Vim

Contents

  Movement
  Editing
    Text Objects
    Insert Mode
    Miscellaneous edit commands
  The Undo Tree
  Macros
  Visual mode
  Find and Replace
  Enter and exit
  Cheatsheet
None
57 comments

Vim is a terminal-based editor optimized for speed. Keys are hotkeys by default. Vim does not even use Ctrl for most of them. Maneuvering via hotkeys is so efficient mouse input is often disabled by default.

This guide focuses on the features I use most frequently. It has nothing about with native Vim windows because I use i3 or Spacemacs instead. If you feel I left out a valuable feature then please let me know about it in the comments.

Movement

The simplest way to move is via the hjkl keys.

The hl keys operate within a single line. Pressing h at the start of a line does nothing. Pressing l at the end of a line does nothing. By line I mean a string of characters ending with a carriage return. The fact that a long paragraph appears to wrap around on your screen is irrelevant.

The jk keys move the cursor down and up a single line. If the cursor is in the 3rd column of the 6th line then pressing j moves the cursor to the 3th column of the 7th line.

Most commands can be prefixed with a number. 4h moves the cursor left 4 characters. 101j moves the cursor down 101 lines.

A sequence of nonempty lines is called a paragraph. The {} keys move the cursor forward and back by paragraphs.

There are two kinds of "words" in Vim. A word is a sequence of alphanumeric characters. A Word is a sequence of non-whitespace characters. The wbe keys move the cursor around words. The WBE keys move the cursor around Words.

The #* keys move the cursor forward and backward to the next "idenfitier". If the cursor hovers over the word "marmot" then pressing * will move the cursor forward to the next instance of the word "marmot" and pressing # will move the cursor backward to the previous instance of the word "marmot".

The f key takes a character as an argument and moves the cursor forward to that character. For example, fa moves the cursor forward to the next instance of a. The f key operates within a line. It will never take the cursor to another line. The F command is like f except it searches backward. The t and T commands are like f and F exvcept they move the cursor one fewer character.

The ; command repeats the most recent fFtT command. The , command is like ; except backwards. If you use an F command followed by a , then the double-backwardsness will cancel itself out.

The 0^$ keys move the cursor to the beginning and end of a line.

The HLM keys move the cursor around relative to the viewing window itself.

You can move the viewing window itself with z and Ctrl keys.

You can move the cursor itself up and down visible lines with the g prefix.

The g key can also go to a particular line.

The | key is like g except for columns.

The / key performs search. You type / then the string you are searching for and then press Enter. The ?nN keys are analogous to F;n.

The () characters move forward and backward one sentence.

The [] characters move the cursor forward and backward to a variety of things. My favorite uses of [] is to go forward and backward to matching parenthesis. For example, ]) moves forward to the next unmatched closing parenthesis. It is indispensable when writing Lisp. Inner quotes and tags behave similarly to parentheticals.

You can (invisibly) mark places in your buffer to return to later. You can set one mark per letter. Lowercase letters a-z are buffer-specific e.g. each buffer can have its own "a" mark. Uppercase letters A-Z are global e.g. only one buffer at a time can have an "A" mark.

Some marks are populated automatically. Of the automatic marks, I only use ''. You can find the others here.

Editing

Now that you know how to move, we can edit some text. Most of the time you edit text you should use the dyp keys.

• d stands for delete, which is similar to "cut".
• y stands for yank, which is similar to "copy".
• p stands for put, which is similar to "paste".

The d key operates on text objects and movement commands. For example dtA deletes everything up to (but not including) the next "A" on the current line.

Every delete operation operates on characters or lines. dtA operates on characters and thus behaves similarly to other editors. A delete operation which operates on lines deletes an integer number of lines. Delete operations which operate on lines delete the current line and the destination line. Thus, dj deletes the current line and the next line.

y is identical to d except it leaves your buffer unchanged.

p puts the selection before the cursor. P puts the selection after the cursor. "Before" and "after" refer to characters or lines depending on whether you deleted/yanked characters or lines.

By default, p and P will put the last text you deleted or yanked. You can save text into registers by prefixing "<register> before your delete or yank command. For example, "add deletes the current line and saves it into register "a".

There is one register for each letter a-z. If you use a capital letter then your delete or yank command will append to the register instead of overwriting it. You can put from a register by prefixing your p or P command with the register. For example, "ap" will put from register "a".

You can find a list of special registers here.

Text Objects

Remember how I said you could follow d and y with a movement command or a text object? Remember from earlier the concept of "words" and "paragraphs"? Here we put them together into a simple grammar.

da deletes a text object.

You can replace the a with an i to delete an inner word, an inner paragraph, etcetera. An inner text object is just like the regular text object except it does not include any surrounding delimiters. In the case of a parenthetical, the "inner parenthetical" does not include the outside parenthesis. For words/sentences/paragraphs, the delimiter is whitespace.

Other text objects include '"[]{}<>. They all do what you would expect them to do. t refers to an HTML-like tag.

Insert Mode

You cannot write everything by yanking and putting pieces of existing text together. Sometimes you have to insert text into a document. Several different keys drop you into insert mode.

You can exit insert mode by pressing Escape but it is faster to remap your CapsLock key to Ctrl and then exit insert mode with Ctrl-[. Some hotkeys are valid only while in insert mode.

The c key is like d except it drops you into insert mode afterward.

After you exit insert mode, the whole insertion counts as a single edit. So if you type ci( followed by an insertion then the entire replacement of text inside the parenthetical counts as a single edit. You can repeat an edit with the . operator.

The . key might be the most important key in all of Vim. Generally-speaking, the more you use the . operator the better you are at Vim.

Miscellaneous edit commands

The Undo Tree

u and Ctrl-r operate like the undo and redo stack you are familiar with.

If you undo a long series of edits and then mistakenly make an edit you can undo the damage with g+ and g- which traverse the nodes of the tree in chronological and reverse-chronological order.

Macros

A macro is a series of keystrokes. Macros are good for automating repetitive tasks, especially editing structured text.

To define a macro, start by pressing the q key. Then pick a letter a-z at which to save the macro. Then execute the macro manually. When you are done typing the macro, press q again.

Once you have a macro defined, you can press @ followed by the macro's letter to execute the macro.

Macros are well-behaved. If a macro modifies a line and then goes down one line and you tell Vim to execute the macro 1000 times but your buffer only has 700 lines then Vim will stop when it gets to the end of your buffer.

Visual mode

Visual modes are similar to highlighting. Visual modes have their uses, but it is usually faster to avoid them.

Find and Replace

You can find and replace all the instances of a string by typing :%s/ followed by the original string followed by / followed by the replacement string followed by Enter…assuming you did not type any escape sequences. Find and replace is a complex subject I will not delve into here even though I do use it.

Enter and exit

You can enter Vim by typing vim into your terminal followed by the file you would like to create or edit. You can exit vim by typing : followed by a quit command.

Typing ZZ does the same thing as the :wq command.

Cheatsheet

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" Prevent data loss
set undofile
" Flush to disk every character (Note: disk intensive, e.g. makes large copy-pastes slow)
set updatecount=1

" Directory browsing usability
let g:netrw_liststyle = 3 " tree list view
let g:netrw_banner = 0

" Copy for X11
vnoremap <C-c> "cy <Bar> :call system('xclip -selection clipboard', @c)<CR><CR>