vim-tips.html

---
layout: josterpi
title: Vim tips
last_updated: 2/16/2006
---
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<h2>Vim tips</h2>
My collection of vim tips. Good things to know, or just interesting. I should use these as sigs for my email or something.<br/>
<p>Add an introduction...</p>
<p>Add conventions...</p>
<p>Bram Moolenaar, the main guy behind vim, has some good things to say about using vim in his <a href="http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html">Seven habits of effective text editing</a><br/>
There's always the main <a href="http://www.vim.org">vim</a> website. If you don't have vim, you can download it there, for unix, windows, mac, and others.<br/>
I just found <a href="http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html">this</a> very nice article on efficient editing with vim.</p>


<h2>If you know nothing else</h2>
Vim help is useful! (<code>:help</code> OR <code>:h</code>) Example: <code>:h tabs</code> will pull up help on tabstop. <code>:h z</code> will pull up help for the <code>z</code> command and commands starting with z. <code>:h v_{char}</code> will pull up help on {char} when in visual mode. <code>:h :c</code> will pull up help on commands starting with c. And so on. I used to almost always have a window up with the online vim documentation. Then I discovered that it's all write there just a few keystrokes away.<br/>

<h2>Movement</h2>

<h3>Little Movements</h3>
<code>I</code> - go to the beginning of the line and go into insert<br/>
<code>A</code> - go to the end of the line and go into insert<br/><br/>

<code>0, ^</code> -- Move to the beginning of the line, and first non-blank character of the line, respectively<br/>
<code>$</code> -- Move to the end of the line<br/><br/>

<code>f{char}</code> - go forward to {char} on the current line<br/>
<code>F{char}</code> - go backwards to {char} on the current line<br/></br>

<code>t{char}</code> - go forward to {char} on the current line, but stop before it<br/>
<code>T{char}</code> - go backwards to {char} on the current line, but stop after it<br/><br/>

<code>;</code> - repeat last f,F,t,T<br/>
<code>,</code> - repeat last f,F,t,T backwards <br/><br/>

<code>gj,gk</code> -- Move down or up one display line. Helpful for navigating in long lines that wrap around.<br/>

<h3>Big Movements</h3>

<code>gg</code> -- Move to the very top of the file<br/>
<code>G</code> -- move to the very bottom of the file<br/>
if either command is proceeded by [count], moves to the [count] line from the top<br/><br/>

<code>H,M,L</code> -- (think, High, Middle, Low) Put the cursor on the first line, middle, and bottom of the window. If H or L are proceeded by [count], move to the [count] line from the top of bottom<br/><br/>

<code>zt,zz,zb</code> -- (think Top, z?, Bottom) Move the window such that the current line is on the top of the window, the middle, and the bottom. Great for seeing context.<br/><br/>

<code>'' OR ``</code> -- Go to the last jump point. Useful for jumping between two places in a file.<br/>
<code>m{a-z}</code> -- create a mark {a-z}<br/>
<code>'{a-z}, `{a-z}</code> -- jump to a mark {a-z} ` takes you to mark, ' takes you to first character on the mark's line<br/><br/>

<code>*</code> -- Search for the word under the cursor<br/><br/>

<code>/</code> - search forward for whatever text you type in<br/>
<code>?</code> - search backwards for whatever text you type in<br/>

<h2>Options</h2>

If you edit text files with vim, setting linebreak (<code>:set linebreak</code>) will make sure that vim breaks lines on word barriers, improving readability significantly. Note: it only breaks the line on the screen, not in the file<br/><br/>

If you have wrap on and would like to see when a line is wrapped or not, you can set "showbreak" to a character which will be appended to each wrapped line. (i.e., <code>:set showbreak=&gt;</code>)<br/>

To change the width of tabs to n characters - <code>:set tabstop=n</code><br/>
To change the width of indent to n characters - <code>:set shiftwidth=n</code><br/>
Lots of helpful info on tabs in vim - <code>:help tabstop</code><br/>

<h2>Advanced. Or, bet you didn't know...</h2>

If you want to search for something you select in visual mode: 1) yank 2) / 3) <code>CTRL-R"</code> 4) &lt;enter&gt; That is: <code>y/^R"&lt;enter&gt;</code> (note: " is the default yank buffer. You could use a named buffer as well if you want.)<br/><br/>

<code>~</code> -- switch case of character under cursor<br/><br/>

<code>i_CTRL-A</code> -- In insert mode, insert the previously inserted text.<br/><br/>

<code>{visual}g?</code> -- Rot13 encode highlighted text<br/>
<code>g??</code> -- Rot13 encode the current line<br/><br/>

<code>CTRL-A</code> -- Add [count] to the number at or after the cursor<br/>
<code>CTRL-X</code> -- Subtract [count] from the number at or after the cursor<br/><br/>

<code>J</code> - join the current line with the line below it.<br/><br/>

<code>.</code> -- repeat the last change<br/><br/>

If you want to change a quotation: "This is a quotation"<br/>
And want to change it to: "blablabla"<br/>
Start on the first letter of the quotation and press <code>ct"</code> (Change Till ")<br/><br/>

<code>ga</code> - with your cursor over a character, it will show you the decimal, hex, and octal codes of the character. Great for non printable characters.<br/><br/>

<p>To insert special characters, you'll be interested in digraphs. <code>:digraphs</code> will show you a complete table of special characters, plus their two character code, plus their ascii number. You can insert digraphs using ctrl-k plus the two character code. For example <code>ctrl-k SX</code> results in ^B being inserted</p>

<img src="/media/viman.gif"><br/>
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