Est. read time: 6 minutes | Last updated: April 09, 2024 by John Gentile

Contents

Overview

“Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi.”- StackOverflow (User Jim Dennis)

Vim is a modal text editor, meaning keystrokes and operations have different actions depending on the mode.

Mode Key(s) Description
Normal Esc Normal mode
Insert i –INSERT– Insert/edit text in traditional text editor sense
Command : Enter commands to execute
Visual v Enter visual mode

Note: You must be in Normal mode before going into other modes

Launching Vim

From the command line, one can open a set of files in a vertical (-O) or a horizontal (-o) split, and specify how many panes to split across by appending that to the command parameter; for instance, if a directory has 5 text files and we want to open them in 3 vertical panes, we can do so with: $ vim -O3 *.txt

Learning Vim

A good way to learn Vim is by launching the built-in vimtutor in your shell. Another is to play VimGolf to try and optimize how few keystrokes are made to accomplish a given text processing task.

Normal Mode

Typing a number before a motion repeats the motion that many times (i.e typing 3w moves the cursor 3 words forward and d2w deletes next 2 words).

vim-movement Credit for picture to Ted Naleid

Other common movement commands:

Operation Key(s) Description
Left/Down/Up/Right h/j/k/l Move cursor left, down, up or right respectively
Scroll Screen Up/Down Ctrl+b/Ctrl+f  
Scroll Half-Screen Up/Down Ctrl+u/Ctrl+d  
Move Screen Up/Down Ctrl+y/Ctrl+e Screen moves 1 line at a time w/o moving cursor
Current Line to Middle of Screen zz  
Current Line to Top of Screen zt  
Current Line to Bottom of Screen zb  
Next Word Beginning/End w/e Move cursor to beginning/end of next word
Back a Word b Moves cursor back to start of last word
Move to Start of Line 0 or Home Move to Start of Line
Move to 1st Non-Blank Character in Line ^ Move to 1st Non-Blank Character in Line
Move to End of Line $ or End Move to End of Line
Append After Cursor a Moves into Insert mode after the cursor (whereas i inputs text before the cursor)
Append End of Line Shift+a Moves cursor to end of line and puts Vim in Insert mode
Insert at Start of Line Shift+i Moves cursor to beginning of line and puts Vim in Insert mode
Insert New Line Above/Below Shift+o/o Inserts a new line above/below the cursor and puts Vim in Insert mode
Display location in File and Status Ctrl+g Display location in file
Move to bottom of file Shift+g  
Move to start of file g,g  
Move to line number line_number,Shift+g Move to line number line_number
Exit & Write Shift+z,Shift+z Write file, if modified, and quit Vim

Copy/Paste

Copy commands start with y, and keys typed after designate what to copy, similar to navigation commands; for example, use y,w to yank a word. One can also enter Visual Mode (v) to select desired text to copy before hitting y. After which, text can be pasted using the put (p) command.

Other copy & paste examples:

Operation Key(s) Description
Copy (yank) Current Line y,y Copies current line
Put/Paste Text from Register p Put text in Vim’s register (such as previously deleted or yanked text) after the cursor
  g,p Just like “p”, but leave the cursor just after the new text.

Deletion

Delete commands start with d, and operate similar to other basic operations where keys after designate what to delete.

Other delete examples:

Operation Key(s) Description
Delete Character x Deletes character under cursor
Delete until Found Character d,f,character Deletes text until character is found
Delete Word d,w Deletes until start of the next word (excluding first character) after cursor
Delete Word d,e Deletes until end of current word (including last character) after cursor
Delete Line d,d Delete entire line at cursor
Delete to End of Line d,$ Delete to end of line after cursor

Changes and Reversals

Change commands start with c, and operate similar to other basic operations where keys after designate what to delete.

Other change examples:

Operation Key(s) Description
Change Word c,w Change rest of word after cursor and place in Insert mode
Change Inner Word c,i,w Change whole word (regardless of cursor position in word) and place in Insert mode
Change to End of Line Shift+c Same as c,$
Change Case ~ If in normal mode, changes the case of character at cursor but in visual mode with multiple selections changes the case of selected characters

Search, Find & Replace

Operation Key(s) Description
Find Character f,character Finds and positions cursor at character
Search in File / or ? to search backwards This opens a command line at the bottom of Vim where you can enter text, or regular expressions, to search for. Hit n to go to next find and Shift+n to search in the opposite direction. Ctrl+o goes back to original cursor position and Ctrl+i goes forward
See Search History q,/ Shows past searches that you can select through and search again
Search Commands :set ic hls is These commands allow for search to ignore exact case matching, to highlight matching values and to increment search respectively. Use :set noic nohlsearch to disable ignoring case and highlighting of matches respectively
Find Matching Bracket % Place cursor at any bracket and hit key to find matching bracket for types (), [], or {}
Replace Mode Shift+r Acts like Insert mode in other text editors in that every typed character is inserted and delets an existing character

For find & replace, see Substitution under the Command section

Undo, Reverse and Recording Commands

Operation Key(s) Description
Undo Last Edit u Undoes last operation (like Ctrl+z in other text editors)
Undo Edits on Line Shift+u Undoes all changes made on the last line that was edited
Reverse Preceding Command Ctrl+r Reverses actions taken until reaching most recent edit
Repeat Last Change . Repeat last command that made a change to the text
Replace Character r,character Replace character after cursor with character
Record Commands to Register q,character Records a set of commands to register character and stops recording after hitting q again
Play command held in register @,character Repeats recorded command(s) held in that registers character
Pipe Command to Shell and Pipe Output into Current File !,! i.e. !!ls pipes the listing of files in your current directory into your current file

Folding

Folding is useful to visually compress files based on their structure, syntax or indentation (depending on the set foldmethod setting). Some useful default key combinations for folding are:

  • za: toggle open/close a fold under the current cursor.
    • zc/zo: close/open a fold, respectively.
  • zR/zM: open/close all folds in a buffer, respectively.

Command Mode

All commands are assumed to start with : while in Normal mode

Operation Command Description
Save Current Buffer w (filename) Write any modifications to existing file or if given a filename write to that file
Save All Open Buffers wa Write any modifications to existing files in all open buffers
Quit q Quit if no modifications since last write
Quit & Save Changes wq Write changes to file and quit Vim
Quit & Discard Changes q! Override warnings and quit without writing to file
Substitution / Search & Replace s/old/new Replace first occurrence of old with new
  s/old/new/g Replace all occurrences of old with new in the current line
  1,4s/old/new/g Same as above but change occurrences in range between line numbers 1 and 4 (inclusive)
  %s/old/new/g or %s/old/new/gcI Change every occurrence of old with new in entire file. Add c to prompt to replace at each occurrence and I to match case sensitive
  %s/\<old\>/new/g Change only whole words exactly matching old to new
  %s//new/g Replace each match of the last search pattern with new
  %s/old/<c-r><c-w>/g Replace each occurrence of old with the word under the cursor. Replace <c-w> with <c-a> to use the white space delimited word under the cursor
  %s/old/<c-r>0/g Replace each match of old with contents of register 0 which contains the text from the most recent yank command
Execute External Command !command Type ! at the command line to execute any operation that can be run in your shell
Pipe/Retrieve Input to Vim r This allows for operations such as piping | in Unix so that an operation such as r FILE places the contents of FILE after the cursor and r !ls reads output of the ls shell command and puts it below the cursor; similar to !! command in Normal mode
Edit another File e FILE Close current file and opens FILE for edit
Open Help help Opens help menu in Vim

Working with Multiple Files

Operation Key(s) Description
Edit a file in a new buffer :e filename  
Go to next open buffer :bnext/:bn  
Go to previously open buffer :bprev/:bp  
Delete buffer (close the file) :bd  
Open a file in a new buffer and split window :sp filename  
Split Windows Horizontally Ctrl+ws  
Split Windows Vertically Ctrl+wv  
Switch between open Windows Ctrl+ww  
Quit a Window Ctrl+wq  

You can also use :b[uffer] with tab-completion to show and navigate all currently open buffers (for instance if you have a lot openend).

Visual Mode

Once in visual mode, navigation causes text to be highlighted. Most normal mode operations, like yank and delete, carry over to visual mode as well and operate on the visually selected text.

Operation Command Description
Select by line Shift+V Select line by line
Block Select Ctrl+v Select text by block
Select Text and Do Stuff : After selecting/highlighting some text, this will enter command mode so you can do things like write selection to another file
Delete Selection x or d Deletes selection
Join Text Shift+J If selecting text that spans multiple lines, join puts the lines into a single line seperated by spaces
Enter Block Visual Mode Ctrl+v Select visual block; useful for tables or multiple line selection
Insert text across a block Shift+i Useful when in Visual Block mode to do things like insert text across multiple lines
Delete selected text and insert across a block c Deletes selected text and then goes into multiple insert mode, similar to above command
Indent Selected Lines >/< Indents/De-indents selected lines by amount specified by shiftwidth. = indents the text by what Vim thinks is appropriate
Jump to definition Ctrl+j Jump to definition of function highlighted

Regular Expressions

Regular expressions (aka regex) are not a Vim-specific feature, they are a sequence of characters that define a search (or even search and replace) pattern and can be found in languages like Perl and other Unix tools like sed and awk. Vim does have regex features that make it very powerful though, and a great overview and tutorial of using regex in Vi(m) can be found at vimregex.com.

Advanced Vim Techniques & Customization

Vim Config File

The .vimrc file (usually found in the home folder, but can be placed in other directories for per project custom features) is useful for enabling extended features of Vim and for personalization/customization of Vim. To see an example .vimrc with comments on what-does-what, see this GitHub link.

Also tools like EditorConfig can be used to keep consistent configurations on a project-to-project basis for things like tab vs. spaces, line endings, etc.

Vimscript and Plugins

Vim can also be further extended with plugins and plugin managers such as vim-plug that execute Vimscript (scripting language within Vim) to execute unique features. Learn Vimscript the Hard Way is a useful site for learning more about customizing Vim as well as developing custom Vim plugins.

Browse for Vim plugins using GitHub or sites like Vim Awesome and awesome-neovim.

Techniques for Development

C/C++ Development

Here are some useful tips when working with Vim for code development:

  • :set filetype=c when you are working with a file with a non-standard file extension, you cna use this to set the syntax highlighting for the “C” filetype
    • Use :set cindent to enable C-style indentation automatically
  • Search for definitions:
    • [,Ctrl+i to search for word under cursor, including files that are brought in by #include directives
    • Use g,d to search for a local declaration of a variable under the cursor and g,Shift+d to search for the global definition
    • [,Ctrl+d to search for first definition of macro under cursor and ],Ctrl+d to search for next definition of macro under cursor
      • Use [/],d to display the same thing
      • Use [/],Shift+d to display all definitions of macro
  • For compiling and checking for errors right from Vim, you can call :make [args] to call the Make program with the local Makefile. This has benefits as any generated errors can be immediately stepped through and changed via:
    • :cnext/:cprevious moves to the next/previous error (:clast/:crewind go to last/first errors)
    • :cnfile goes to the first error message in the next file
    • :cc shows current error and :clist gives a list of errors (:clist! shows all informational messages)
  • To search a regular expression across files, you can use vimgrep such as :vi /hack/ /usr/src/linux**/*.c; in this example, we search for the regex hack in all files that match the wildcard *.c in the directory /usr/src/linux and all directories below it
    • You can use the same navigational commands for tags to navigate search matches from vimgrep
  • Open file under cursor with gf; this is very useful for opening referenced #include files in a C/C++ file
    • Ctrl+Shift+o to go back
    • Ctrl+Shift+f to open file in new window
  • When working with source files edited/made in Windows/DOS, you’ll often come across the issue of line ending mismatches when developing in Unix based systems. Vim can simply change line endings with a command such as :set ff=unix (to convert a DOS file to Unix line endings) or :set ff=dos for the opposite
  • Get creative with autocommands and abbreviations to insert commonly used sections of code/text automagically
  • Use plugins to help aid in quicker, more effecient development (see .vimrc linked above for an example) but not those that add bloat and distraction to your development flow
    • For example, YouCompleteMe is an intelligent code-completion engine for Vim that can accelerate development and makes Vim more IDE-like
  • You can easily remove trailing whitespace with :%s/\s\+$// (or macro to a keyboard shortcut for easier use)
  • vim -d [file1] [file2] (or vim diff) is an easy way to diff two files
  • :sort is a powerful sort feature within Vim, use often
  • Open the last edited file with Ctrl+o+o
  • Interactive command history window q:
  • Open, edit and save compressed files with vim such as $ vim archive.tar.gz
  • Launch the man page for a command under the cursor when hitting K

Tags

To use tags in Vim, you can generate tags for your source (i.e. using exuberant ctags $ ctags *.c) which acts as a lookup for important parts/definitions of code in a project (function definitions, constants, classes, etc.). Then use either :tag FUNCTION or a keyboard shortcut- if the function you are looking for is under your cursor- to search across multiple files to find the tag’s definition and jump to it:

  • Ctrl+]: Jump to definition
  • Ctrl+t: Jump back from definition
  • Ctrl+W+}: Preview definition
  • g+]: List all definitions

Ctag options can be defined globably (to ignore common directories for instance) by making a config file in your home directory ~/.ctags like:

--recurse=yes
--exclude=.git
--exclude=vendor/*
--exclude=node_modules/*
--exclude=db/*
--exclude=log/*

If there’s multiple definitions of a tag, you can:

  • :tn move to next definition
  • :tp move to previous definition
  • :tr goes to first definition
  • :tl goes to last definition
  • :ts list all definitions for a tag
  • :tj jump to tag if only one exists

Tags can also use regular expressions to search and find definitions; any tag command starting with a / is assumed to use regular expressions (i.e :tag /regex_function). You can similarly use :stag FUNCTION and Ctrl+w+j to split the current screen with your original screen and with where the tag function is defined.

Since tags are generally large and a byproduct of the development process, it’s often a good idea to ignore the generated tags file in repos under source control.

Plugins like tagbar and gutentags are great for making Vim feel more like an IDE with tags integration.

Techniques for Writing

  • To turn on spell check, use :set spell spelllang=en_us
    • To spell check only the local buffer use :setlocal spell spelllang=en_us
    • To turn off spell checking, use :set nospell

Other Tricks

Search & Replace Across Buffers

Using the bufdo command applies a command across all open buffers. For example to search & replace across multiple buffers:

:bufdo %s/pattern/replace

Fix Long Line Lengths

In normal mode, you can format a long commented line to fit within your set textwidth with:

gqip

References



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