VIM special chars without shift key

Question

I write a lot of code and tired of pressing shift each time I need a special character. And since I use special chars much often, then numbers, I want to reverse shift behavior on them.

So, if I type <4> I'll get '$' and if I type <shift>+<4> I'll get '4' and so on for each number. This mapping should work only in insert mode.

I've tried:

:set langmap 123...;!@#...,!@#...;123 "works only in normal-mode

:imap 4 $
:imap $ 4 "recursive mapping error

Answer 1

Use :ino, which does the same thing as :imap except that it doesn't look for maps in the replaced text. (it's short for 'inoremap') That will fix the recursion issue.

See here for more information: http://vim.dindinx.net/orig/html/map.txt.php

Or type :h map for vim online help (same thing, just inside vim).

Answer 2

From :help imap:

If you want to exchange the meaning of two keys you should use the :noremap
command.  For example: >
   :noremap k j
   :noremap j k
This will exchange the cursor up and down commands.

With the normal :map command, when the 'remap' option is on, mapping takes
place until the text is found not to be a part of a {lhs}.  For example, if
you use: >
   :map x y
   :map y x
Vim will replace x with y, and then y with x, etc.  When this has happened
'maxmapdepth' times (default 1000), Vim will give the error message
"recursive mapping".

Same applies to imap (use inoremap instead).