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Do you know Vim can execute normal mode command while in insert mode?

Igor Irianto on August 12, 2019

Follow @learnvim for more Vim tips and tricks! Vim has been my go-to editor for the last 1.5 years, yet I am still learning something new. Recentl...

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Robin Palotai • Aug 12 '19 • Edited

Nice! Let me add my favorite here:

Shift-j to merge next line
gqip to reformat paragraph
gqj to reformat over next line

These together are mostly enough to avoid manual reflow to honor line length limit.

Igor Irianto • Aug 12 '19

Good use cases! I never really knew about the last two - thanks! Always learning something new about vim.

Holy-Elie Scaïde • Aug 12 '19

I've known about insert-normal, but I never used it really. I've remapped to and my brain is already wired to leave insert more whenever I pause. But thanks for the insight, it's always helpful to know more about vim!

David Cantrell • Aug 13 '19

I've been vimming for ... I don't know how many years. probably since 1994 because I see that it was in Slackware 2. I didn't know about this. Thanks!

Mind you, now that I know about it I'm not sure whether I'll use it. <ESC> command i is soooo deeply ingrained in my muscle-memory that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop doing it :-)

Igor Irianto • Aug 14 '19

I agree. It is ingrained in my muscle memory too - and I haven't used vim for more than 2 years!
Learning to be more thoughtful when I'm typing and breaking from the <Esc> normal-command habit slowly... :) This is going to take a while!

Kriss • Aug 13 '19

Thx for sharing !

What I find helpful is mapping some combinations to shortcuts in insert mode to ease cursor movement and/or scrolling :

" Movement in insert mode
inoremap <C-h> <C-o>h
inoremap <C-j> <C-o>j
inoremap <C-k> <C-o>k
inoremap <C-l> <C-o>l
" Also allow line-wise scrolling
inoremap <C-e> <C-o><C-e>
inoremap <C-y> <C-o><C-y>

Igor Irianto • Aug 13 '19

Woah. This is mind-blowing. I'll have to try this!

Austin S. Hemmelgarn • Aug 12 '19

Despite having used Vim for almost a decade (possibly more, I don't quite remember exactly when I started using it), this is actually completely new to me.

OTOH, I'm not too surprised when I find something I didn't know about Vim (or just vi in general), I still average about one new thing I learn about it every week or so these days, but then, I never really went out of my way to learn anything but the absolute basics originally (and it was Nethack, not Vim, that got me in the habit of using hjkl for movement).

Roberto Maurizzi • Aug 12 '19

Nice, now I can stop invoking Anubis every time I want to switch to another tab while staying in insert mode ;-)

Igor Irianto • Aug 12 '19

Haha, good use case! Stay away from the underworld >:)

Martin Bielik • Aug 12 '19

My favourite is C-o o or C-o O, starting on next/previous line.

Igor Irianto • Aug 12 '19

I used o/ O all the time and didn't think of that. Good rec!

Mika Andrianarijaona • Aug 12 '19

😲😲😲😲😲😲 thanks for sharing!!!!! it's a real discovery for me, I really love it.

Igor Irianto • Aug 12 '19

Haha, glad you found it helpful! It totally changed my workflow when I discovered this too!

バカです • Oct 19 '19

There's mine:

inoremap <up> <C-o>:resize +5<cr>
inoremap <left> <C-o>:vertical resize -5<cr>
inoremap <right> <C-o>:vertical resize +5<cr>
inoremap <down> <C-o>:resize -5<cr>

Igor Irianto • Oct 19 '19

Haha nice!! I thought of mapping my arrow keys as well, good call!