What are the dark corners of Vim your mom never told you about

Question

There are a plethora of questions where people talk about common tricks  notably  Vim ctags tips and tricks    However  I don t refer to commonly used shortcuts that someone new to Vim would find cool  I am talking about a seasoned Unix user  be they a developer  administrator  both  etc    who thinks  they know something 99  of us never heard or dreamed about  Something that not only makes their work easier  but also is COOL and hackish  After all  Vim resides in the most dark-corner-rich OS in the world  thus it should have intricacies that only a few privileged know about and want to share with us

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Not sure if this counts as dark-corner-ish at all, but I've only just learnt it...

:g/match/y A

will yank (copy) all lines containing "match" into the "a/@a register. (The capitalization as A makes vim append yankings instead of replacing the previous register contents.) I used it a lot recently when making Internet Explorer stylesheets.

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I d like to arrange some of my own config files in after-directory  It s especially useful for ftplugin    You can avoid to write a long list of augroup in your  vimrc file instead of separate files for each type   But  obviously   vim ftplugin directory do the same thing as  vim after ftplugin  but I d prefer to leave  vim directory to vim plugins

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In normal mode                                                            gf                  open file under cursor in same window --  see  h path Ctrl-w f            open file under cursor in new window Ctrl-w q            close current window Ctrl-w 6            open alternate file --  see  h   gi                  init insert mode in last insertion position  0                  place the cursor where it was when the file was last edited

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Ability to run Vim on a client server based modes    For example  suppose you re working on a project with a lot of buffers  tabs and other info saved on a session file called session vim    You can open your session and create a server by issuing the following command   vim --servername SAMPLESERVER -S session vim   Note that you can open regular text files if you want to create a server and it doesn t have to be necessarily a session   Now  suppose you re in another terminal and need to open another file  If you open it regularly by issuing   vim new file txt   Your file would be opened in a separate Vim buffer  which is hard to do interactions with the files on your session  In order to open new file txt in a new tab on your server use this command   vim --servername SAMPLESERVER --remote-tab-silent new file txt   If there s no server running  this file will be opened just like a regular file   Since providing those flags every time you want to run them is very tedious  you can create a separate alias for creating client and server   I placed the followings on my bashrc file   alias vims  vim --servername SAMPLESERVER  alias vimc  vim --servername SAMPLESERVER --remote-tab-silent    You can find more information about this at  http   vimdoc sourceforge net htmldoc remote html

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In order to copy a text from Vim to your clipboard for other application to use  select the text you want to copy in visual mode  and then press   y  This way  you can easily paste your text to other applications    This is particularly useful  if you have splitted the window vertically and you want to copy something from the right window  Using set mouse r  won t help you with this situation  since it will select everything on the left window as well   Note that your vim has to be compiled with xterm support

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Vim will open a URL  for example  vim http   stackoverflow com    Nice when you need to pull up the source of a page for reference

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de Delete everything till the end of the word by pressing   at your heart s desire   ci xyz Esc  -- This is a weird one  Here  the  i  does not mean insert mode  Instead it means inside the parenthesis  So this sequence cuts the text inside parenthesis you re standing in and replaces it with  xyz   It also works inside square and figure brackets -- just do ci  or ci  correspondingly  Naturally  you can do di  if you just want to delete all text without typing anything  You can also do a instead of i if you want to delete the parentheses as well and not just text inside them   ci  - cuts the text in current quotes  ciw - cuts the current word  This works just like the previous one except that   is replaced with w   C - cut the rest of the line and switch to insert mode   ZZ -- save and close current file  WAY faster than Ctrl-F4 to close the current tab    ddp - move current line one row down  xp -- move current character one position to the right  U - uppercase  so viwU upercases the word    - switches case  so viw  will reverse casing of entire word  Ctrl u   Ctrl d scroll the page half-a-screen up or down  This seems to be more useful than the usual full-screen paging as it makes it easier to see how the two screens relate  For those who still want to scroll entire screen at a time there s Ctrl f for Forward and Ctrl b for Backward  Ctrl Y and Ctrl E scroll down or up one line at a time   Crazy but very useful command is zz -- it scrolls the screen to make this line appear in the middle  This is excellent for putting the piece of code you re working on in the center of your attention  Sibling commands -- zt and zb -- make this line the top or the bottom one on the sreen which is not quite as useful     finds and jumps to the matching parenthesis   de -- delete from cursor to the end of the word  you can also do dE to delete until the next space   bde -- delete the current word  from left to right delimiter  df space  -- delete up until and including the next space  dt  -- delete until next dot  dd -- delete this entire line  ye  or yE  -- yanks text from here to the end of the word  ce - cuts through the end of the word  bye -- copies current word  makes me wonder what  hi  does    yy -- copies the current line  cc -- cuts the current line  you can also do S instead  There s also lower cap s which cuts current character and switches to insert mode   viwy or viwc  Yank or change current word  Hit w multiple times to keep selecting each subsequent word  use b to move backwards  vi  - select all text in figure brackets  va  - select all text including   s  vi p - highlight everything inside the   s and replace with the pasted text  b and e move the cursor word-by-word  similarly to how Ctrl Arrows normally do  The definition of word is a little different though  as several consecutive delmiters are treated as one word  If you start at the middle of a word  pressing b will always get you to the beginning of the current word  and each consecutive b will jump to the beginning of the next word  Similarly  and easy to remember  e gets the cursor to the end of the current  and each subsequent  word   similar to b e  capital B and E move the cursor word-by-word using only whitespaces as delimiters   capital D  take a deep breath  Deletes the rest of the line to the right of the cursor  same as Shift End Del in normal editors  notice 2 keypresses -- Shift D -- instead of 3

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HOWTO  Auto-complete Ctags when using Vim in Bash  For anyone else who uses Vim and Ctags  I ve written a small auto-completer function for Bash  Add the following into your    bash completion file  create it if it does not exist    Thanks go to stylishpants for his many fixes and improvements    vim ctags         local cur prev      COMPREPLY        cur    COMP WORDS COMP CWORD        prev    COMP WORDS COMP CWORD-1         case    prev   in         -t                Avoid the complaint message when no tags file exists             if     -r   tags               then                 return             fi                Escape slashes to avoid confusing awk             cur   cur                      COMPREPLY     compgen -W   awk -vORS           cur     print    1    tags                                              filedir xspec                    esac      Files matching this pattern are excluded excludelist      o O so SO so   conf  SO   CONF  a A rpm RPM deb DEB gif GIF jp  e g JP  E G mp3 MP3 mp  e g MP  E G avi AVI asf ASF ogg OGG class CLASS    complete -F  vim ctags -f -X    excludelist   vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview   Once you restart your Bash session  or create a new one  you can type   Code      vim -t MyC lt tab key gt    and it will auto-complete the tag the same way it does for files and directories   Code   MyClass MyClassFactory    vim -t MyC   I find it really useful when I m jumping into a quick bug fix

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Map F5 to quickly ROT13 your buffer   map  lt F5 gt  ggg G     You can use it as a boss key

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Ctrl-n while in insert mode will auto complete whatever word you re typing based on all the words that are in open buffers   If there is more than one match it will give you a list of possible words that you can cycle through using ctrl-n and ctrl-p

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Due to the latency and lack of colors  I love color schemes    I don t like programming on remote machines in PuTTY  So I developed this trick to work around this problem  I use it on Windows   You will need   1x gVim 1x rsync on remote and local machines 1x SSH private key auth to the remote machine so you don t need to type the password 1x Pageant 1x PuTTY   Setting up remote machine  Configure rsync to make your working directory accessible  I use an SSH tunnel and only allow connections from the tunnel   address   127 0 0 1 hosts allow   127 0 0 1 port   40000 use chroot   false  bledge ce      path    home xplasil divine bledge ce     read only   false   Then start rsyncd      rsync --daemon --config rsyncd conf  Setting up local machine  Install rsync from Cygwin  Start Pageant and load your private key for the remote machine  If you re using SSH tunelling  start PuTTY to create the tunnel  Create a batch file push bat in your working directory which will upload changed files to the remote machine using rsync   rsync --blocking-io   cc   h SConstruct rsync   localhost 40001 bledge ce   SConstruct is a build file for scons  Modify the list of files to suit your needs  Replace localhost with the name of remote machine if you don t use SSH tunelling   Configuring Vim That is now easy  We will use the quickfix feature   make and error list   but the compilation will run on the remote machine  So we need to set makeprg   set makeprg push   amp  amp   plink  -batch  xplasil anna fi muni cz    cd   home xplasil divine bledge ce   amp  amp   scons  -j  2     This will first start the push bat task to upload the files and then execute the commands on remote machine using SSH  Plink from the PuTTY suite   The command first changes directory to the working dir and then starts build  I use scons    The results of build will show conviniently in your local gVim errors list

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O and  I  Go to older newer position   When you are moving through the file  by searching  moving commands etc   vim rember these  jumps   so you can repeat these jumps backward   O - O for old  and forward   I - just next to I on keyboard   I find it very useful when writing code and performing a lot of searches   gi  Go to position where Insert mode was stopped last  I find myself often editing and then searching for something  To return to editing place press gi   gf  put cursor on file name  e g  include header file   press gf and the file is opened  gF  similar to gf but recognizes format   file name   line number    Pressing gF will open  file name  and set cursor to  line number     P and  N  Auto complete text while editing   P - previous match and  N next match    X L  While editing completes to the same line  useful for programming   You write code and then you recall that you have the same code somewhere in file  Just press  X L and the full line completed   X F  Complete file names  You write   etc pass  Hmm  You forgot the file name  Just press  X F and the filename is completed   Z or  sh  Move temporary to the shell  If you need a quick bashing    press  Z  to put vi in background  to return to original shell and press fg to return to vim back  press  sh to go to sub shell and press  D exit to return to vi back

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command  executes an external command while you re in Vim   But add a dot after the colon        command   and it ll dump the output of the command into your current window  That s             For example       ls   I use this a lot for things like adding the current date into a document I m typing       date

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imap jj  lt esc gt

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I love  ls command

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A few useful ones    set nu   displays lines  44       go to line 44           go to last modification line   My favourite  Ctrl   n WORD COMPLETION

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insert range ip s                O O            oOO      OOo         for i in range 1 255     put  10 0 0   i   endfor

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gg G   Corrects indentation for entire file  I was missing my trusty  lt C-a gt  lt C-i gt  in Eclipse but just found out vim handles it nicely

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Input a character from its hexadecimal value  insert mode     lt C-Q gt x type the hexadecimal byte

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xxd   Make vim into a hex editor      xxd -r   Revert   Warning  If you don t edit with binary  -b   you might damage the file       Josh Lee in the comments

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Neither of the following is really diehard  but I find it extremely useful   Trivial bindings  but I just can t live without  It enables hjkl-style movement in insert mode  using the ctrl key   In normal mode  ctrl-k j scrolls half a screen up down and ctrl-l h goes to the next previous buffer  The    and    mappings are especially for an AZERTY-keyboard and go to the next previous make error   imap  lt c-j gt   lt Down gt  imap  lt c-k gt   lt Up gt  imap  lt c-h gt   lt Left gt  imap  lt c-l gt   lt Right gt  nmap  lt c-j gt   lt c-d gt  nmap  lt c-k gt   lt c-u gt  nmap  lt c-h gt   lt c-left gt  nmap  lt c-l gt   lt c-right gt   nmap     cp lt RETURN gt  nmap     cn lt RETURN gt    A small function I wrote to highlight functions  globals  macro s  structs and typedefs   Might be slow on very large files   Each type gets different highlighting  see   help group-name  to get an idea of your current colortheme s settings  Usage  save the file with ww  default   ww    You need ctags for this   nmap  lt Leader gt ww  call SaveCtagsHighlight   lt CR gt    Based on  http   stackoverflow com questions 736701 class-function-names-highlighting-in-vim function SaveCtagsHighlight       write      let extension   expand    e       if extension   c   amp  amp  extension   cpp   amp  amp  extension   h   amp  amp  extension   hpp          return     endif      silent  ctags --fields  KS       redraw       let list   taglist           for item in list         let kind   item kind          if     kind     member              let kw    Identifier          elseif kind     function              let kw    Function          elseif kind     macro              let kw    Macro          elseif kind     struct              let kw    Structure          elseif kind     typedef              let kw    Typedef          else             continue         endif          let name   item name         if name     operator    amp  amp  name     operator                exec  syntax keyword   kw     name         endif     endfor     echo expand        written  tags updated  endfunction   I have the habit of writing lots of code and functions and I don t like to write prototypes for them  So I made some function to generate a list of prototypes within a C-style sourcefile  It comes in two flavors  one that removes the formal parameter s name and one that preserves it  I just refresh the entire list every time I need to update the prototypes  It avoids having out of sync prototypes and function definitions  Also needs ctags    Usage  in normal mode  where you want the prototypes to be pasted    call GenerateProptotypes   function GeneratePrototypes       execute  silent  ctags --fields  KS   expand          redraw      let list   taglist           let line   line          for item in list         if item kind     function    amp  amp   item name     main              let name   item name             let retType   item cmd             let retType   substitute  retType        s                       let retType   substitute  retType    s   name                              if has key  item   signature                    let sig   item signature                 let sig   substitute  sig    s  w   s                    g                   let sig   substitute  sig    s  w     s        1                    else                 let sig                    endif             let proto   retType     t    name   sig                   call append  line  proto               let line   line   1         endif     endfor endfunction   function GeneratePrototypesFullSignature        execute  silent  ctags --fields  KS   expand          let dir   expand    p h        execute  silent  ctags --fields  KSi --extra  q  dir           redraw      let list   taglist           let line   line          for item in list         if item kind     function    amp  amp   item name     main              let name   item name             let retType   item cmd             let retType   substitute  retType        s                       let retType   substitute  retType    s   name                              if has key  item   signature                    let sig   item signature             else                 let sig     void               endif             let proto   retType     t    name   sig                   call append  line  proto               let line   line   1         endif     endfor endfunction

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Some of my must-haves are   cscope   ctags   vim  which can be found on the web   Some abreviations for quickly starting new code files such as   ab cpph  include  lt iostream gt  lt CR gt  include  lt string gt  lt CR gt  include  lt cstdlib gt  lt CR gt  include  lt cassert gt  lt CR gt  include  lt vector gt  lt CR gt  include  lt  stdexcept gt  lt CR gt using namespace std  lt CR gt int main int argc  char  argv      ab perlh    usr bin perl lt CR gt use strict  lt CR gt use warnings  lt CR gt  ab chdr  include  lt stdio h gt  lt CR gt  include  lt sys types h gt  lt CR gt  include  lt unistd h gt  lt CR gt  include  lt stdlib h gt  lt CR gt  include  lt sys stat h gt  lt CR gt   include  lt sys wait h gt  lt CR gt  include  lt string h gt  lt CR gt int main int argc  char  argv      ab xhtmlhdr  lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  UTF-8   gt  lt CR gt  lt  DOCTYPE html PUBLIC  -  W3C  DTD XHTML 1 0 Strict  EN   http   www w3 o rg TR xhtml1 DTD xhtml1-strict dtd  gt  lt CR gt  lt html xmlns  http   www w3 org 1999 xhtml  gt  lt CR gt    lt head gt  lt CR gt    lt title gt  lt  title gt  lt CR gt  lt link h ref  style css  rel  STYLESHEET  type  text css  gt  lt CR gt  lt  head gt    For example cpph will insert a basic skeleton of a main cc file  There is also my mapping of the function keys   map  lt F1 gt   lt Esc gt  w lt CR gt  perl  e      error pl   my   f  l  w    split      e   my  w join      w    curwin- gt Cursor  l 0   VIM  Msg  w   lt CR gt  map  lt F2 gt   wincmd w lt CR gt  map  lt F3 gt   wincmd s lt CR gt  map  lt F4 gt   wincmd v lt CR gt  map  lt F5 gt   wincmd o lt CR gt  map  lt F6 gt   sball lt CR gt  map  lt F7 gt   wq lt CR gt  map  lt F8 gt   wincmd q lt CR gt  map  lt F9 gt   wincmd - lt CR gt  map  lt F10 gt   wincmd   lt CR gt  map  lt F11 gt   wincmd  lt  lt CR gt  map  lt F12 gt   wincmd  gt  lt CR gt    In this case my F1 is mapped to put the cursor over the next error that needs to be corrected for a source code migration   map   ebi   ea      This map would make   quote a string

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Not an obscure feature  but very useful and time saving    If you want to save a session of your open buffers  tabs  markers and other settings  you can issue the following   mksession session vim   You can open your session using   vim -S session vim

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Mappings to make movements operate on the current screen line in wrap mode   I discovered this in a comment for a Vim tip some time ago  and it has proven quite handy   function  ScreenMovement movement    if  amp wrap     return  g    a movement   else     return a movement   endif endfunction onoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  j ScreenMovement  j   onoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  k ScreenMovement  k   onoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  0 ScreenMovement  0   onoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt    ScreenMovement      onoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt    ScreenMovement      nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  j ScreenMovement  j   nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  k ScreenMovement  k   nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt  0 ScreenMovement  0   nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt    ScreenMovement      nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt expr gt    ScreenMovement

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sp   h - directory listing   file-chooser using the current file s directory   belongs as a comment under rampion s cd tip  but I don t have commenting-rights yet

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Not exactly a dark secret  but I like to put the following mapping into my  vimrc file  so I can hit  -   minus  anytime to open the file explorer to show files adjacent to the one I just edit  In the file explorer  I can hit another  -  to move up one directory  providing seamless browsing of a complex directory structures  like the ones used by the MVC frameworks nowadays    map -  Explore lt cr gt    These may be also useful for somebody  I like to scroll the screen and advance the cursor at the same time   map  lt c-j gt  j lt c-e gt  map  lt c-k gt  k lt c-y gt    Tab navigation - I love tabs and I need to move easily between them   map  lt c-l gt   tabnext lt enter gt  map  lt c-h gt   tabprevious lt enter gt    Only on Mac OS X  Safari-like tab navigation   map  lt S-D-Right gt   tabnext lt cr gt  map  lt S-D-Left gt   tabprevious lt cr gt

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Create a function to execute the current buffer using it s shebang  assuming one is set  and call it with crtl-x   map  lt C-X gt   call CallInterpreter   lt CR gt   au BufEnter     if match  getline 1               0       execute  let b interpreter   getline 1  2         endif  fun  CallInterpreter       if exists  b interpreter           exec      b interpreter           endif endfun

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Not exactly obscure  but there are several  delete in  commands which are extremely useful  like     diw to delete the current word di  to delete within the current parens di  to delete the text between the quotes   Others can be found on  help text-objects

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Here s something not obvious  If you have a lot of custom plugins   extensions in your  HOME and you need to work from su   sudo       sometimes  then this might be useful   In your    bashrc   export VIMINIT   so  HOME  vimrc   In your    vimrc   if  HOME    root          if  USER   root                  if isdirectory   home your typical username                           let rtuser    your typical username                  elseif isdirectory   home your other username                           let rtuser    your other username                  endif         else                 let rtuser    USER         endif         let  amp runtimepath   substitute  amp runtimepath   HOME    home   rtuser   g   endif  It will allow your local plugins to load - whatever way you use to change the user   You might also like to take the   swp files out of your current path and into   vimtmp  this goes into  vimrc    if   isdirectory expand    vimtmp       call mkdir expand    vimtmp    endif if isdirectory expand    vimtmp       set directory   vimtmp else    set directory    var tmp  tmp endif   Also  some mappings I use to make editing easier - makes ctrl s work like escape and ctrl h l switch the tabs   inoremap  lt C-s   lt ESC  vnoremap  lt C-s   lt ESC  noremap  lt C-l  gt noremap  lt C-h  gT

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Let s see some pretty little IDE editor do column transposition     s        I        2 I 1    Explanation     and    is how to remember stuff in regex-land  And  1   2 etc is how to retrieve the remembered stuff    gt  gt  gt         I         Remember everything followed by  I  tab  followed by everything    gt  gt  gt   2 I 1   Replace the above stuff with  2nd stuff you remembered  followed by  1st stuff you remembered  - essentially doing a transpose

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My favourite recipe to switch back and forth between windows   function  SwitchPrevWin       let l winnr index   winnr       if l winnr index  gt  1        let l winnr index -  1     else         set winnr index to max window open         let l winnr index   winnr          endif     exe l winnr index    wincmd w   endfunction     nmap  lt M-z gt   call SwitchPrevWin   imap  lt M-z gt   lt ESC gt  call SwitchPrevWin       nmap  lt C-z gt   wincmd w imap  lt C-z gt   lt ESC gt  wincmd w

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Typing    will correct the indentation of the current line based on the line above   Actually  you can do one   sign followed by any movement command    movement   For example  you can use the   movement which moves between matching braces  Position the cursor on the   in the following code   if  thisA    that      not indented if  some    other    x   y        And press    to instantly get this   if  thisA    that          not indented     if  some    other            x   y            Alternately  you could do  a  within the code block  rather than positioning yourself right on the   character

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I often want to highlight a particular word function name  but don t want to search to the next instance of it yet   map m

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setlocal autoread   Auto reloads the current buffer  especially useful while viewing log files and it almost serves the functionality of  tail  program in unix from within vim   Checking for compile errors from within vim   set the makeprg variable depending on the language let s say for perl      setlocal makeprg   perl  -c       For PHP      set makeprg php  -l         set errorformat  m  in   f  on  line   l   Issuing   make  runs the associated makeprg and displays the compilation errors warnings in quickfix window and can easily navigate to the corresponding line numbers

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In Insert mode   lt C-A gt    - Increments the number under cursor   lt C-X gt    - Decrements the number under cursor   It will be very useful if we want to generate sequential numbers in vim  Lets say if we want to insert lines 1-10 with numbers from 1 to 10  like  1  on 1st line  2  on 2nd line     insert  0  on the first line and copy the line and past 9 times So that all lines will show  0    Run the following Ex command   g   exe  norm     line           lt C-A gt

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This is a nice trick to reopen the current file with a different encoding    e   enc cp1250   p   Useful when you have to work with legacy encodings  The supported encodings are listed in a table under encoding-values  see help encoding-values   Similar thing also works for   ff  so that you can reopen file with Windows Unix line ends if you get it wrong for the first time  see help ff

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I use Vim for everything   When I m editing an e-mail message  I use   gqap  or gwap   extensively to easily and correctly reformat on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis  even with quote leadin characters   In order to achieve this functionality  I also add   -c  set fo tcrq  -c  set tw 76   to the command to invoke the editor externally   One noteworthy addition would be to add  a  to the fo  formatoptions  parameter   This will automatically reformat the paragraph as you type and navigate the content  but may interfere or cause problems with errant or odd formatting contained in the message

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Assuming you have Perl and or Ruby support compiled in   rubydo and  perldo will run a Ruby or Perl one-liner on every line in a range  defaults to entire buffer   with    bound to the text of the current line  minus the newline    Manipulating    will change the text of that line   You can use this to do certain things that are easy to do in a scripting language but not so obvious using Vim builtins   For example to reverse the order of the words in a line    perldo      join      reverse split   To insert a random string of 8 characters  A-Z  at the end of every line    rubydo              1  8  collect   A    Z   to a rand 26   join   You are limited to acting on one line at a time and you can t add newlines

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gv   Reselects last visual selection

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is also good when you want to diff files across two different copies of a project without wearing out the pinkies  from root of project1      vert diffs  project2 root

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I collected these over the years     Pasting in normal mode should append to the right of cursor nmap  lt C-V gt       a lt C-V gt  lt ESC gt    Saving imap  lt C-S gt        lt C-o gt  up lt CR gt  nmap  lt C-S gt        up lt CR gt    Insert mode control delete imap  lt C-Backspace gt   lt C-W gt  imap  lt C-Delete gt   lt C-O gt dw nmap     lt Leader gt o       o lt ESC gt k nmap     lt Leader gt O       O lt ESC gt j   tired of my typo nmap  W      w

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Want an IDE    make will run the makefile in the current directory  parse the compiler output  you can then use  cn and  cp to step through the compiler errors opening each file and seeking to the line number in question    syntax on turns on vim s syntax highlighting

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Just before copying and pasting to stackoverflow    retab 1    s  I   g    s           Now copy and paste code   As requested in the comments   retab 1  This sets the tab size to one  But it also goes through the code and adds extra tabs and spaces so that the formatting does not move any of the actual text  ie the text looks the same after ratab      s  I   g   Note the  I is tthe result of hitting tab  This searches for all tabs and replaces them with a single space  Since we just did a retab this should not cause the formatting to change but since putting tabs into a website is hit and miss it is good to remove them     s    nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp    Replace the beginning of the line with four spaces  Since you cant actually replace the beginning of the line with anything it inserts four spaces at the beging of the line  this is needed by SO formatting to make the code stand out

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Sometimes a setting in your  vimrc will get overridden by a plugin or autocommand  To debug this a useful trick is to use the  verbose command in conjunction with  set  For example  to figure out where cindent got set unset    verbose set cindent    This will output something like   cindent     Last set from  usr share vim vim71 indent c vim   This also works with maps and highlights   Thanks joeytwiddle for pointing this out   For example    verbose nmap U n  U              lt C-R gt          Last set from    vimrc   verbose highlight Normal Normal         xxx guifg  dddddd guibg  111111 font Inconsolata Medium 14         Last set from   src vim-holodark colors holodark vim

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I like to use  sudo bash   and my sysadmin hates this  He locked down  sudo  so it could only be used with a handful of commands  ls  chmod  chown  vi  etc   but I was able to use vim to get a root shell anyway   bash  sudo vi   silent  bash   q Password         root

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I just found this one today via NSFAQ   Comment blocks of code   Enter Blockwise Visual mode by hitting CTRL-V   Mark the block you wish to comment   Hit I  capital I  and enter your comment string at the beginning of the line      for C     Hit ESC and all lines selected will have    prepended to the front of the line

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Put this in your  vimrc to have a command to pretty-print xml   function FormatXml        s    S     lt            gt      lt      1 3 r 2 4 g     set filetype xml     normal gg G endfunction  command FormatXml  call FormatXml

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I often use many windows when I work on a project and sometimes I need to resize them  Here s what I use   map    lt C-W gt   map -  lt C-W gt -   These mappings allow to increase and decrease the size of the current window  It s quite simple but it s fast

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In insert mode  ctrl x  ctrl p will complete  with menu of possible completions if that s how you like it  the current long identifier that you are typing   if  SomeCall LONG ID   lt -- type c-x c-p here              LONG ID I CANT POSSIBLY REMEMBER               LONG ID BUT I NEW IT WASNT THIS ONE              LONG ID GOSH FORGOT THIS              LONG ID ETC

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Macros can call other macros  and can also call itself   eg   qq0dwj qq q      will delete the first word from every line until the end of the file   This is quite a simple example but it demonstrates a very powerful feature of vim

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I use vim for just about any text editing I do  so I often times use copy and paste  The problem is that vim by default will often times distort imported text via paste  The way to stop this is to use   set paste   before pasting in your data  This will keep it from messing up   Note that you will have to issue  set nopaste to recover auto-indentation  Alternative ways of pasting pre-formatted text are the clipboard registers    and     and  r cat  you will have to end the pasted fragment with  D    It is also sometimes helpful to turn on a high contrast color scheme  This can be done with   color blue   I ve noticed that it does not work on all the versions of vim I use but it does on  most

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set colorcolumn  1 or set cc  1 for vim 7 3

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Use the right mouse key to toggle insert mode in gVim with the following settings in    gvimrc       ------------------------------------------------------------------   toggle insert mode  lt -- gt   normal mode with the  lt RightMouse gt -key  ------------------------------------------------------------------ nnoremap   lt RightMouse gt   lt Insert gt  inoremap   lt RightMouse gt   lt ESC gt

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r   lt command gt    pastes the output of an external command into the buffer   Do some math and get the result directly in the text    r  echo    3   5   8     Get the list of files to compile when writing a Makefile    r  ls   c   Don t look up that fact you read on wikipedia  have it directly pasted into the document you are writing    r  lynx -dump http   en wikipedia org wiki Whatever

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Might not be one that 99  of Vim users don t know about  but it s something I use daily and that any Linux Vim poweruser must know    Basic command  yet extremely useful    w  sudo tee     I often forget to sudo before editing a file I don t have write permissions on  When I come to save that file and get a permission error  I just issue that vim command in order to save the file without the need to save it to a temp file and then copy it back again   You obviously have to be on a system with sudo installed and have sudo rights

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Want to look at your  command history   q    Then browse  edit and finally  to execute the command   Ever make similar changes to two files and switch back and forth between them   Say  source and header files     set hidden  map  lt TAB gt   e  lt CR gt    Then tab back and forth between those files

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per this thread  To prefix a set of lines I use one of two different approaches   One approach is the block select  mentioned by sth   In general  you can select a rectangular region with ctrl-V followed by cursor-movement  Once you ve highlighted a rectangle  pressing shift-I will insert characters on the left side of the rectangle  or shift-A will append them on the right side of the rectangle  So you can use this technique to make a rectangle that includes the left-most column of the lines you want to prefix  hit shift-I  type the prefix  and then hit escape   The other approach is to use a substitution  as mentioned by Brian Agnew   Brian s substitution will affect the entire file  the   in the command means  all lines    To affect just a few lines the easiest approach is to hit shift-V  which enables visual-line mode  while on the first last line  and then move to the last first line  Then type    s   YOUR PREFIX   The   is a regex  in this case  the beginning of the line   By typing this in visual line mode you ll see   lt     inserted before the s automatically  This means the range of the substitution will be the visual selection   Extra tip  if your prefix contains slashes  you can either escape them with backslash  or you can use a different punctuation character as the separator in the command  For example  to add C   line comments  I usually write    s         For adding a suffix the substitution approach is generally easier unless all of your lines are exactly the same length  Just use   for the pattern instead of   and your string will be appended instead of pre-pended   If you want to add a prefix and a suffix simultaneously  you can do something like this    s    PREFIX  amp  SUFFIX   The    matches the whole line  The  amp  in the replacement puts the matched text  the whole line  back  but now it ll have your prefix and suffix added   BTW  when commenting out code you ll probably want to uncomment it later  You can use visual-block  ctrl-V  to select the slashes and then hit d to delete them  or you can use a substitution  probably with a visual line selection  made with shift-V  to remove the leading slashes like this    s

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When working on a project where the build process is slow I always build in the background and pipe the output to a file called errors err  something like make debug 2 gt  amp 1    tee errors err   This makes it possible for me to continue editing or reviewing the source code during the build process  When it is ready  using pynotify on GTK to inform me that it is complete  I can look at the result in vim using quickfix  Start by issuing  cf ile  which reads the error file and jumps to the first error  I personally like to use cwindow to get the build result in a separate window

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I was sure someone would have posted this already  but here goes   Take any build system you please  make  mvn  ant  whatever  In the root of the project directory  create a file of the commands you use all the time  like this   mvn install mvn clean install     and so forth  To do a build  put the cursor on the line and type   sh  I e  filter that line  write it to a shell and replace with the results    The build log replaces the line  ready to scroll  search  whatever   When you re done viewing the log  type u to undo and you re back to your file of commands

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Variation of sudo write   into  vimrc  cmap w   w  sudo tee    gt  dev null   After reload vim you can do  sudo save  as   w

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map macros  I rather often find it useful to on-the-fly define some key mapping just like one would define a macro  The twist here is  that the mapping is recursive and is executed until it fails   Example   enum ProcStats           ps pid          ps comm          ps state          ps ppid          ps pgrp   map X  ps  lt CR gt 3xixy lt Esc gt X   Gives   enum ProcStats           xypid          xycomm          xystate          xyppid          xypgrp    Just an silly example      I am completely aware of all the downsides - it just so happens that I found it rather useful in some occasions  Also it can be interesting to watch it at work

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Mine is using macros instead of searches - combining a macro with visual mode is sometimes more efficient

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Replace all      s oldtext newtext igc   Give a to replace all

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For making vim a little more like an IDE editor    set nu - for line numbers in the left margin  set cul - highlights the line containing the cursor

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Something I just discovered recently that I thought was very cool    earlier 15m   Reverts the document back to how it was 15 minutes ago  Can take various arguments for the amount of time you want to roll back  and is dependent on undolevels  Can be reversed with the opposite command  later

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One that I rarely find in most Vim tutorials  but it s INCREDIBLY useful  at least to me   is the  g  and g   to move  forward  backward  through the changelist   Let me show how I use it  Sometimes I need to copy and paste a piece of code or string  say a hex color code in a CSS file  so I search  jump  not caring where the match is   copy it and then jump back  g   to where I was editing the code to finally paste it  No need to create marks  Simpler   Just my 2cents

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Reuse  Motions to mix with other commands  more here   tx fx Fx   Use your favorite tools in Vim    r  python anything you want or awk or Y something   Repeat in visual mode  powerful when combined with tips above

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TOhtml  Creates an html rendering of the current file

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Often  I like changing current directories while editing - so I have to specify paths less   cd   h

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Try using perltidy for formatting by   normal-mode command   set equalprg perltidy

[unix] What are the dark corners of Vim your mom never told you about?

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