Wsrtjtyk

Apologies if "composite" is not the technical term. I mean the following:

Hi, I-am-a-composite-word and we are not

I would like to delete only the composite word. In command mode, if I move the cursor to I, then repeating dw a few times, or better typing dw once, followed by a few . presses, will do the trick. However, for various reasons I find myself doing this quite often during the day, thus I was wondering if there's any simpler way.

PS I would NOT consider the command d9w to be a simpler way. Counting a long sequence of words and dashes is not my idea of "simpler".

What you are calling a composite word is actually a WORD (by opposition to a word). Reading :h word and :h WORD should be helpful:

                            *word*

A word consists of a sequence of letters, digits and underscores, or a

sequence of other non-blank characters, separated with white space (spaces,

tabs, <EOL>).  This can be changed with the 'iskeyword' option.  An empty line

is also considered to be a word.

                            *WORD*

A WORD consists of a sequence of non-blank characters, separated with white

space.  An empty line is also considered to be a WORD.

What you are looking for here is dW when you are on the I or diW when you are anywhere in the word.

Maybe in the future you will also need to read :h 'iskeyword'.

Another more general solution is to delete up to the whitespace character using dt (with a space after the t), which means "delete to [character]. This often is useful for things like dt: and similar as well.

If you want to keep using dw and the like, and also want to let it work with double-clicking a word, you can add

set iskeyword+=-

to your .vimrc, which adds - as a word character.

Example:

Double-clicking any character in ab-cd visually highlights ab-cd.

Don't forget the f (find) and t (to) commands. I'd probably just dt or df (note the space at the end).