What are the most-used vim commands keypresses

Question

I m a Ruby programming trying to switch from Textmate to MacVim  and I m having trouble wading through the gargantuan lists of things you can do in VIM and all of the keypresses for them  I m tired of hearing  You can use  I  for inserting text  or  a  for appending text after the character  or  A  for appending text at the end of the line  or     I can t imagine everyone uses all 20 different keypresses to navigate text  10 or so keys to start adding text  and 18 ways to visually select an inner block  Or do you    My ideal cheat sheet would be the 30-40 most-used keypresses or commands that everyone uses for writing code on a daily basis  along with the absolute essential plugins that rubyists use daily and the 10 most-used commands for them  In theory  once I have that and start becoming as proficient in VIM as I am in Textmate  then I can start learning the thousands of other VIM commands that will make me more efficient   Or  am I learning VIM the wrong way altogether

User · Answer

http   www viemu com a vi vim graphical cheat sheet tutorial html  This is the greatest thing ever for learning VIM

User · Answer

Go to Efficient Editing with vim and learn what you need to get started  Not everything on that page is essential starting off  so cherry pick what you want   From there  use vim for everything   hjkl    y   and  p  will get you a long way  even if it s not the most efficient way  When you come up against a task for which you don t know the magic key to do it efficiently  or at all   and you find yourself doing it more than a few times  go look it up  Little by little it will become second nature   I found vim daunting many moons ago  back when it didn t have the  m  on the end   but it only took about a week of steady use to get efficient  I still find it the quickest editor in which to get stuff done

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Greg Hewgill s cheatsheet is very good  I started my switch from TextMate a few months ago  Now I m as productive as I was with TM and constantly amazed by Vim s power   Here is how I switched  Maybe it can be useful to you   Grosso modo  I don t think it s a good idea to do a radical switch  Vim is very different and it s best to go progressively   And to answer your subquestion  yes  I use all of iaIAoO everyday to enter insert mode  It certainly seems weird at first but you don t really think about it after a while   Some commands incredibly useful for any programming related tasks    r and R to replace characters  lt C-a gt  and  lt C-x gt to increase and decrease numbers cit to change the content of an HTML tag  and its variants  cat  dit  dat  ci   etc    lt C-x gt  lt C-o gt   mapped to     for omnicompletion visual block selection with  lt C-v gt  and so on      Once you are accustomed to the Vim way it becomes really hard to not hit o or x all the time when editing text in some other editor or textfield

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I can t imagine everyone uses all 20 different keypresses to navigate text  10 or so keys to start adding text  and 18 ways to visually select an inner block  Or do you     I do      In theory  once I have that and start becoming as proficient in VIM as I am in Textmate  then I can start learning the thousands of other VIM commands that will make me more efficient    That s the right way to do it  Start with basic commands and then pick up ones that improve your productivity  I like following this blog for tips on how to improve my productivity with vim

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Here s a tip sheet I wrote up once  with the commands I actually use regularly   References   vim documentation online advanced vim tips more useful tips and graphical cheat sheet   General   Nearly all commands can be preceded by a number for a repeat count  eg  5dd delete 5 lines  lt Esc gt  gets you out of any mode and back to command mode Commands preceded by   are executed on the command line at the bottom of the screen  help help with any command   Navigation   Cursor movement   h  j  k l  By words    w next word  by punctuation   W next word  by spaces  b back word  by punctuation   B back word  by spaces  e end word  by punctuation   E end word  by spaces   By line    0 start of line    first non-whitespace   end of line  By paragraph      previous blank line    next blank line  By file    gg start of file  G end of file 123G go to specific line number  By marker    mx set mark x   x go to mark x    go to position of last edit     go back to last point before jump  Scrolling     F forward full screen   B backward full screen  D down half screen   U up half screen  E scroll one line up   Y scroll one line down zz centre cursor line    Editing   u undo   R redo   repeat last editing command   Inserting  All insertion commands are terminated with  lt Esc gt  to return to command mode    i insert text at cursor  I insert text at start of line a append text after cursor  A append text after end of line o open new line below  O open new line above   Changing   r replace single character  R replace multiple characters s change single character cw change word  C change to end of line  cc change whole line c lt motion gt  changes text in the direction of the motion ci  change inside parentheses  see text object selection for more examples    Deleting   x delete char dw delete word  D delete to end of line  dd delete whole line d lt motion gt  deletes in the direction of the motion   Cut and paste   yy copy line into paste buffer  dd cut line into paste buffer p paste buffer below cursor line  P paste buffer above cursor line xp swap two characters  x to delete one character  then p to put it back after the cursor position    Blocks   v visual block stream  V visual block line   V visual block column   most motion commands extend the block to the new cursor position o moves the cursor to the other end of the block  d or x cut block into paste buffer y copy block into paste buffer   indent block   lt  unindent block gv reselect last visual block   Global     s foo bar g substitute all occurrences of  foo  to  bar      is a range that indicates every line in the file  g is a flag that changes all occurrences on a line instead of just the first one    Searching     search forward    search backward   search forward for word under cursor    search backward for word under cursor n next match in same direction  N next match in opposite direction fx forward to next character x  Fx backward to previous character x   move again to same character in same direction    move again to same character in opposite direction   Files    w write file to disk  w name write file to disk as name ZZ write file to disk and quit  n edit a new file   n  edit a new file without saving current changes  q quit editing a file   q  quit editing without saving changes  e edit same file again  if changed outside vim   e   directory explorer   Windows    Wn new window  Wj down to next window   Wk up to previous window  W  maximise current window   W  make all windows equal size  W  increase window size   W- decrease window size   Source Navigation     jump to matching parenthesis bracket brace  or language block if language module loaded gd go to definition of local symbol under cursor   O return to previous position    jump to definition of global symbol  requires tags file    T return to previous position  arbitrary stack of positions maintained   N  in insert mode  automatic word completion   Show local changes  Vim has some features that make it easy to highlight lines that have been changed from a base version in source control  I have created a small vim script that makes this easy  http   github com ghewgill vim-scmdiff

User · Answer

Have you run through Vim s built-in tutorial  If not  drop to the command-line and type vimtutor  It s a great way to learn the initial commands    Vim has an incredible amount of flexibility and power and  if you re like most vim users  you ll learn a lot of new commands and forget old ones  then relearn them  The built-in help is good and worthy of periodic browsing to learn new stuff   There are several good FAQs and cheatsheets for vim on the internet  I d recommend searching for vim   faq and vim   cheatsheet  Cheat-Sheets org vim is a good source  as is Vim Tips wiki

User · Answer

What most people do is start out with the bare basics  like maybe i  yw  yy  and p   You can continue to use arrow keys to move around  selecting text with the mouse  using the menus  etc   Then when something is slowing you down  you look up the faster way to do it  and gradually add more and more commands   You might learn one new command per day for a while  then it will trickle to one per week   You ll feel fairly productive in a month   After a year you will have a pretty solid repertoire  and after 2-3 years you won t even consciously think what your fingers are typing  and it will look weird if you have to spell it out for someone  I learned vi in 1993 and still pick up 2 or 3 new commands a year

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tuxfiles org holds a pretty good cheat sheet  I think there are a couple of points to learning the commands    Read the cheat sheet regularly   Don t worry about using all of them  or remembering all the keys  just know that the command exists   Look up the command and use it when you find yourself doing something repetitive  If you find yourself doing something regularly  like deleting an entire line after a particular character d    go a quick google search to see if you can find a command for it  Write down commands you think you ll find useful and keep that list where you can see it while you re writing your code   I would argue against printing something out and instead encourage you to use post it notes for just a few commands at a time  If possible  watch other programmers use vim  and ask them what commands they are using as you see them do something interesting    Besides these tips  there are some basic concepts you should understand    vim will use the same character to represent the same function   For example  to delete a line after a character use d    To highlight a line after a particular character use v    So notice that   indicates you will be doing something to the end of the line from where your cursor currently is  u is undo  and ctrl r is redo  putting a number in front of a command will execute it repeatedly  3dd will delete the line your cursor is on and the two lines that follow  similarly 3yy will copy the line your cursor is on and the two lines that follow  understand how to navigate through the buffers use  ls to list the buffers  and  bn   bp to cycle through them  read through the tutorial found in  help  This is probably the best way to  learn the ropes   and the rest of the commands you will learn through usage

User · Answer

Put this in your  bashrc to open vim with last edited file at last edited line  alias vil  vim        0

User · Answer

Here is a great cheat sheet for vim

[vim] What are the most-used vim commands/keypresses?

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