstop. -
alt-': rotate selections content, if specified, the count groups selections, so3<a-'>rotate (1, 2, 3) and (3, 4, 6) independently.
Commands beginning with g are used to goto certain position and or buffer:
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gh: select to line begin -
gl: select to line end -
gg,gk: go to the first line -
gj: go to the last line -
ge: go to last char of last line -
gt: go to the first displayed line -
gc: go to the middle displayed line -
gb: go to the last displayed line -
ga: go to the previous (alternate) buffer -
gf: open the file whose name is selected -
g.: go to last buffer modification position
If a count is given prior to hitting g, g will jump to the given line.
Using G will extend the selection rather than jump.
Some commands, all beginning with v permit to manipulate the current view.
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vvorvc: center the main selection in the window -
vt: scroll to put the main selection on the top line of the window -
vb: scroll to put the main selection on the bottom line of the window -
vh: scroll the window count columns left -
vj: scroll the window count line downward -
vk: scroll the window count line upward -
vl: scroll the window count columns right
Using V will lock view mode until <esc> is hit
Current selections position can be saved in a register and restored later on.
By default, marks use the '^' register, but using the register can be set
using "<reg> prefix.
Z will save the current selections to the register.
alt-Z will append the current selections to the register.
z will restore the selections from the register.
alt-z will add the selections from the register to the existing ones.
Some commands, like the goto commands, buffer switch or search commands, push the previous selections to the client’s jump list. It is possible to forward or backward in the jump list using:
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control-i: Jump forward -
control-o: Jump backward -
control-s: save current selections
Kak was designed from the start to handle multiple selections.
One way to get a multiselection is via the s key.
For example, to change all occurrences of word 'roger' to word 'marcel' in a paragraph, here is what can be done:
select the paragraph with enough x. press s and enter roger, then enter.
Now paragraph selection was replaced with multiselection of each roger in
the paragraph. Press c and marcel<esc> to replace rogers with marcels.
A multiselection can also be obtained with S, which splits the current
selection according to the regex entered. To split a comma separated list,
use S then ', *'
The regex syntax supported by Kakoune is the Perl one and is describe here Regex syntax.
s and S share the search pattern with /, and hence entering an empty
pattern uses the last one.
As a convenience, alt-s allows you to split the current selections on
line boundaries.
To clear multiple selections, use space. To keep only the nth selection
use n followed by space, in order to remove a selection, use alt-space.
alt-k allows you to enter a regex and keep only the selections that
contains a match for this regex. using alt-K you can keep the selections
not containing a match.
C copies the current selection to the next line (or lines if a count is given)
alt-C does the same to previous lines.
$ allows you to enter a shell command and pipe each selections to it.
Selections whose shell command returns 0 will be kept, other will be dropped.
Some keys allow you to select a text object:
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alt-a: selects the whole object -
alt-i: selects the inner object, that is the object excluding it’s surrounder. for example, for a quoted string, this will not select the quote, and for a word this will not select trailing spaces. -
[: selects to object start -
]: selects to object end -
{: extends selections to object start -
}: extends selections to object end
After this key, you need to enter a second key in order to specify which object you want.
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b,(or): select the enclosing parenthesis -
B,{or}: select the enclosing {} block -
r,[or]: select the enclosing [] block -
a,<or>: select the enclosing <> block -
"orQ: select the enclosing double quoted string -
'orq: select the enclosing single quoted string -
`org: select the enclosing grave quoted string -
w: select the whole word -
W: select the whole WORD -
s: select the sentence -
p: select the paragraph -
␣: select the whitespaces -
i: select the current indentation block -
n: select the number -
u: select the argument -
:: select user defined object, will prompt for open and close text.
For nestable objects, a count can be used in order to specify which surrounding level to select.
When pressing : in normal mode, Kakoune will open a prompt to enter a command.
Commands are used for non editing tasks, such as opening a buffer, writing the current one, quitting, etc.
A few keys are recognized by prompt mode to help editing a command:
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<ret>: validate prompt -
<esc>: abandon without -
<left> or <a-h>: move cursor to previous character -
<right> or <a-l>: move cursor to previous character -
<home>: move cursor to first character -
<end>: move cursor to passed last character -
<backspace> or <a-x>: erase character before cursor -
<del> or <a-d>: erase character under cursor -
<c-w>: advance to next word begin -
<c-a-w>: advance to next WORD begin -
<c-b>: go back to previous word begin -
<c-a-b>: go back to previous WORD begin -
<c-e>: advance to next word end -
<c-a-e>: advance to next word end -
<up> or <c-p>: select previous entry in history -
<down> or <c-n>: select next entry in history -
<tab>: select next completion candidate -
<backtab>: select previous completion candidate -
<c-r>: insert then content of the register given by next key. -
<c-v>: insert next keystroke without interpreting it -
<c-o>: disable auto completion for this prompt
Commands starting with horizontal whitespace (e.g. a space) will not be saved in the command history.
Some commands take an exclamation mark (!), which can be used to force
the execution of the command (i.e. to quit a modified buffer, the
command q! has to be used).
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cd [<directory>]: change the current directory to<directory>, or the home directory is unspecified -
e[dit][!] <filename> [<line> [<column>]]: open buffer on file, go to given line and column. If file is already opened, just switch to this file. use edit! to force reloading. -
w[rite] [<filename>]: write buffer to <filename> or use it’s name if filename is not given. -
w[rite]a[ll]: write all buffers that are associated to a file. -
q[uit][!]: exit Kakoune, use quit! to force quitting even if there is some unsaved buffers remaining. -
kill[!]: terminate the current session, all the clients as well as the server, use kill! to ignore unsaved buffers -
w[a]q[!]: write the current buffer (or all buffers whenwaqis used) and quit -
b[uffer] <name>: switch to buffer <name> -
b[uffer]n[ext]: switch to the next buffer -
b[uffer]p[rev]: switch to the previous buffer -
d[el]b[uf][!] [<name>]: delete the buffer <name> -
source <filename>: execute commands in <filename> -
runtime <filename>: execute commands in <filename>, <filename> is relative to kak executable path. -
colorscheme <name>: load named colorscheme. -
nameclient <name>: set current client name -
namebuf <name>: set current buffer name -
namesession <name>: set current session name -
echo [options] <text>: show <text> in status line, with the following options:-
-color<face>: print the given text with <face>, most commonlyErrororInformation -
-markup: expand the markup strings in <text> -
-debug: print the given text to the*debug*buffer
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nop: does nothing, but as with every other commands, arguments may be evaluated. So nop can be used for example to execute a shell command while being sure that it’s output will not be interpreted by kak.:%sh{ echo echo tchou }will echo tchou in Kakoune, whereas:nop %sh{ echo echo tchou }will not, but both will execute the shell command.
Multiple commands can be separated either by new lines or by semicolons,
as such a semicolon must be escaped with \; to be considered as a literal
semicolon argument.
When entering a command, parameters are separated by whitespace (shell like), if you want to give parameters with spaces, you should quote them.
Kakoune support three string syntax:
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'strings': uninterpreted strings, you can use\'to escape the separator, every other char is itself. -
"strings": expanded strings, % strings (see Expansions) contained are expended. Use \% to escape a % inside them, and \\ to escape a slash. -
%{strings}: these strings are very useful when entering commands-
the
{and}delimiters are configurable: you can use any non alphanumeric character. like%[string],%<string>,%(string),%~string~or%!string!… -
if the character following the % is one of {[(<, then the closing one is the matching }])> and the delimiters are not escapable but are nestable. for example
%{ roger {}; }is a valid string,%{ marcel \}as well.
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A special kind of %{strings} can be used, with a type between
% and the opening delimiter (which cannot be alphanumeric). These
strings are expanded according to their type.
For example %opt{autoinfo} is of type 'opt'. opt expansions are replaced
by the value of the given option (here autoinfo).
Supported types are:
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sh: shell expansion, similar to posix shell $(…) construct, see Shell expansion for more details. -
reg: register expansion, will be replaced by the content of the given register. -
opt: option expansion, will be replaced with the value of the given option -
val: value expansion, gives access to the environment variable available to the Shell expansion. Thekak_prefix is not used there. -
arg: argument expansion, gives access to the arguments of the current command, the content can be a number, or@for all arguments.
for example you can display last search pattern with
:echo %reg{/}
The %sh{…} expansion replaces its content with the output of the shell
commands in it. It is similar to the shell $(…) syntax and is evaluated
only when needed.
for example: %sh{ ls } is replaced with the output of the ls command.
Some of Kakoune state is available through environment variables:
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kak_selection: content of the main selection -
kak_selections: content of the selection separated by colons, colons in the selection contents are escaped with a backslash. -
kak_selection_desc: range of the main selection, represented asanchor,cursor; anchor and cursor are in this format:line.column -
kak_selections_desc: range of the selecations separated by colons -
kak_bufname: name of the current buffer -
kak_buffile: full path of the file or same askak_bufnamewhen there’s no associated file -
kak_buflist: the current buffer list, each buffer separated by a colon -
kak_timestamp: timestamp of the current buffer, the timestamp is an integer value which is incremented each time the buffer is modified. -
kak_runtime: directory containing the kak binary -
kak_count: count parameter passed to the command -
kak_opt_<name>: value of option <name> -
kak_reg_<r>: value of register <r> -
kak_socket: filename of session socket (/tmp/kak-<session>) -
kak_session: name of the current session -
kak_client: name of current client -
kak_cursor_line: line of the end of the main selection -
kak_cursor_column: column of the end of the main selection (in byte) -
kak_cursor_char_column: column of the end of the main selection (in character) -
kak_cursor_byte_offset: offset of the main selection from the beginning of the buffer (in byte). -
kak_window_width: width of the current kakoune window -
kak_window_height: height of the current kakoune window -
kak_hook_param: filtering text passed to the currently executing hook -
kak_client_env_<name>: value of the <name> variable in the client environment. Example: $kak_client_env_SHELL is the SHELL variable
Note that in order to make only needed information available, Kakoune needs
to find the environment variable reference in the shell script executed.
Hence %sh{ ./script.sh } with script.sh referencing an environment
variable will not work.
For example you can print informations on the current file in the status line using:
:echo %sh{ ls -l $kak_bufname }
In certain context, kakoune can take a markup string, which is a string containing
formatting informations. In these strings, syntax {facename} will enable the
face facename until another face gets activated (or the end of the string.
Literal { shall be written \{, and literal \ that precede a { shall
be written \\