Kind of off-topic but this is probably a decent place to ask.. I've just started working on a text editor as a side project, and one of the main things I want

Kind of off-topic but this is probably a decent place to ask.. I've just started working on a text editor as a side project, and one of the main things I want to include is a really complete implementation of vim keybindings. So far I just have a queue of keyboard events. Basic movements seem pretty easy, but I'm worried about operator motions (d6w - delete 6 words, etc). Will I basically need to build a parser? Any guidance or keywords I can use to research/learn how to do this would be greatly appreciated.