Vim Bootcamp

Concepts

• Vim is a modal editor with four primary modes
  • Normal: default mode used for movement and commands
  • Insert: typical text editing mode
  • Visual: selection mode for selecting characters, lines, and blocks of text
  • Command-line: for entering editor commands (e.g. :q or :help)
• Vim strives to be purely keyboard-driven
• Most commands have some handy mnemonic to help you memorize it
  • e.g. d is delete, u is undo, p is put, i is insert
• Many commands have multiple forms that do something similar
  • e.g. i inserts before cursor, I inserts at the beginning of the line
  • e.g. d is the delete command, D deletes to end-of-line, dd deletes an entire line
• Orthogonal design
  • Vim has two main types of commands: movement and editing
  • You can combine editing commands with movement commands to make editing more powerful
    • e.g. w moves the cursor by a word, d deletes something, so dw deletes a word
  • Commands can be repeated by prefixing them with a number
    • e.g. j moves the cursor down one line, so 5j moves the cursor down 5 lines
    • e.g. yy yanks (copies) a line, so 10yy copies the next 10 lines
  • Editing-movements can be combined with repetition as well
    • e.g. d3w deletes 3 words

Movement

• Cursor movement
  • j down
  • k up
  • h left
  • l right
• Word movement
  • w go to begining of next word (punctuation separates)
  • W like w, but only space separates
  • e go to end of current word (punctuation separates)
  • E like e, but only space separates
  • b go back to the beginning of previous word (punctuation separates)
  • B like b, but only space separates
• Line movement
  • $ go to last character on line (mnemonic: same as regex)
  • ^ go to first character on line (mnemonic: same as regex)
  • 0 go to beginning of line
  • 10| go to column 10
• Searching movement
  • /foo go to the next instance of "foo" in the document
  • ?foo like /foo but in reverse
  • n repeat the last search in its natural direction
  • N repeat the last search in reverse
  • fx find the next location of x on the current line and go to it
  • Fx like fx but in reverse
  • tx find til the next location of x on the current line and go to it (puts cursor just before x)
  • Tx like tx but in reverse
  • ; repeat the last line search in its natural direction
  • , repeat the last line search in reverse
  • %G
  • [, {
• Marks
  • mx creates a mark named x at the cursor's current location
  • `x moves the cursor to the location defined by mark x
  • `` moves the cursor back to its last location (e.g. after a search or paging)
• Document movement
  • Ctrl-d page down
  • Ctrl-u page up
  • gg go to top of file
  • G go to bottom of file
  • 10G go to line 10
• View movement
  • H move cursor to top of view (high point)
  • M move cursor to middle of view
  • L move cursor to bottom of view (low point)
  • zz center view on the cursor's current line

Editing

• Mode switching: transitioning from normal mode to insert mode
  • i start inserting left of cursor
  • I start inserting at the beginning of the line
  • a start inserting right of cursor (mnemonic: after or append)
  • A start inserting at the end of the line
  • o start inserting on a new line below current
  • O start inserting on a new line above current
  • R start replacing (like insert, but overwrites)
  • Esc Ctrl-[ return to normal mode
• Editing
  • u undo
  • Ctrl-r redo
  • y copy (yank) text, requires movement
  • yy copy entire line
  • p put (paste) after cursor
  • P put before cursor
  • d delete text, requires movement
  • D delete to end of line
  • dd delete entire line
  • c change text (change is a delete that also starts inserting), requires movement
  • C change to end of line
  • cc change entire line
  • s substitute text
  • rx replace character under cursor with x
  • x delete single character under cursor
  • . repeat last editing command
  • ~ toggle casing of selected characters
  • >> << indent, outdent line (mnemonic: bitwise shift, like C)
• Visual mode
  • While in visual mode, most normal-mode commands will apply to whatever you have selected (e.g. y yanks selection, d deletes it)
  • v switch to character-based visual mode
  • V switch to line-based visual mode
  • Ctrl-v switch to block-based visual mode
    • While in block-based visual mode, after selecting text, I and A will switch you to multiline insert/append mode where you can edit multiple lines together
  • Esc Ctrl-[ return to normal mode

Repetition

• Commands and movements can be repeated
• 3yy yank 3 lines starting at the cursor
• 10>> indent 10 lines starting at the cursor
• d2w and 2dw both delete 2 words
• 4p put 4 times
• 10k move cursor up 10 lines

Command-Line

• : in normal mode, switch to command-line mode to enter editor commands
• A few editor commands
  • q quit
  • q! quit without saving
  • wq write file and quit
  • wq! write file and quit, even if read-only
  • w write file
  • w! write file, even if read-only
  • %s/foo/bar/g replace all instances of "foo" with "bar" in the document

Other Goodies

• Macros
  • Macros allow you to record commands and play them back. This is helpful when editing structured patterns of data or performing a repetitive operation on similar text.
  • qx start recording macro into the macro named x
  • q if recording, stop recording
  • @x replay the commands stored in x
• Vim can address anything that has matching characters (e.g. quotes, parentheses, brackets, braces)
  • e.g. di" deletes the inner text between two quotes, same with di', di(, di{, etc.
  • This works with other commands, too, e.g. c and y