The Vim Reference

Recently I decided to learn vim after hearing how much Ben Awad loves it. I though maybe it could boost my productivity too. I am still getting use to it, but right now it seems pretty fun.

Now to the reference. Here are some useful commands and what they do:

Using Vim

• Open Vim: vim filename
• Closing Vim:
  • :wq -> save and quit
  • :q -> quit and not save
  • :w -> save and not quit

Movements

• Hitting gg will take you to the top of file
• G takes you to the bottom
• } and { navigate code blocks
• o adding a new line and put into insert mode
• O adding a new line above and put into insert mode
• w will jump to next word b will take you back
• :number will take you to line number
• 0 will take you to the start of the line
• 0 + w or ^ will take you to the first word of a line
• h j k l to move up down left and right
• a move over by 1 and set insert mode
• A jump to end and set insert mode

Editing

• Hitting "i" in command mode lets you insert
• Hitting shift + i will set insert mode at the beginning of the line
• Then esc puts you back into command mode
• Hitting dd will delete a line and copy to clip board
• Hitting d + } will delete a whole block of code
• Hitting 10 dd will delete 10 lines
• Hitting u will undo
• Hitting ctrl + r will redo
• Hitting yy will copy a line
• p to paste bellow P to paste above
• x remove a letter where the cursor is
• number x remove number letters before cursor
• ~ swap the case of the letter prefix with number for multiple characters

• . redo

• $ will take you to the end of a line

• W will jump spaces and B reverses that

• f + char find and place cursor on char

• t + charfind and place cursor before char

• % take you to and from closing brackets

• d + % remove code between brackets

• c + w change mode and word will remove a word and set insert mode

• D remove everthing from cursor onwards

• c + t + char edit from cursor to char

• C change whole line

• d + t + char delete from cursor to char

• * take you to occurances of the word where your cursor is

• ; take you to next instance after using a find command

• r + char replace letter at cursor with char prefix with number for multiple replaces

• R allow to replace lots of letters into replace mode

• /word highlight all occurances of word

Macros

• Press q to start recording then select a hotkey. Now run some commands and hit q to end. Then hit @ hotkey to replay a command. Prefix @ with a number to replace that many times

Visual Mode: V

• Select text with movement commands then you can hit:
  • d to delete
  • After selected > or < to indent code.
• shift + v selects the whole line and puts you into visual mode.
• v + move select from cursor while move

Visual Block Mode

ctrl + v enter visual block mode. Now you can select columns and hit r to replace things.
In visual block mode hitting shift i will allow you to type and then after you hit esc the text will appear in all places selected.

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Thank you for referring to this guide, I hope you found it useful.

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Photo by Bich Tran from Pexels

Comments

[leob]

You forgot one alternative key combo for "save and quite", it is:

shift-Z-Z

(two key presses of Z while keeping Shift pressed) - it's my favorite over :wq

A few others:

:q! to quite and discard changes
control-G to display the line number and status

and my favorite settings inside .vimrc:

set ignorecase
set ruler
set hlsearch

[Richard]

That's awesome! Thanks!