Traversing text in Insert mode

Question

While in Insert Mode in Vim  is there any way to traverse the text moving some characters forward and backward other than using the arrow keys   If I press h  j  k and l while in Insert mode  the actual characters are printed on screen instead of moving through the text   The way I m doing it at the moment is having to resort to Ctrl      Esc  and traversing the text then  but obviously that is not productive

User · Answer

Insert mode

Movement

hjkl

Notwithstanding what Pavel Shved said - that it is probably more advisable to get used to Escaping Insert mode - here is an example set of mappings for quick navigation within Insert mode:

" provide hjkl movements in Insert mode via the <Alt> modifier key
inoremap <A-h> <C-o>h
inoremap <A-j> <C-o>j
inoremap <A-k> <C-o>k
inoremap <A-l> <C-o>l

This will make Alt+h in Insert mode go one character left, Alt+j down and so on, analogously to hjkl in Normal mode.

You have to copy that code into your vimrc file to have it loaded every time you start vim (you can open that by typing :new $myvimrc starting in Normal mode).

Any Normal mode movements

Since the Alt modifier key is not mapped (to something important) by default, you can in the same fashion pull other (or all) functionality from Normal mode to Insert mode. E.g.:
Moving to the beginning of the current word with Alt+b:

inoremap <A-b> <C-o>b
inoremap <A-w> <C-o>w

(Other uses of `Alt` in Insert mode)

It is worth mentioning that there may be better uses for the Alt key than replicating Normal mode behaviour: e.g. here are mappings for copying from an adjacent line the portion from the current column till the end of the line:

" Insert the rest of the line below the cursor.
" Mnemonic: Elevate characters from below line
inoremap <A-e> 
    \<Esc>
    \jl
        \y$
    \hk
        \p
        \a
" Insert the rest of the line above the cursor.
" Mnemonic: Y depicts a funnel, through which the above line's characters pour onto the current line.
inoremap <A-y> 
    \<Esc>
    \kl
        \y$
    \hj
        \p
        \a

(I used \ line continuation and indentation to increase clarity. The commands are interpreted as if written on a single line.)

Built-in hotkeys for editing

CTRL-H   delete the character  in front of the cursor (same as <Backspace>)
CTRL-W   delete the word       in front of the cursor
CTRL-U   delete all characters in front of the cursor (influenced by the 'backspace' option)

_{(There are no notable built-in hotkeys for movement in Insert mode.)}

Reference: :help insert-index

Command-line mode

This set of mappings makes the upper Alt+hjkl movements available in the Command-line:

" provide hjkl movements in Command-line mode via the <Alt> modifier key
cnoremap <A-h> <Left>
cnoremap <A-j> <Down>
cnoremap <A-k> <Up>
cnoremap <A-l> <Right>

Alternatively, these mappings add the movements both to Insert mode and Command-line mode in one go:

" provide hjkl movements in Insert mode and Command-line mode via the <Alt> modifier key
noremap! <A-h> <Left>
noremap! <A-j> <Down>
noremap! <A-k> <Up>
noremap! <A-l> <Right>

The mapping commands for pulling Normal mode commands to Command-line mode look a bit different from the Insert mode mapping commands (because Command-line mode lacks Insert mode's Ctrl+O):

" Normal mode command(s) go… --v <-- here
cnoremap <expr> <A-h> &cedit. 'h' .'<C-c>'
cnoremap <expr> <A-j> &cedit. 'j' .'<C-c>'
cnoremap <expr> <A-k> &cedit. 'k' .'<C-c>'
cnoremap <expr> <A-l> &cedit. 'l' .'<C-c>'

cnoremap <expr> <A-b> &cedit. 'b' .'<C-c>'
cnoremap <expr> <A-w> &cedit. 'w' .'<C-c>'

Built-in hotkeys for movement and editing

CTRL-B       cursor to beginning of command-line
CTRL-E       cursor to end       of command-line

CTRL-F       opens the command-line window (unless a different key is specified in 'cedit')

CTRL-H       delete the character  in front of the cursor (same as <Backspace>)
CTRL-W       delete the word       in front of the cursor
CTRL-U       delete all characters in front of the cursor

CTRL-P       recall previous command-line from history (that matches pattern in front of the cursor)
CTRL-N       recall next     command-line from history (that matches pattern in front of the cursor)
<Up>         recall previous command-line from history (that matches pattern in front of the cursor)
<Down>       recall next     command-line from history (that matches pattern in front of the cursor)
<S-Up>       recall previous command-line from history
<S-Down>     recall next     command-line from history
<PageUp>     recall previous command-line from history
<PageDown>   recall next     command-line from history

<S-Left>     cursor one word left
<C-Left>     cursor one word left
<S-Right>    cursor one word right
<C-Right>    cursor one word right

<LeftMouse>  cursor at mouse click

Reference: :help ex-edit-index

User · Answer

For some frequently used movements and actions  I have defined the following mappings  This saves a keystroke compared to the CTRL O combination and since I need them frequently  they pay off in the long  run    inoremap  lt A-  gt   lt C-o gt   inoremap  lt A-  gt   lt C-o gt   inoremap  lt A-h gt   lt Left gt  inoremap  lt A-l gt   lt Right gt  inoremap  lt A-O gt   lt C-O gt O inoremap  lt A-o gt   lt C-o gt o

User · Answer

Sorry but vim don t work that way   You should switch to  normal  mode  navigate and then go back to insert again

User · Answer

Many people in the Vim community argue that you should not navigate in Insert mode  that it is not the Vim way  I think this is an incorrect sentiment learned when transitioning from standard editors to Vim   Vim is most powerful when you use its tools to create atomic  repeatable actions or finds   It is ok to navigate while in Insert mode if you are fixing a mistake you made in the same Insert session  You should not navigate outside of the range of text you modified   If you make a mistake while entering text and escape out of Insert mode to fix it you will not be able to repeat the intended action    will repeat the correction   Vim does support many Insert mode navigation keys  Obviously there are the arrow keys  Home  and End  but there are also many other shortcuts  See  h ins-special-keys

User · Answer

You could use imap to map any key in insert mode to one of the cursor keys  Like so   imap h  lt Left gt    Now h works like in normal mode  moving the cursor   Mapping h in this way is obviously a bad choice   Having said that I do not think the standard way of moving around in text using VIM is  not productive   There are lots of very powerful ways of traversing the text in normal mode  like using w and b  or   and    or f and F  etc

User · Answer

I believe Home and End  and PageUp PageDn  also work normally while in insert mode  but aside from that  I don t believe there are any other standard keys defined for text traversal

User · Answer

In GVim  you can use the mouse  But honestly  what s wrong with using the arrow keys  There s a reason why they are on a keyboard

User · Answer

You seem to misuse vim  but that s likely due to not being very familiar with it   The right way is to press Esc  go where you want to do a small correction  fix it  go back and keep editing   It is effective because Vim has much more movements than usual character forward backward up down   After you learn more of them  this will happen to be more productive   Here s a couple of use-cases    You accidentally typed  accifentally    No problem  the sequence EscFfrdA will correct the mistake and bring you back to where you were editing   The Ff movement will move your cursor backwards to the first encountered  f  character   Compare that with Ctrl  larr  rarr  rarr  rarr  rarr DeldEnd  which does virtually the same in a casual editor  but takes more keystrokes and makes you move your hand out of the alphanumeric area of the keyboard  You accidentally typed  you accidentally typed   but want to correct it to  you intentionally typed    Then Esc2bcw will erase the word you want to fix and bring you to insert mode  so you can immediately retype it   To get back to editing  just press A instead of End  so you don t have to move your hand to reach the End key  You accidentally typed  mouse  instead of  mice    No problem - the good old Ctrl w will delete the previous word without leaving insert mode   And it happens to be much faster to erase a small word than to fix errors within it   I m so used to it that I had closed the browser page when I was typing this message     Repetition count is largely underused    Before making a movement  you can type a number  and the movement will be repeated this number of times   For example  15h will bring your cursor 15 characters back and 4j  will move your cursor 4 lines down   Start using them and you ll get used to it soon  If you made a mistake ten characters back from your cursor  you ll find out that pressing the  larr  key 10 times is much slower than the iterative approach to moving the cursor  So you can instead quickly type the keys 12h  as a rough of guess how many characters back that you need to move your cursor   and immediately move forward twice with ll to quickly correct the error    But  if you still want to do small text traversals without leaving insert mode  follow rson s advice and use Ctrl O   Taking the first example that I mentioned above  Ctrl OFf will move you to a previous  f  character and leave you in insert mode

User · Answer

To have a little better navigation in insert mode  why not map some keys   imap  lt C-b gt   lt Left gt  imap  lt C-f gt   lt Right gt  imap  lt C-e gt   lt End gt  imap  lt C-a gt   lt Home gt     lt C-a gt  is used to repeat last entered text  Override it  if its not needed   If you can work around making the Meta key work in your terminal  you can mock emacs mode even better  The navigation in normal-mode is way better  but for shorter movements it helps to stay in insert mode    For longer jumps  I prefer the following default translation    lt Meta-b gt     maps to      lt Esc gt  lt C-left gt    This shifts to normal-mode and goes back a word

User · Answer

You can create mappings that work in insert mode  The way to do that is via inoremap  Note the  i  at the beginning of the command  noremap is useful to avoid key map collisions   The corollary is  n  for  normal  mode  You can surmise what vim thinks is  normal      HOWEVER  you really want to navigate around in text using  normal  mode  Vim is super at this kind of thing and all that power is available from normal mode  Vim already provides easy ways to get from normal mode to insert mode  e g   i  I  a  A  o  O   The trick is to make it easy to get into normal mode  The way to do that is to remap escape to a more convient key  But you need one that won t conflict with your regular typing  I use   inoremap jj  lt Esc gt    Since jj  that s 2 j s typed one after the other quickly  doesn t seem to appear in my vocabulary  Other s will remap to where it s comfortable   The other essential change I make is to switch the CAPSLOCK and CONTROL keys on my keyboard  using the host computer s keyboard configuration  since I almost never use CAPSLOCK and it has that big  beautiful button right where I want it   This is common for Emacs users  The downside is when you find yourself on an  unfixed  keyboard  Aaarggh    Once you remap CAPSLOCK  you can comfortably use the following insert mode remappings   Keeping in mind that some keys are already mapped in insert mode  backwards-kill-word is C-w  Control-w  by default  you might already have the bindings you want  That said  I prefer C-h so in my  vimrc I have   inoremap  lt C-h gt   lt C-w gt    BUT  you probably want the same muscle memory spasm in normal mode  so I also map C-h as   nnoremap  lt C-h gt  db    d elete  b ackwards accomplishes the same thing with the same key chord  This kind of quick edit is one that I find useful in practice for typos  But stick to normal mode for moving around in text and anything more than killing the previous word  Once you get into the habit of changing modes  using a remap of course   it will be much more efficient than remapping insert mode

User · Answer

If you are a vim purist  skip reading this answer  OTOH  if you are new to vim and are looking for a few helpful tips you wont find in the many hundred of vim tutorials and blogs  read on     -   A few un-orthodox  vim  ways  It s 2014  and as someone who s recently gone back to vim I can offer a few  potentially contrarian  points of view and tips   Use shift left or shift right to traverse words  While repetition is a powerful concept in vim  I  personally  find it strange that using it either forces me to count  lines  characters  words  etc   or make guesses  My brain usually works like  I want the cursor there  and not like  I want the cursor  5 words to the left    Quickly being able to move the cursor  and visually observe where the insertion point this way allows me to keep my mind on what I m editing instead of having to count how many hops I need to make to get to where I need to edit       Turn on mouse mode  and use the mouse wheel and clicking     to navigate large bodies of text   Most  all  modern computers have a touchpad that is closely integrated with the keyboard  e g  MacBooks   Industrial designers have spent many man years optimizing these designs so that the old problem of having to move the hand away from the keyboard is no longer a real issue  Okay  it is if you are used to a mouse and don t like to switch  but for anyone new to vim  like those that might find this post via a search   this should not be much of an issue   As a bonus  click   drag puts you in visual mode  With mouse enabled  clicking and dragging has the effect of switching to visual mode and marking a region for yanking   And use the scroll wheel  Using the mouse  wheel  to scroll around  and clicking to position the cursor  duh  just works  See http   usevim com 2012 05 16 mouse  for more on this   And so     These are what I d call more modern  using mouse  scroll wheel  etc   ways of navigating in vim  equally effective depending on your preference of input   HTH

User · Answer

While in insert mode  use CtrlO to go to normal mode for just one command   CTRL-O h  move cursor left  CTRL-O l  move cursor right CTRL-O j  move cursor down CTRL-O k  move cursor up   which is probably the simplest way to do what you want and is easy to remember   Other very useful control keys in insert mode   CTRL-W    delete word to the left of cursor CTRL-O D  delete everything to the right of cursor CTRL-U    delete everything to the left of cursor CTRL-H    backspace delete CTRL-J    insert newline  easier than reaching for the return key  CTRL-T    indent current line CTRL-D    un-indent current line   these will eliminate many wasteful switches back to normal mode

[vim] Traversing text in Insert mode

Insert mode

Movement

hjkl

Any Normal mode movements

(Other uses of `Alt` in Insert mode)

Built-in hotkeys for editing

Command-line mode

Built-in hotkeys for movement and editing

Examples related to vim

Examples related to vi

[vim] Traversing text in Insert mode

Insert mode

Movement

hjkl

Any Normal mode movements

(Other uses of Alt in Insert mode)

Built-in hotkeys for editing

Command-line mode

Built-in hotkeys for movement and editing

Examples related to vim

Examples related to vi

(Other uses of `Alt` in Insert mode)