Vim, or NeoVim, is the text editor that I am sure almost every tech
savvy person must have heard of. Though only few people use it on daily
basis. I don't blame them. It can be intimidating, hard at first. That hard that some people don't even know how to exit Vim. Though don't worry, I am here to help.
In this post, I will highlight some native features of Vim which I
believe, that other command line editors and IDEs lack. Expect maybe
Emacs which has most of them but with different keybindings and
philosophy.
This isn't a comprehensive tutorial. Vim has lots of useful features
that it would be impossible to cover it in a single post. If you need a
comprehensive tutorial then refer to official
documentation or run vimtutor command.
Table of Contents
Basics
Vim keybindings are all case-sensitive, and follow this
structure[int] + verb + object.
i Enter insert mode.
A Jump to one character ahead of the end of the line and enter insert
mode.
:! Run external command.
:r! Run external command and paste output into the current cursor
position.
:h keyword Browse documentation for the keyword.
:q Exit Vim.
Navigation
h/j/k/l Move left, down, up, right.
G Move to end of the buffer.
gg Move to beginning of the buffer.
b Move to previous word.
w Move to the next word.
mX Set a mark at current position with x
`X Jump to position of mark X.
tX Jump forward till the next occurrence of X.
TX Jump backward till the previous occurrence of X.
^ Jump to first non blank character in current line.
$ Jump to last non-blank character in current line.
zf Create a fold.
za Unfold the selection.
K Pass the current word to keywordprg . By default, its man but
can be configured to use any other program like sdcv, pydoc.
Editing
~ Switch case of a single character.
A Jump to enter end of line and enter insert mode.
c Delete a single character and enter insert mode
x Delete a single character.
C-a Increase the number at current position by one.
C-x Decrease the number at current position by one.
Spell Checking
:set spell Turn on spell check.
z= Show suggestions.
Multiple Windows
C-w h/j/k/l Navigate through windows, in left, down, up, right
direction.
C-w s Split current window.
C-w o Close all other windows.
:vsplit filename Open the specified file in a vertical split.
:split filename Open the specified file in a horizontal split.
Registers
qX Record a macro at register X.
@X Play the macro X.
"X Paste the content of the register X.
Examples
3jA Move three lines downwards till the last non-empty character of
that line and then enter insert mode.
ci{ Delete a function body and enter insert mode.
Too overwhelming? Remember, it doesn\'t have to be. You don\'t have to
learn all of these keybindings at once. You can just learn basic things
mentioned in Navigation section to get started. Just open
any plain text file, or a one with source code in it, to get started. It
wont take more than five minutes. If you like it, which I am sure you
will, you can continue using it, otherwise you can just stop. At least
you wont have to regret in future that you never tried it.
I highly recommend starting with vanilla Vim, or Neovim, instead of
per-configured distributions like LunarVim,
LazyVim as they might be too overwhelming and
confusing.
Written on: 2024-03-12. Last Updated on: 2024-08-30.
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