Simple Vim commands you wish you d known earlier

Question

I m learning new commands in Vim all the time  but I m sure everyone learns something new once in a while  I just recently learned about this   zz  zt  zb - position cursor at middle  top  or bottom of screen  What are some other useful or elegant commands you wish you d learned ages ago

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gi switches to insertion mode  placing the cursor at the same location it was previously

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ZZ  works like  wq   And about the cursor position  I found that a cursor which always stays in the middle of screen is cool -  set scrolloff 9999

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The most recent  wow  trick that I learnt is a method of doing complicated search-and-replace   Quite often in the past  I ve had a really complicated regexp to do substitutions on and it s not worked   There is a better way    set incsearch               I have this in  vimrc  my complicated regexp       Highlighted as you enter characters   s  replace with this       You don t have to type it again   The  trick  here  for want of a better word  is the way that you can use the search to create the regexp  and  incsearch  highlights it as you enter characters  and then use an empty pattern in the substitution  the empty pattern defaults to the last search pattern   Example    blue   d       s  red 1    Equivalent to     s blue   d     red 1    See    help  incsearch   help  substitute

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Tabbed interface Apart from split windows  you also can have tabbed windows  In the escape mode  type tabnew  You can open multiple tabs like this  To navigate between tabs  type tabn  This will move to the next tab  To move to a tabbed window  type tabn2 to move the second tab and so on  To close a tab  type tabc  tabclose  or just close  If you are in a terminal emulator  basically terminal in GUI  then you can try doing set mouse a  Once that s done  you can click inside the editor with your mouse  And this will also help you navigate between tabs by clicking  and also closing by clicking on the close button at the right side  Align your code - Full file Just type G gg in the escape mode  Fold your code Say you have a function that is completed  You want to minimise  or fold  that part of code so that you can free up some space and reduce clutter  Just select the code  Then  type fold  This will fold the code up  If you want to expand the code  just go there  and type zo  To fold again  type zc

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Use Vim bindings on the command line in Bash       set -o vi   In other  readline-using programs  hit Ctrl   Alt   J to switch from Emacs to Vim bindings

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Some of my latest additions to my Vim brainstore     wi  Jump to the tag under the cursor by splitting the window  cib ciB  Change the text inside the current set of parenthesis    or braces     respectively   set listchars tab  gt - trail   list  Show tabs trailing spaces visually different from other spaces  It helps a lot with Python coding

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I m surprised no-one s mentioned Vim s windowing support  Ctrl   W  S is something I use nearly every time I open Vim

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set confirm allows you to quit Vim gracefully with  q  You don t need to use ZZ or other heavy-handed mechanisms which blindly save or discard all changes

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Build and debug your code from within Vim   Configuration  Not much  really  You need a Makefile in the current directory   To Compile  While you re in Vim  type  make to invoke a shell and build your program  Don t worry when the output scrolls by  just press Enter when it s finished to return to Vim   The Magic  Back within Vim  you have the following commands at your disposal     cl lists the errors  warnings  and other messages   cc displays the current error warning message at the bottom of the screen and jumps to the offending line in your code   cc n jumps to the nth message   cn advances to the next message   cp jumps to the previous message    There are more  if you re interested  type  help  cc from within Vim

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r w to paste the word under the cursor in command mode   It is really useful when using grep or replace commands

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I created this reference of my most used command for a friend of mine   select                                   v select row s                             SHIFT   v select blocks  columns                   CTRL    v indent selected text                      gt  unindent selected text                    lt  list buffers                              ls open buffer                               bN  N   buffer number  print                                     hardcopy open a file                               e  path to file txt                                           e C  Path To File txt sort selected rows                        sort search for word under cursor               open file under cursor                   gf    absolute path or relative  format selected code                       select contents of entire file           ggVG convert selected text to uppercase       U convert selected text to lowercase       u invert case of selected text               convert tabs to spaces                    retab start recording a macro                  qX  X   key to assign macro to  stop recording a macro                   q playback macro                            X  X   key macro was assigned to  replay previously played macro              auto-complete a word you are typing      CTRL   n bookmark current place in file           mX  X   key to assign bookmark to  jump to bookmark                          X  X   key bookmark was assigned to                                                  back tick tilde key  show all bookmarks                        marks delete a bookmark                         delm X  X   key bookmark to delete  delete all bookmarks                      delm  split screen horizontally                 split split screen vertically                   vsplit navigating split screens                 CTRL   w   j   move down a screen                                          CTRL   w   k   move up a screen                                          CTRL   w   h   move left a screen                                          CTRL   w   l   move right a screen close all other split screens             only     - As with other commands in vi  you can playback a macro any number of times       The following command would playback the macro assigned to the key  w  100      times  100 w     - Vim uses words that exist in your current buffer and any other buffer you may have open for auto-complete suggestions

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qx will start recording keystrokes  You can do pretty much any editing task and Vim remembers it  Hit q again when you re finished  and press  x to replay your keystrokes  This is great for repetitive edits which are too complex to write a mapping for  You can have many recordings by using a character other than x

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Opening multiple files using tabs   tabe filepath   Navigating between open files  gt and gT or  tabn and  tabp   Save the open session so that you can get back to your list of open files later   mksession session file name vim   Open a created session  vim -S session file name vim   Close all files at once   qa   Another command I learned recently  autocmd   It allows you to run a command on an event  so you could for example run the command make when you save a file using something like    autocmd BufWritePost   cpp  make

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qall and  wqall to close all the split screens

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You can use a whole set of commands to change text inside brackets   parentheses   quotation marks  tags  It s super useful to avoid having to find the start and finish of the group  Try ci   ci   ci lt   ci   ci   ct depending on what kind of object you want to change  And the ca   ca       variants delete the brackets   quotation marks as well   Easy to remember  change inside a bracketed statement   change a bracketed statement

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y will copy the character above the cursor

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I often make functions for editing tasks and store them in my  vimrc file  so I can find them again   For example  reading  NET callstacks that have been converted into a single line    function  FixCallStacks     s   NLN    r g   s   TAB    t g endfunction

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I know this is not completely Vim  But I find the cscope integration really good  and it helps me a lot when hacking the Linux kernel    Ctrl      g to reach the definition of a function Ctrl      s to find all the usages of a function  macro  or variable

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gv starts visual mode and automatically selects what you previously had selected

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Until  character   t   It is useful for any command which accepts a range  My favorite is ct  or ct  which deletes everything up to the trailing semicolon   closing parentheses and then places you in insert mode   Also  G and gg are useful  Go to bottom and top respectively

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I just discovered this one while browsing the Vim help    help index   This takes you to a single  searchable   page with all the commands for all the modes   So if you know that the command you re trying to remember learn starts with or involves a certain keystroke  you can search for that and flip through all the possibilities  Or you can just browse the mode you re interested in to see learn editing possibilities   I can t count the number of times I ve done just  help Ctrl   R or whatever and gotten just the first thing  which is of course never the one you want  This is much better than  helpgrep IMO   And into the  vimrc it goes   nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt F1 gt   help normal-index lt CR gt  inoremap  lt silent gt   lt F1 gt   lt C-O gt  help insert-index lt CR gt     help still gets you to the default F1 page

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I wish I d known basic visual block mode stuff earlier   Even if you don t use Vim for anything else  it can be a big time saver to open up a file in Vim just for some block operations  I m quite sure I wasted a ton of time doing this kind of thing manually   Examples I ve found particularly useful  when  say  refactoring lists of symbolic constant names consistently   Enter Visual Block mode  Ctrl   Q for me on Windows instead of Ctrl   V   Move the cursor to highlight the desired block   Then  I whatever text and press Esc to have the text inserted in front of the block on every line   Use A instead of I to have the text inserted after the block on every line   Also - simply toggling the case of a visual selection with   can be a big time saver   And simply deleting columns  too  with d of course

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s  search  replace   You can use other characters than    slash  to separate patterns for substitution  This way you don   t have to escape the slashes of file paths

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The asterisk key     will search for the word under the cursor     Tab will take you to the definition of a C function that s under your cursor   It doesn t always work  though

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P and  N Complete previous   P  or next   N  text   O and  I Go to previous   O -  quot O quot  for old  location or to the next   I -  quot I quot  just near to  quot O quot    When you perform searches  edit files  etc   you can navigate through these  quot jumps quot  forward and back  Marks Press ma  m- mark  a - name of mark   Later to return to the position  type  a

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shell to launch a shell console from Vim  Useful when for example you want to test a script without quitting Vim  Simply hit  d when you done with the shell console  and then you come back to Vim and your edited file

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x   Save and Quit a File    Same as  wq or ZZ

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Taking xcramps  suggestion one step further  I can t tell you how many times I ve used         sort   to sort a list of items in a file   Details       range command   will execute a shell command on the specified range of lines  A range is usually specified as start end     Examples    1 3 specifies the first 3 lines     a  b selects the text between bookmarks a and b        selects the entire document      first line      last line       is a shortcut for     and also selects the entire document    Feel free to mix and match numbers  bookmarks     and

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Comment out a range of lines    First set a bookmark at the beginning of range  ma Go the the last line in range The command is     a  s         Assuming   is your comment character

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I would have to say that one of my favorites is putting the help window in a new tab    tab help  lt help topic gt    This opens up help in a new tab and  as somebody that loves Vim tabs  this is ridiculously useful

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Te xplore    Tab  amp  Explore  does a tabnew before generating the browser window

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ma move cursor down   a   program   This will take all text between where you set the a mark  ma  to the current line      run it through program  and replace the contents of the marked region with the results  You can even use it to see the contents of a directory  for example  by making a blank line  then with cursor sitting on that line      ls   Oh  and you can set marks like this for a-z  i e  ma   and   a   will jump you to the position you marked as  a      searches forward  and   repeats search backwards without having to resupply search pattern   Groovy stuff  vi is highly underrated  Once you get the hang of it  you won t ever want to use the IDE supplied editors

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q lt letter gt  - records a macro   and     lt same-letter gt  - plays it back   These are by far the most useful commands in Vim since you can have the computer do a whole lot of work for you  and you don t even have to write a program or anything

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In our software shop  variable declarations need to be sorted   In the language that we use  multiple variables can appear on the same line     new var1 var2 var3 etc   It is a real pain to go through and visually attempt to sort each and every variable   The block highlighting  and sort command in Vim are my friends here    Move the cursor to the first variable to be sorted  Issue the v command to enter visual mode  Move the cursor to the end of the last variable to be sorted in my case I enter   to go to the end of the line   Execute the  sort command to tell Vim to sort the highlighted text    This will only work if their exists a  sort  command on the underlying system

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vimcryption  vim -x filename txt  You will be asked for a passphrase  edit and save  Now whenever you open the file in vi again you will have to enter the password to view

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I really wish I d known that you can use CtrlC instead of Esc to switch out of insert mode  That s been a real productivity boost for me

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This always cheers me up    help 42

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X-F completes using filenames from the current directory  No more copying pasting from the terminal or painful double checking    X-P completes using words in the current file   set scrollbind forces one buffer to scroll alongside another  e g  split your window into two vertical panes  Load one file in each  perhaps different versions of the same file   Do  set scrollbind in each  Now when you scroll in one  both panes will scroll together  Ideal for comparing files

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Press   when the cursor is on a quote  parenthesis  bracket  or brace to find its match

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Don t press Esc ever  See this answer to learn why  As mentioned above  Ctrl   C is a better alternative  I strongly suggest mapping your Caps Lock key to escape  If you re editing a Ctags compatible language  using a tags file and  ta  Ctrl      etc  is a great way to navigate the code  even across multiple files  Also  Ctrl   N and Ctrl   P completion using the tags file is a great way to cut down on keystrokes  If you re editing a line that is wrapped because it s wider than your buffer  you can move up down using gk and gj  Try to focus on effective use of the motion commands before you learn bad habits  Things like using  dt  or  d3w  instead of pressing x a bunch of times  Basically  any time that you find yourself pressing the same key repeatedly  there s probably a better faster more concise way of accomplishing the same thing

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cw  Change word - deletes the word under the cursor and puts you in insert mode to type a new one   Of course this works with other movement keys  so you can do things like c  to change to the end of the line   f   character  Finds the next occurrence of the character on the current line   So you can do vft to select all the text up to the next  t  on the current line   It s another movement key  so it works with other commands too

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b  any portion of a buffer name  to switch buffers  So if you have two buffers   somefile1 txt   and  someotherfile2 txt   you can switch to the second with simply   b 2 t lt enter gt    It also supports tab completion  although it s not required   Speaking of tab completion  the setting  set wildmode full wildmenu is also very helpful  It enables complete tab completion for command-mode  as well as a very helpful ncurses-style menu of all the possible matches when using it

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For obsessive Vim configuration have a look at https   github com jmcantrell dotfiles-vim

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Typing a line number followed by gg will take you to that line

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q   I wish I knew that before I started vi for the first time

[vim] Simple Vim commands you wish you'd known earlier

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