The introductory paper Orthodox Editorsintroduced
some ideas on which this page was build. Here is the abstract of the paper:
This paper tried to introduce a new concept: orthodox editors as a special category of editors.
All of them have command line set of commands and respective glue macrolanguage. We have found two
such families:
Eastern Orthodox family represented by such editors as XEDIT, Kedit, THE. All of
them use REXX as a glue macrolanguage. All of them support folding which the second
important feature typical for this category of editors
Western Orthodox family represented by vi and its derivatives with VIM as the top
representative of the category. They are characterized by extensive support for regular
expressions and ability to pipe the editing buffer through external filters. The
letter is the key advantage as it provides the unique and unmatched ability to use Unix
utilities and shell scripts as an extension of the
command set. Some of them (VIM) also support folding. They often have ad-hoc macro language
(primitive in VI, better but still ugly in VIM)
We define the notion of "orthodox editors" as having the following distinct features:
They have a well-defined command set that is comparable
in power to GUI based commands and command line can be used to enter editor commands.
For some of them (vi - line ) that comes naturally, from the fact that they were
initially designed for typewriters.
They permit doing any editing task using keyboard (although mouse can speed
up or simplify many of those tasks and is not rejected in the extremist way)
They use a standard scripting language as a macrolanguage (TCL, REXX) or unique for
the application (YASL - yet another scripting language) like in vim 6 as a macrolanguage.
It serves as a glue for the command set implemented by the editor. With some reservations we
can accept a unique for the application (YASL - yet another scripting language)
like in VIM. This is definitely less attractive solution as it is difficult to master the language
that you use only for a specific application (in this case an editor). The same consideration
is applicable to Emacs.
They support folding (all
command in XEDIT and its derivatives; folding capabilities
in VIM )
They distinguish between editing buffer and the windows in which this editing buffer
is displayed allowing multiple windows to display the same buffer.
They support regular expressions
They permit processing selected part of the editing buffer or all the buffer via pipe
connected to external command (! command in vi)
They support multiple views of the same editing buffer.
They allow piping in output from arbitrary pipe into the current position of cursor,
selection, or all buffer as well as exporting a selection or all buffer as an input stream for
an arbitrary pipe.
This article is a modest attempt to create a basic classification useful for further studying
this important class of editors. The author argues that this class of editors can serve as viable
mid-weight editors for programmers (see a companion paper
A Note on Size-based Classification
of Text Editors for this further discussion of related ideas).
This article is a modest attempt to create a basic classification
useful for further studying this important class of editors. The author argues that this class of
editors can serve as viable editors for programmers providing despite Spartan interface rich functionality
absent in almost any other editor with possible exception of vi and its derivatives. Despite integrating
a macro language they are actually pretty small, mid-weight by some standards (see a companion paper
A Note on Size-based Classification
of Text Editors for this further discussion of related ideas).
Please note that both subclasses of orthodox editors were pioneers in introducing several important
for any modern editor features, features that unfortunately still are absent or poorly implemented
in most other editors:
Eastern orthodox editors introduced
folding (all command in XEDIT)
Usage of a standard scripting language as a macro language (REXX).
Multiple views on editing buffer
Ability to bind execution of a command on the command line to the selection on the screen
Western Orthodox editors have command set of ex editor. They introduced
regular expressions as a editing tool
extremely powerful concept of editing buffer via Unix pipes; the latter is still
mostly missing in most other advanced editors.
The idea of two command channels: channel to internal interpreter (":" commands) and
channel to OS shell ("!" commands).
This paper explores two sets of deep interconnections that
were previously unnoticed in the literature:
There is a deep interconnection between OFMs and Orthodox
Editors. Actually OFM can be implemented on the base of EOE and VM/CMS actually contains
a file manager that is XEDIT-based.
There is a subtle similarity between XEDIT family and VI
family, those two seemingly unconnected families of editors one originating at East
Coast and the other in West coast (that's why I used names Eastern Orthodox and Western Orthodox
for them ;-).
Actually the second point was the main reason that I decided to use
a superclass term "orthodox editors" that includes as subclasses both XEDIT editors line and VI
editors lines. Not only because I like to invent new terms (that goes with Ph.D ;-), but I really
see deep similarities between them and their connection to a similar phenomenon that I studied earlier
in case of File Managers (see OFM page for details). Those tools
are representative of a different approach to GUI interface then Apple GUI or Microsoft GUI (which
are converging). Interface that can be called "Orthodox Interface". And this Spartan interface
with ancient-looking, "half-baked" GUI with command line present give users important and unique
capabilities that are missing in other similar "pure GUI" Tools. They survived because they are
capable of giving advanced users the ability to achieve an extremely high productivity, beating
competition. Although some design decisions in those editors were dictated by limitation of old
hardware they withstand the test of time and proved to be useful and extremely productive tools
for modern environments.
Another interesting for me issue is the value of editors
of different sizes (lightweight, mid-weight and heavyweight). My thought on this issue are reflected
in another paper A Note on Size-based
Classification of Text Editors Here is the abstract:
The article presents an attempt to understand correlation between features of text editors and
editor size based of tasks each weight category performs better and1 propose size based classification
of editors
The concept of "editor weight" is useful for explaining why most programmers use several editors
(usually three: standalone lightweight editor like Notepad, midweight editor like Vim, Kedit or
SlickEdit and heavyweight editor/IDE type of environments like Microsoft Visual Studio .Net, Emacs, etc).
That suggests that there are tasks for which one editor of a certain
size suit best and performing of which with the editor of a different category is less efficient
despite the additional power it might provide. This paradox that most programmers use several
editors while leading one would be more efficient can be explained by the hypothesis that editors
can be classified into three distinct categories and that each category of editors has its own unique
set of features In this case one size does not fit all. We will distinguish
lightweight editors (editors
that does not need installation and can be fully functional if the computer contains one executable
and a user can start editing after moving this executable to new computer. They can They
can use additional initialization and configuration files but they should be optional of at
max two files (editor executable and optional initialization file/files)
midweight editors should have
powerful macro language, folding and full multi-windows support. That's the category were orthodox
editors fall into.
heavyweight editors are essentially
in IDE in disguise. Emacs is classic example of heavyweight editor, Visual Studio .Net is another
example.
The main idea here that there are tasks that are better, quicker performed by lightweight editors
and they're are tasks that are better performed by midweight/heavyweight editors, so those categories
of editors develop in different directions.
Most programmers spend a lot of time editing the code (may as much as 40%). If that's the case,
finding the best tool available and, if necessary, spending a few extra dollars for it definitely is
a good investment.
Step 1:
Open
the file using vim editor with command:
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Step 2:
Highlight
the lines that you want to comment out. To do so, go to the line you want to comment and move the cursor to the beginning of a line.
Press
SHIFT+V
to
highlight the whole line after the cursor. After highlighting the first line, press
UP
or
DOWN
arrow
keys or
k
or
j
to
highlight the other lines one by one.
Here is how the lines will look like after highlighting them.
Highlight
lines in Vim editor
Step 3:
After
highlighting the lines that you want to comment out, type the following and hit
ENTER
key:
:s/^/# /
Please mind
the
space
between
#
and
the last forward slash (
/
).
Now you will see the selected lines are commented out i.e.
#
symbol
is added at the beginning of all lines.
Comment
out multiple lines at once in Vim editor
Here,
s
stands
for
"substitution"
.
In our case, we substitute the
caret
symbol
^
(in
the beginning of the line) with
#
(hash).
As we all know, we put
#
in-front
of a line to comment it out.
Step 4:
After
commenting the lines, you can type
:w
to
save the changes or type
:wq
to
save the file and exit.
Let us move on to the next method.
Method 2:
Step 1:
Open
the file in vim editor.
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Step 2:
Set
line numbers by typing the following in vim editor and hit ENTER.
:set number
Set
line numbers in Vim
Step 3:
Then
enter the following command:
:1,4s/^/#
In this case, we are commenting out the lines from
1
to
4
.
Check the following screenshot. The lines from
1
to
4
have
been commented out.
Comment
out multiple lines at once in Vim editor
Step 4:
Finally,
unset the line numbers.
:set nonumber
Step 5:
To
save the changes type
:w
or
:wq
to
save the file and exit.
The same procedure can be used for uncommenting the lines in a file. Open the file and set the line numbers as shown in Step 2.
Finally type the following command and hit ENTER at the Step 3:
:1,3s/^#/
After uncommenting the lines, simply remove the line numbers by entering the following command:
:set nonumber
Let us go ahead and see the third method.
Method 3:
This one is similar to Method 2 but slightly different.
Step 1:
Open
the file in vim editor.
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Step 2:
Set
line numbers by typing:
:set number
Step 3:
Type
the following to comment out the lines.
:1,4s/^/# /
The above command will comment out lines from 1 to 4.
Comment
out multiple lines at once in Vim editor
Step 4:
Finally,
unset the line numbers by typing the following.
:set nonumber
Method 4:
This method is suggested by one of our reader
Mr.Anand
Nande
in the comment section below.
Step 1:
Open
file in vim editor:
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Step 2:
Go
to the line you want to comment. Press
Ctrl+V
to
enter into
'Visual
block'
mode.
Enter
into Visual block mode in Vim editor
Step 3:
Press
UP
or
DOWN
arrow
or the letter
k
or
j
in
your keyboard to select all the lines that you want to be commented in your file.
Select
the lines to comment in Vim
Step 4:
Press
Shift+i
to
enter into
INSERT
mode.
This will place your cursor on the first line.
Step 5:
And
then insert
#
(press
Shift+3
)
before your first line.
Insert
hash symbol before a line in Vim
Step 6:
Finally,
press
ESC
key.
This will insert
#
on
all other selected lines.
Comment
out multiple lines at once in Vim editor
As you see in the above screenshot, all other selected lines including the first line are commented out.
Method 5:
This method is suggested by one of our Twitter follower and friend
Mr.Tim
Chase
. We can even target lines to comment out by
regex
.
In other words, we can comment all the lines that contains a specific word.
Step 1:
Open
the file in vim editor.
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Step 2:
Type
the following and press ENTER key:
:g/\Linux/s/^/# /
The above command will comment out all lines that contains the word
"Linux"
.
Replace
"Linux"
with
a word of your choice.
Comment
out all lines that contains a specific word in Vim editor
As you see in the above output, all the lines have the word
"Linux"
,
hence all of them are commented out.
And, that's all for now. I hope this was useful. If you know any other method than the given methods here, please let me know in the
comment section below. I will check and add them in the guide.
Most (if not every) Linux distributions come with an editor that allows you to perform hexadecimal and binary manipulation. One
of those tools is the command-line tool "" xxd , which is most commonly used to make a hex dump of a given file or standard input.
It can also convert a hex dump back to its original binary form.
Hexedit Hex Editor
Hexedit is another hexadecimal command-line editor that might already be preinstalled on your OS.
Tilde is a text editor for the console/terminal, which provides an intuitive interface for
people accustomed to GUI environments such as Gnome, KDE and Windows. For example, the
short-cut to copy the current selection is Control-C, and to paste the previously copied text
the short-cut Control-V can be used. As another example, the File menu can be accessed by
pressing Meta-F.
However, being a terminal-based program there are limitations. Not all terminals provide
sufficient information to the client programs to make Tilde behave in the most intuitive way.
When this is the case, Tilde provides work-arounds which should be easy to work with.
The main audience for Tilde is users who normally work in GUI environments, but sometimes
require an editor for a console/terminal environment. This may be because the computer in
question is a server which does not provide a GUI, or is accessed remotely over SSH. Tilde
allows these users to edit files without having to learn a completely new interface, such as vi
or Emacs do. A result of this choice is that Tilde will not provide all the fancy features that
Vim or Emacs provide, but only the most used features.
NewsTilde version
1.1.2 released
This release fixes a bug where Tilde would discard read lines before an invalid character,
while requested to continue reading.
23-May-2020
Tilde version 1.1.1 released
This release fixes a build failure on C++14 and later compilers
...Now, let us edit these two files at a time using Vim editor. To do so, run:
$ vim file1.txt file2.txt
Vim will display the contents of the files in an order. The first file's contents will be
shown first and then second file and so on.
Edit Multiple Files Using Vim Editor Switch between files
To move to the next file, type:
:n
Switch between files in Vim editor
To go back to previous file, type:
:N
Here, N is capital (Type SHIFT+n).
Start editing the files as the way you do with Vim editor. Press 'i' to switch to
interactive mode and modify the contents as per your liking. Once done, press ESC to go back to
normal mode.
Vim won't allow you to move to the next file if there are any unsaved changes. To save the
changes in the current file, type:
ZZ
Please note that it is double capital letters ZZ (SHIFT+zz).
To abandon the changes and move to the previous file, type:
:N!
To view the files which are being currently edited, type:
:buffers
View files in buffer in VIm
You will see the list of loaded files at the bottom.
List of files in buffer in Vim
To switch to the next file, type :buffer followed by the buffer number. For example, to
switch to the first file, type:
:buffer 1
Or, just do:
:b 1
Switch to next file in Vim
Just remember these commands to easily switch between buffers:
:bf # Go to first file.
:bl # Go to last file
:bn # Go to next file.
:bp # Go to previous file.
:b number # Go to n'th file (E.g :b 2)
:bw # Close current file.
Opening additional files for editing
We are currently editing two files namely file1.txt, file2.txt. You might want to open
another file named file3.txt for editing. What will you do? It's easy! Just type :e followed by
the file name like below.
:e file3.txt
Open additional files for editing in Vim
Now you can edit file3.txt.
To view how many files are being edited currently, type:
:buffers
View all files in buffers in Vim
Please note that you can not switch between opened files with :e using either :n or :N . To
switch to another file, type :buffer followed by the file buffer number.
Copying contents
of one file into another
You know how to open and edit multiple files at the same time. Sometimes, you might want to
copy the contents of one file into another. It is possible too. Switch to a file of your
choice. For example, let us say you want to copy the contents of file1.txt into file2.txt.
To do so, first switch to file1.txt:
:buffer 1
Place the move cursor in-front of a line that wants to copy and type yy to yank(copy) the
line. Then, move to file2.txt:
:buffer 2
Place the mouse cursor where you want to paste the copied lines from file1.txt and type p .
For example, you want to paste the copied line between line2 and line3. To do so, put the mouse
cursor before line and type p .
Sample output:
line1
line2
ostechnix
line3
line4
line5
Copying contents of one file into another file using Vim
To save the changes made in the current file, type:
ZZ
Again, please note that this is double capital ZZ (SHIFT+z).
To save the changes in all files and exit vim editor. type:
:wq
Similarly, you can copy any line from any file to other files.
Copying entire file
contents into another
We know how to copy a single line. What about the entire file contents? That's also
possible. Let us say, you want to copy the entire contents of file1.txt into file2.txt.
To do so, open the file2.txt first:
$ vim file2.txt
If the files are already loaded, you can switch to file2.txt by typing:
:buffer 2
Move the cursor to the place where you wanted to copy the contents of file1.txt. I want to
copy the contents of file1.txt after line5 in file2.txt, so I moved the cursor to line 5. Then,
type the following command and hit ENTER key:
:r file1.txt
Copying entire contents of a file into another file
Here, r means read .
Now you will see the contents of file1.txt is pasted after line5 in file2.txt.
line1
line2
line3
line4
line5
ostechnix
open source
technology
linux
unix
Copying entire file contents into another file using Vim
To save the changes in the current file, type:
ZZ
To save all changes in all loaded files and exit vim editor, type:
:wq
Method 2
The another method to open multiple files at once is by using either -o or -O flags.
To open multiple files in horizontal windows, run:
$ vim -o file1.txt file2.txt
Open multiple files at once in Vim
To switch between windows, press CTRL-w w (i.e Press CTRL+w and again press w ). Or, use the
following shortcuts to move between windows.
CTRL-w k - top window
CTRL-w j - bottom window
To open multiple files in vertical windows, run:
$ vim -O file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
Open multiple files in vertical windows in Vim
To switch between windows, press CTRL-w w (i.e Press CTRL+w and again press w ). Or, use the
following shortcuts to move between windows.
CTRL-w l - left window
CTRL-w h - right window
Everything else is same as described in method 1.
For example, to list currently loaded files, run:
:buffers
To switch between files:
:buffer 1
To open an additional file, type:
:e file3.txt
To copy entire contents of a file into another:
:r file1.txt
The only difference in method 2 is once you saved the changes in the current file using ZZ ,
the file will automatically close itself. Also, you need to close the files one by one by
typing :wq . But, had you followed the method 1, when typing :wq all changes will be saved in
all files and all files will be closed at once.
In this case, we are commenting out the lines from 1 to 3. Check the following screenshot.
The lines from 1 to 3 have been commented out.
Comment out multiple lines at once in vim
To uncomment those lines, run:
:1,3s/^#/
Once you're done, unset the line numbers.
:set nonumber
Let us go ahead and see third method.
Method 3:
This one is same as above but slightly different.
Open the file in vim editor.
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Set line numbers:
:set number
Then, type the following command to comment out the lines.
:1,4s/^/# /
The above command will comment out lines from 1 to 4.
Comment out multiple lines in vim
Finally, unset the line numbers by typing the following.
:set nonumber
Method 4:
This method is suggested by one of our reader Mr.Anand Nande in the comment section
below.
Open file in vim editor:
$ vim ostechnix.txt
Press Ctrl+V to enter into 'Visual block' mode and press DOWN arrow to select all the lines
in your file.
Select lines in Vim
Then, press Shift+i to enter INSERT mode (this will place your cursor on the first line).
Press Shift+3 which will insert '#' before your first line.
Insert '#' before the first line in Vim
Finally, press ESC key, and you can now see all lines are commented out.
Comment out multiple lines using vim Method 5:
This method is suggested by one of our Twitter follower and friend Mr.Tim Chase .
We can even target lines to comment out by regex. Open the file in vim editor.
$ vim ostechnix.txt
And type the following:
:g/\Linux/s/^/# /
The above command will comment out all lines that contains the word "Linux".
Comment out all lines that contains a specific word in Vim
And, that's all for now. I hope this helps. If you know any other easier method than the
given methods here, please let me know in the comment section below. I will check and add them
in the guide. Also, have a look at the comment section below. One of our visitor has shared a
good guide about Vim usage.
NUNY3 November 23, 2017 - 8:46 pm
If you want to be productive in Vim you need to talk with Vim with *language* Vim is using.
Every solution that gets out of "normal
mode" is most probably not the most effective.
METHOD 1
Using "normal mode". For example comment first three lines with: I#j.j.
This is strange isn't it, but:
I –> capital I jumps to the beginning of row and gets into insert mode
# –> type actual comment character
–> exit insert mode and gets back to normal mode
j –> move down a line
. –> repeat last command. Last command was: I#
j –> move down a line
. –> repeat last command. Last command was: I#
You get it: After you execute a command, you just repeat j. cobination for the lines you would
like to comment out.
METHOD 2
There is "command line mode" command to execute "normal mode" command.
Example: :%norm I#
Explanation:
% –> whole file (you can also use range if you like: 1,3 to do only for first three
lines).
norm –> (short for normal)
I –> is normal command I that is, jump to the first character in line and execute
insert
# –> insert actual character
You get it, for each range you select, for each of the line normal mode command is executed
METHOD 3
This is the method I love the most, because it uses Vim in the "I am talking to Vim" with Vim
language principle.
This is by using extension (plug-in, add-in): https://github.com/tomtom/tcomment_vim
extension.
How to use it? In NORMAL MODE of course to be efficient. Use: gc+action.
Examples:
gcap –> comment a paragraph
gcj –> comment current line and line bellow
gc3j –> comment current line and 3 lines bellow
gcgg –> comment current line and all the lines including first line in file
gcG –> comment current line and all the lines including last line in file
gcc –> shortcut for comment a current line
You name it it has all sort of combinations. Remember, you have to talk with Vim, to
properly efficially use it.
Yes sure it also works with "visual mode", so you use it like: V select the lines you would
like to mark and execute: gc
You see if I want to impress a friend I am using gc+action combination. Because I always
get: What? How did you do it? My answer it is Vim, you need to talk with the text editor, not
using dummy mouse and repeat actions.
NOTE: Please stop telling people to use DOWN arrow key. Start using h, j, k and l keys to
move around. This keys are on home row of typist. DOWN, UP, LEFT and RIGHT key are bed habit
used by beginners. It is very inefficient. You have to move your hand from home row to arrow
keys.
VERY IMPORTANT: Do you want to get one million dollar tip for using Vim? Start using Vim
like it was designed for use normal mode. Use its language: verbs, nouns, adverbs and
adjectives. Interested what I am talking about? You should be, if you are serious about using
Vim. Read this one million dollar answer on forum:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most-productive-shortcut-with-vim/1220118#1220118
MDEBUSK November 26, 2019 - 7:07 am
I've tried the "boxes" utility with vim and it can be a lot of fun.
"... Apart from regular absolute line numbers, Vim supports relative and hybrid line numbers too to help navigate around text files. The 'relativenumber' vim option displays the line number relative to the line with the cursor in front of each line. Relative line numbers help you use the count you can precede some vertical motion commands with, without having to calculate it yourself. ..."
"... We can enable both absolute and relative line numbers at the same time to get "Hybrid" line numbers. ..."
How do I show
line numbers in Vim by default on Linux? Vim (Vi IMproved) is not just free text editor, but it
is the number one editor for Linux sysadmin and software development work.
By default, Vim
doesn't show line numbers on Linux and Unix-like systems, however, we can turn it on using the
following instructions.
.... Let us see how to display the line number in vim
permanently. Vim (Vi IMproved) is not just free text editor, but it is the number one editor
for Linux sysadmin and software development work.
By default, Vim doesn't show line numbers on
Linux and Unix-like systems, however, we can turn it on using the following instructions. My
experience shows that line numbers are useful for debugging shell scripts, program code, and
configuration files. Let us see how to display the line number in vim permanently.
Vim show line numbers by default
Turn on absolute line numbering by default in vim:
Open vim configuration file ~/.vimrc by typing the following command: vim ~/.vimrc
Append set number
Press the Esc key
To save the config file, type :w and hit Enter key
You can temporarily disable the absolute line numbers within vim session, type: :set nonumber
Want to enable disabled the absolute line numbers within vim session? Try: :set number
We can see vim line numbers on the left side.
Relative line numbers
Apart from regular absolute line numbers, Vim supports relative and hybrid line numbers too
to help navigate around text files. The 'relativenumber' vim option displays the line number
relative to the line with the cursor in front of each line. Relative line numbers help you use
the count you can precede some vertical motion commands with, without having to calculate it
yourself. Once again edit the ~/vimrc, run: vim ~/vimrc
Finally, turn relative line numbers on: set relativenumber Save and close the file
in vim text editor.
How to show "Hybrid" line numbers in Vim by default
What happens when you put the following two config directives in ~/.vimrc ? set number
set relativenumber
That is right. We can enable both absolute and relative line numbers at the same time to get
"Hybrid" line numbers.
Conclusion
Today we learned about permanent line number settings for the vim text editor. By adding the
"set number" config directive in Vim configuration file named ~/.vimrc, we forced vim to show
line numbers each time vim started. See vim docs here for more info and following tutorials too:
Vim
is one of the best, most popular, feature-rich and powerful text editor. There is no doubt
about that. It has lot of features. For example, the beginners can easily learn the basics of
Vim from the built-in help-section by running "vimtutor" command in Terminal. Learning Vim is
worth the effort. Today, in this guide, we will be discussing one of the most-widely used
feature called "spell check" in Vim editor. If you're a programmer who edits lots of text, then
"spell check" feature might be quite useful. It helps you to avoid embarrassing spelling
mistakes/typos while editing text files using Vim. Use Spell Check Feature In Vim Text
EditorEnable Spell Check
To enable Spell Check feature in Vim, open it and type the following from Command Mode:
:set spell
Enable Spell Check feature in Vim
Remember you need to type the above command inside Vim session, not in the Terminal
window.
Find and correct spelling mistakes, typos
Now, go to "Insert Mode" (type "i" to switch to Insert Mode from Command mode) and type any
misspelled letters. Vim will instantly highlight the misspelled words.
As you see in the above output, I have typed "Welcome to Linux learng sesion" instead of
"Welcome to Linux learning session" and vim is highlighting the misspelled words "learng" and
"sesion" in red color.
Now, go back to Command mode by simply pressing the ESC key.
You can navigate through the misspelled words by typing any one of the following
letters:
]s – Find the misspelled word after the cursor (Forward search).
[s – Find the misspelled word before the cursor (Backward search).
]S (Note the capital "S") – Similar to "]s" but only stop at bad words, not at rare
words or words for another region.
[S – Similar to "[s" but search backwards.
After you located the misspelled word, type z= to find suggestions for the that particular
word. Here, Vim shows me the list of suggestions for the misspelled word "learng". Pick the
correct word from the list by typing the respective number and press ENTER key to update the
misspelled word with right one.
As you see in the above screenshot, I entered number 13 to replace the misspelled word
"learng" with correct word "learning. Vim immediately updated the correct word in the input
after I hit ENTER key.
Similarly, correct all spelling mistakes in your text as described above. Once you've
corrected all mistakes type :wq to save the changes and quit Vim editor.
Please remember – we can only check the spelling mistakes, not the grammar
mistakes.
Set Spell language
By default, Vim uses "en" (all regions of English) to check for spelling mistakes. We can
also choose our own spell language. For instance, to set US region English, type the following
from the Command mode in Vim editor:
:set spell spelllang=en_us
The list of all available regions for the English language is:
en – all regions
en_au – Australia
en_ca – Canada
en_gb – Great Britain
en_nz – New Zealand
en_us – USA
Add words to Spellfile
Some times you might want to add some words as exceptions, for example your name, a command,
Email etc. In such cases, you can add those specific words to the Spellefile . This file
contains all exceptions.
Make sure you have ~/.vim/spell/ directory in your system. If it is not, create one:
$ mkdir -p ~/.vim/spell/
Then, set spellfile using:
:set spellfile=~/.vim/spell/en.utf-8.add
Now, any words which are not in Dictionary, locate the misspelled word (use z= ) and type zg
. It will add the word under the cursor as good word in spellfile. i.e adds the words to your
own dictionary.
To undo this add (remove the word from spellfile), just use zug . To mark the mispelled
word, type zw . To undo this action, use zuw .
Disable Spell Check in Vim
Vim will highlight all misspelled and words which are not available in the Dictionary. Some
times, you find this annoying while writing code or a README file that contains a lot of words
which are not available in the Dictionary. In such cases, you can disable the "Spell Check"
feature by simply typing the following command:
:set nospell
Disable Spell Check feature in Vim
That's it. Now, Vim will highlight nothing. You can enable the spell check feature at any
time by running ":set spell" from the Command mode in Vim.
Vim has more built-in help pages for Spell Check feature. To know more about spell check
feature, run:
:help spell
You also refer individual help section for every options, for example:
Who here actually likes Emacs-the-editor (as opposed to Emacs-the-LispM), and why?
First of all, let the record reflect that I consider Emacs the best data processing
system for modern PC-compatibles, bar none. Need Emacs to have an orthodox file manager? It's in there! Web browser? Emacs
has that, too! Want the kitchen sink? Emacs comes with the kitchen sink---and the kitchen counter, and the kitchen
microwave, and the kitchen dishwasher, and the kitchen LISP Machine! The sky is literally the limit when it comes to
features, because Emacs is Turing complete---anything you can do in C++, you can do in LISP. Speaking of, LISP is one of
the two best scripting languages ever devised for a text editor. The other one is TECO. Nuff said.
Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen a program with a clunkier out-of-box
experience, as far as factory-default controls go for its original intended purpose (in the specific case of Emacs, for
editing text/code). In my opinion, the sheer awesomeness of Emacs' macro language is matched only by the awfulness of its
inbuilt command language.
This might take some explaining, but please bear with me. Imagine, if you will, a user
who has heard of Emacs only as an editor. He goes to the GNU Emacs web site, downloads it, installs it, runs it without
customising his .emacs in any way, and opens up the file he's thus far been editing in pico. He has no clue that there's
such a thing as Vimpulse, Viper, Evil, or Spacemacs. In his situation, instead of praising Emacs, I'd be banging my head
against the wall!
Now, I know this situation is unrealistic. There are two kinds of Emacs users: those who
have customised their .emacs file within an inch of its life, and those that haven't done so yet. That said, I've seen
.emacs files where features have been installed, but the default key map for Normal Mode has been left as is, and I've
always wondered... who does that? Are they mostly old Emacs hands who started before the invention of Evil-Mode? Or new
users who don't know about it? What makes them stick to the clunky default key map? Why haven't the default keys changed?
I especially wonder about newbies to Emacs who take the trouble to install Spacemacs and
then change the line
dotspacemacs-editing-style 'vim
to
dotspacemacs-editing-style 'emacs
, i.e. giving themselves the clunky, clumsy
original key layout
intentionally
.
Why?!?!?!?!11oneone!eleventy?slashslash?
I'm not trying to start a flame war here. I'm honestly, genuinely curious. Why would
someone consciously, intentionally choose the stock key layout? Who uses that layout? Or are we Vimpulse/Evil/Spacemacs
users in the minority? :wq
99 comments
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level 1
zipdry
18 points ·
1 year ago
Why would someone consciously, intentionally choose the stock key
layout?
Because it works.
Who uses that layout?
I do, as do so many others.
Or are we Vimpulse/Evil/Spacemacs users in the minority?
You apparently came over to Emacs from Vim and realized how much more you
could do with Emacs. If you want Emacs to behave as Vim then you can certainly do that. It's almost never
the reverse scenario. Anyway, happy hacking. That's the culture over here. :)
level 2
honeywhite
3 points ·
1 year ago
Thanks, happy hacking to you too.
My editor preference is
slightly
more complicated than that. In short, vim used to be my second choice after Teco (the PDP-6 text editor,
believe it or not - there's a visual variant of it for Linux called SciTECO). Because Emacs can do so much
more than Vim, it has now tied with Teco, depending on my mood/requirements. If I want a pure editor, I use
SciTECO; if I want the full Monty, I use Emacs with Vi-style keys. Vim is now third. Vanilla Emacs is way
down the list.
There's an interesting historical footnote to this: Emacs was originally
written in Teco. It was used by students who didn't like Teco's one-letter commands, and who wanted their
input to show up on the screen as they typed. Teco wasn't portable across architectures back then (was
written in DEC assembler). RMS apparently wanted a portable version of Emacs, so he rewrote it in Lisp, and
it took the up-and-coming OS called Unix by storm.
level 3
7890yuiop
4 points ·
1 year ago
Multics edm and qedx sound like exactly the sort of editors that have me
banging my head against a wall - to wit, line-at-a-time editors in the tradition of ed, em, and ex. Line
editors arise as the logical result of punch-card thinking: cards can be added to the beginning, middle, or
end of a stack, deleted, switched around, etc - and a line editor is nothing more than a virtualisation of
an idealised card deck.
People often think Teco is a line editor. It isn't. The PDP-6, I'm given
to understand, used a paper tape to store text, and paper-tape thinking is diametrically opposed to the
punch-card mindset in many ways. First, paper tape treats a file as a stream of continuous data; the concept
of a "line" has no place in the tape world. This is why Teco treats line feed as just another character,
like A, c, T, g, or space. It's also why it's got such robust search capability (the ancestor to regex in
fact) - with no lines to make reference to, you're left with descriptions like "right after the third
occurrence of 'wibble'".
Second, making changes to the middle of a tape means cutting out the bad
section and splicing in a new one, or just punching a whole new tape. Third, punching a tape is a slow
process. That's why the Teco workflow is something like "1. print out the tape/file you're going to edit 2.
make your corrections by hand 3. punch a tape containing only the corrections, using search to move around
4. read both the tape to edit and the correction tape 5. punch the corrected file." Strictly speaking, you
only really need a computer for steps 4 and 5.
Anyway. if you're making corrections to a class of related files, the
correction tape/file will literally be a *program* containing conditionals and suchlike - in other words,
the Teco language is Turing complete, and interactively editing a file necessarily takes place in a REPL.
You can understand the "problem" with this approach: with a general-purpose language, the script to edit a
file might be longer than the actual file. This is why Teco statements are one character long.
Add real-time video to it (so you can see the contents of the file as you
edit), and you're left with an experience that can be summed up as Vim on steroids. Your correction program
shows up in a modeline at the bottom of the screen; Teco previews the corrections before you actually
evaluate them (by hitting Escape twice), and you can undo your changes by backspacing up to your mistake.
This isn't the video-mode mentioned in the article; it's far more
sophisticated. Technically speaking, it's a refinement of C-r mode; unlike Stallman's version, though, it
maintains Teco syntax (Stallman's version had Emacs syntax, or rather,
was
Emacs). With the passage of time, Emacs has grown into something beautiful; thanks to Spacemacs, it
now also has a workable syntax for editing text.
By now, both editors have advanced to a point where they're probably tied
for feature-completeness. In comparison to SciTeco, Emacs lacks the REPL carried over from old school Teco.
In SciTeco, you can edit by writing a macro to open a file, make your changes, save, and quit - a process
that takes mere seconds. Emacs lacks an efficient version of this because Lisp commands aren't one character
long; you're better served by making your changes in real-time, rather than writing a script to do it. On
the other hand, SciTeco has much hairier syntax, so while programming in it is possible, it's much less
user-friendly than Lisp, which was made for general purpose work. This is why I say that Teco is a great
editor
, while Emacs is a great
system
(with a browser, mail client, news reader, organiser, etc.). Now that Spacemacs is reasonably
mature, Emacs has also gained an editor that is both usable and feature complete.
level 5
larsbrinkhoff
1 point ·
1 year ago
I'd invite you to use PDP-6 TECO with the graphical display, but I don't
have it running quite yet.
I don't know what PDP-1 TECO looked like - maybe there was just the paper
tape. The PDP-6 came with DECtape and used it to store a file system.
It was never called C-r mode.
In GNU Emacs, I can make a keyboard macro to open a file, make changes,
and save. Indeed, I have several times.
level 4
zipdry
2 points ·
1 year ago
Thank you for contributing this article here. I would say that most
people -- especially the younger generations -- have absolutely no idea about the development of the
Internet and how it came to be. When I tell people that it's been around since the 60's I get weird looks
and lots of questions. Then it was the government and academia (places such as MIT). Overall you present a
good discussion on LISP and the early development and implementation of Emacs. Thanks for sharing!
level 1
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
11 points ·
1 year ago
You never say what is "clunky" about Emacs OOB, nor what is "awful" about
is built-in command language. Suggest you explain some of that, for those of us who never tried using pico.
Maybe then the discussion will be a bit more productive.
level 2
honeywhite
4 points ·
1 year ago
The clunkiness comes from the fact that Emacs OOB uses key chords for its
commands. Not only are multiple keys pressed at once, but the fingers have to reach long distances (pinky on
Ctrl, ring on Shift, index on X, release ring and index, index on s). Vi and Teco both use mostly
sequentially-pressed commands (for example, open file in Teco is e r filename escape. In Vi it's : e space
filename enter). Both Vi and Teco have repeatable commands (for example, in both editors, insert "text "
five times is 5 i t e x t space escape). If there's a way to do that in vanilla Emacs I have no clue what it
is. Vi uses the shift key on occasion; Teco uses ctrl on occasion. In either case, only one bucky-bit is
used.
I don't use pico; I merely brought it up as an example of a "simple",
non-customisable editor - i.e. someone who was used to pico as an editor and ONLY an editor would probably
use Emacs in the same way (without customisation).
level 3
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
5 points ·
1 year ago
I don't see how
C-x C-f
is
so much worse than
e r
. And anyway, this is just one command;
how many commands can you support if the requirement is never to use more than one finger?
Inserting a character
N
time in
vanilla Emacs is
C-u N CH
or
M-N CH
, where CH is the character. If you mean you ant to
insert SOME TEXT several times, then you need to copy/paste, but how frequently you need that in text
editing? What are the real-life use cases for that?
Vi uses the shift key on occasion; Teco uses ctrl on occasion. In
either case, only one bucky-bit is used.
Emacs has much more commands, so it must use more combinations. Power
doesn't come without a price.
The "simple" editing is easy in Emacs as it is in any other editor: use
arrow keys and Home/End to move cursor, PgUp/PgDn to scroll, Delete and Backspace to delete. the "usual"
mouse gestures are also supported as newcomers will expect. So I really don't see what is this all about.
Really.
level 4
epicwisdom
2 points ·
1 year ago
I don't see how
C-x C-f
is so much worse than
e r
.
You have to either move your wrist, to press ctrl with your palm, or your
whole hand, to press it with your pinky or ring finger. You also have to press modifier keys
before
non-modifier keys, so in some sense
C-x C-f
is more like a 4-key sequence; in practice this isn't
really an issue since there are so many fewer modifier keys than non-modifiers.
And anyway, this is just one command; how many commands can you
support if the requirement is never to use more than one finger?
You can assign a leader key in vim, then bind further sequences behind
it. In Spacemacs they use the same idea to provide many (~hundreds) of keybindings behind
SPC
, e.g.
SPC f f
,
SPC w l
,
SPC h d k
.
One can always rely on
M-x
or an equivalent binding for
anything used so infrequently that typing its name is fast enough.
Emacs has much more commands, so it must use more combinations. Power
doesn't come without a price.
I think the existence of usable (imho better) evil-mode based
configurations contradicts that. I don't think Emacs-style bindings has anything to do with the number of
available commands as opposed to simple personal preference.
The "simple" editing is easy in Emacs as it is in any other editor:
use arrow keys and Home/End to move cursor, PgUp/PgDn to scroll, Delete and Backspace to delete. the
"usual" mouse gestures are also supported as newcomers will expect. So I really don't see what is this
all about. Really.
Well, I disagree with OP's point about somebody who came from using pico
or Notepad or whatever, so I don't really have any issue with the argument that Emacs has a more
beginner-friendly UI. But I don't think that this is a great argument for the overall ergonomics of Emacs
bindings once one is experienced, as I'm sure most Emacs users would agree.
level 5
KOMON
2 points ·
1 year ago
You also have to press modifier keys before non-modifier keys, so in
some sense
C-x C-f
is more like a 4-key sequence
Correction here. You don't have to lift your finger off ctrl in between x
and f, so it's at most a 3-key sequence.
how many commands can you support if the requirement is never to use
more than one finger?
Unlimited. Mode-changes are done with one finger too. The vi-way can
easily support as much commands as emacs offers. Whether it always makes sense is a different topic.
level 5
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
2 points ·
1 year ago
Sorry, but I could never understand why people like bimodal editors. They
drive me nuts. I guess I'm limited in some way.
level 6
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
I'd have to agree. There are certain dichotomies in daily life for which
society has largely plumped for one way over the other - usually for reasons that are obvious once you think
about them.
Take the idea of loading forks and knives into a dishwasher. Pointy bits
down, right? Right. It's safer that way, and besides, what are the handles for if not for handling? In the
shower, soap first, or hairwash? Hairwash first, of course! In a chest of drawers, socks and underwear
occupy the top drawer, and loo roll goes over.
The question of unimodal or bimodal editing is one of these. The
"obvious" answer is bimodal. O'Reilly sells twice as many Vi manuals as Emacs manuals, twice as many Arch
Linux users install Vi as install Emacs, etc. That said, there
are
people who load forks and knives pointy bits up, who lather up before washing their hair, who put their
socks in the bottom drawer, and who put the loo roll "backwards". There are good reasons for all of these
choices (pointy-bits-up is
cleaner
, top drawer is for vibrators and
dildos, loo roll backwards offers more torque) and yet if someone tells me they do things in the less
conventional way, it sounds strange.
level 7
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
4 points ·
1 year ago
In my personal perspective, the bimodal character of Vi is because it
started as
ed
and
ex
,
which didn't have the "visual" mode at all. Then the visual mode was added as a kind of patch, and the rest
is history.
O'Reilly sells twice as many Vi manuals as Emacs manuals
That's not the comparison you should be making. We should compare vi-like
bimodal editors with Emacs-like unimodal ones. Gedit, Notepad, etc. -- are all in the unimodal camp.
level 8
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
Partly true, but if visual mode hadn't been added to Vi, I'd argue that
it would have been added to Teco, and that Teco would have become the bimodal editor of choice. It died, I'd
argue, because it was in PDP-11 assembly language and wasn't re-written into C until the late 80's, at which
point the editor wars were in full swing. Teco, you may note, has been bimodal in a Vi-like way ever since
the Lyndon B. Johnson years.
level 4
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
Inserting a character
N
time
in vanilla Emacs is C-u N CH
or M-N CH, where CH is the character. If you mean you [w]ant to insert SOME TEXT several times, then you
need to copy/paste, but how frequently you need that in text editing? What are the real-life use cases
for that?
Lots of times. Just one use case is if I need 20 lines that all start the
same way. I issue the command
20iSOMETEXT[enter][escape]
then
20k$
and I can edit from there. For example, a list of serial
numbers.
Emacs's paradigm to do the same is different, and involves recording a
keyboard macro and invoking it with an argument. It's a different mechanism (and more flexible, I would
say), but it the same job with similar means.
level 6
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
The Vi equivalent would be
qQi0000[ENTER][ESC]q
to record a macro bound to Q-register
Q
,
then run the macro by typing
20@Q
.
level 7
oantolin
2 points ·
1 year ago
Having an unnamed macro, and being able to run the macro as you stop
recording, makes these things shorter in Emacs:
<F3> 0000 RET C-2 C-1
<F4>
(9 keystrokes vs 14 in your version). As I said elsewhere in this thread, I don't mind modifiers
and like Emacs for its brevity.
level 3
cbrachyrhynchos
4 points ·
1 year ago
(pinky on Ctrl, ring on Shift, index on X, release ring and index,
index on s).
I'd buy the complaints about emacs pinky a bit more if it didn't involve
arbitrary examples that would have gotten you smacked on the wrist with a ruler in any respectable
professional keyboarding class. Use the pinky sparingly, and don't one-handed keychord when you have two
hands available. The home row is a neutral position, from which you're going to reach wherever you need to
including the paten roller, manual carriage return, the shift lever, numeric keypad if you have it, and
fresh paper if you need it. Aspiring teens practicing on manual systems where using the pinky with the shift
key was physically impossible unless you were Harry Houdini could bang out an incredible number of pages per
day, on keyboards that required more force than any available for a computer system.
And in this case,
C-S-x s
is
mapped to the same function as
C-x s
.
C-x s (translated from C-S-x s) runs the command save-some-buffers
(found in global-map), which is an interactive compiled Lisp function
in 'files.el'.
It is bound to C-x s.
I almost never encounter C-S bindings in emacs. I do see them in Chrome,
Firefox, and MS Word.
level 4
Lord_Mhoram
2 points ·
1 year ago
I also learned to type on a manual typewriter, where you had no choice
but to hold the shift lever with your opposite hand. I still do shift that way if I'm just typing a letter
or something. But somehow over the years I got in the habit of 'chording' with the left Ctrl key and
basically ignoring the right one. I wonder why that is, because it would be more comfortable and ergonomic
to use right-Ctrl together with keys on the left. I suspect it's because of the mouse -- having my right
hand on the mouse in programs like web browsers, and then hitting combos like
C-c' and
C-f` with the left hand alone. Now that I've gone to a
keyboard-driven browser and window manager, maybe I'll try to get in the habit of using the right Ctrl key.
level 3
bmiww
2 points ·
1 year ago
As far as I remember, the vanilla emacs tutorial showcases the repeat
command.
level 4
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
2 points ·
1 year ago
Of course, the tutorial shows this important feature.
level 5
zipdry
1 point ·
1 year ago
Apparently nobody reads that but you and I.
level 6
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
1 point ·
1 year ago
(pinky on Ctrl, ring on Shift, index on X, release ring and index,
index on s)
I had to look this one up, because I don't think I've ever pressed it in
20+ years of using emacs. If I ever need to use
save-some-buffers
,
I'll probably do
Meta-x save-some-buffers
, because I wouldn't
remember the shortcut anyway.
Seems to me the common commands are on key combos that are easier to
type, and the rarely-used ones on harder combinations like this one. If you have an unusual use case that
requires a rare command often, you bind it differently with one line in .emacs.
level 4
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
Just how would
you
save the
buffer you're currently working on?
level 5
Lord_Mhoram
1 point ·
1 year ago
I actually know a bunch of people who use vanilla Emacs, no
customizations, and they're not really that old. I personally use the original layout, because I like it? I
don't particularly like modal editing, I don't like to have to keep track of the state of the program
constantly and am more key chord oriented. Instead of a sequence of keys, I prefer one chord. Admittedly I
have to use an ergonomic keyboard, but that's not that big a deal. I've also added many key combinations of
my own and shadowed some others, but in general I follow the paradigm laid out by RMS, or whoever RMS was
adapting from at the time, anyway.
I would say that the community is pretty well split between Emacs
standard paradigm and Vim style keybindings. With that said, I think there are still more vanilla style
users around, but that's just a guess.
level 2
StrangeAstronomer
1 point ·
1 year ago
Vanilla here. And old (old enough to have started my Unix travels with
ed
! And I was already middle aged then.)
Also fluent in
vi
as well as
emacs
- both sets of commands are baked-in to my cerebellum by
now.
level 3
Amonwilde
1 point ·
1 year ago
I don't believe I said vanilla Emacs users are old, although I'd hazard a
guess that inertia keeps them from customising it (i.e. they've invested time into learning vanilla fully,
and changing to something "easier" would in fact be harder for them). So I'd say if someone does have 100%
vanilla emacs, they're either completely new or relatively experienced (seniority rather than age is what
I'm talking about).
level 1
7890yuiop
4 points ·
1 year ago
are we Vimpulse/Evil/Spacemacs users in the minority?
I have nothing against vi bindings, but I would be bewildered if you were
not in the minority of Emacs users (and by a very large margin).
level 2
zipdry
2 points ·
1 year ago
Exactly. Which also begs the question: How many Emacs users decide to
switch to Vim? And why?
level 3
tincholio
2 points ·
1 year ago
I've been an Emacs user for some 17 years now, and I haven't switched to
vim, but I have switched to Evil about 5 or 6 years ago, and find it a much better editing experience than
stock Emacs. Even the transition was much easier than I had anticipated (and as a bonus, I became proficient
in vim as well).
level 4
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
I don't think
anyone
in his right
mind would switch to Vim from Spacemacs or Evil. That's the functional equivalent of giving up Lisp in
favour of Vimscript. Literally the only two reasons to use Vim over Emacs are a) the one-at-a-time commands,
and b) it's available everywhere. Well, Emacs now has a), and if you know Spacemacs, you now also know Vim,
so b) isn't a problem.
level 3
Comment deleted by user
1
year ago
level 4
emgee_1
3 points ·
1 year ago
I think most emacsers are proficient in vi ( or vim) but prefer a
different comfort zone
level 5
zipdry
1 point ·
1 year ago
I dont get this argument, there is Tramp. You never need to rely on a
remote binary to edit text which is by the way an idiotic concept.
level 5
Comment deleted by user
1
year ago
level 6
Lord_Mhoram
1 point ·
1 year ago
Yes, when I ssh into a remote system, I'm usually there to perform a
task, which may or may not involve editing files, and I probably won't know until I get into it. Also, the
files I need to edit may be owned by root or other users. Could I setup Tramp and sudo so that I would have
permission to edit them? Quite likely, but that would be overkill for situations where I may not need to do
this very often. Vi is ideal for those cases, and I don't have a problem using it for that, while using
Emacs for editing (and mail and news and git and org and....) on my local system.
level 5
physicologist
3 points ·
1 year ago
You never need to rely on a remote binary to edit text
I didn't downvote you, but there are instances where you must use the
remote binary to edit the text. At a previous employer, they had a computing cluster with a single atrium
computer that you could ssh into. The atrium node would ONLY allow you to run their shell script which would
then ssh into a randomly selected node.
The atrium node had not write access to anything, so you could not use
tramp to connect to the atrium and edit your remote files. The nodes would not accept ssh access from any
machine but the atrium, so you could not use tramp to connect to the nodes that did have write access.
Attempting to perform a multi-hop edit through the atrium to the node wouldn't work, since the atrium
disallowed access to the actual ssh program and only supported running their shell script wrapper, which
accepted no command line arguments.
level 1
oantolin
4 points ·
1 year ago
My editor history is that I used Emacs first, but very naively, then
switched to Vim for 5 years where I learned editing in terms of syntactic units, then back to Emacs with
Evil for about a year, and finally dropped Evil. So you can see I really do prefer the Emacs default
keybindings ---with, of course, a few minor modifications!
I agree with most of the other answers you've received and will add one I
think you haven't gotten yet: I prefer Emacs keybindings because they are slightly more efficient in terms
of number of keystrokes! I'll count them using VimGolf rules: a key pressed with a modifier, such as CTRL,
counts as one keystroke. (People seem to forget that Vim uses plenty of <C-somethings>, just because Emacs
uses even more of them.)
Many very common operations take one more keypress in Vim than in Emacs:
for example, deleting 3 words is
3dw
in Vim, but
M-3 M-d
in Emacs. A global search and replace takes a whopping
3 extra characters in Vim:
:%s/foo/bar/g<CR>
(pattern &
replacement + 8 keypresses) vs
M-< M-% foo RET bar RET !
(pattern & replacement + 5 keypresses). Macros are also much lighter-weight in Emacs than in Vim, thanks to
the ability of not naming them: you can record and play with one keypress each. For example to do
3itext<CR>
(inserted text + 3 keypresses) in Emacs, I would do
<F3> text C-3 <F4>
(also inserted text + 3 keypresses).
These keypresses here and there add up! I played VimGolf in Emacs for a
while (using an excellent
vimgolf
Emacs package that used to be
on MELPA) and fairly often tied or beat the best VimGolf score. Now, some people prefer to type more in
exchange for using far fewer modifiers and that is fine! Personally, I have no issue with modifiers,
probably because I don't use my pinky to press them. :)
level 2
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
Yeah, you've basically hit upon my exact reason for preferring Vim keys.
I will take a longer command over a shorter one if I don't have to hold down any modifiers, or at least if I
have to hold down
fewer
modifiers.
As for counting keystrokes, I count at least two in C-c (if I'm feeling
particularly prejudicial, I'll count three, including releasing the Ctrl key at the end).
level 1
xah
4 points ·
1 year ago
Perhaps, look at it this way:
most emacs users use emacs default keys because it's the default. This is
same with qwerty vs dvorak situation, or any tech. It takes quite some effort to change things out of
ordinary. e.g. first one must be aware there are alternatives. This also rules out most newbies for not
using default key.
for those who use spacemacs and change it to emacs default key, probably
because, they've already have experience with emacs. The default keys are burned to muscle memory, which is
very hard and painful to change.
default key has other advantages other than habit. e.g. dvorak layout is
more efficient, but everytime you goto library, or use other computer, it's a problem. And other people
can't type on your keyboard. This also applies to PC keyboard vs those fancy ergo ones such as ergodox.
another advantage of default is that it's the "official". As with most
other things, you want to stick to official. Unless one really learned otherwise, such as by words of mouth
and established a trust on X.
vi is more popular simply because vi is bundled with unixes. Emacs
require install. This is still true today on linuxes.
people switch away from default mostly due to need. e.g. those who got
hand pain. Those who have interest in efficiency. (which may be the same reason that drew them into emacs in
the first place)
i used emacs default keys 100% for the first 6 years of my emacs life.
level 1
jonnay23
6 points ·
1 year ago
I'm not trying to start a flame war here
Maybe try a little harder?
. I'm honestly, genuinely curious. Why would someone consciously,
intentionally choose the stock key layout? Who uses that layout? Or are we Vimpulse/Evil/Spacemacs users
in the minority? :wq
It's not that terrible and it does have it's own (loose) logic. Plus most
elisp follows that kind of logic. K for kill. Be it a line, s-expression, change in magit, whatever.
Besides,
Composability
is what gives vim commands their magic. I'm sure that's coming for stock emacs commands at some point.
level 2
1Nude
3 points ·
1 year ago
Little shout out to one of my favorite emac packages:
composable.el
very easy to make custom functions too. For example I have my own custom paren function
that I just use all the time.
level 3
TheNinthJhana
1 point ·
1 year ago
At least I use my own made actions-oriented menus : I have the delete
menus (delete Sexp, buffer, delete window...), The new menu (new buffer, new window.. ), the replace menu (
replace Sexp...). The goal for each menus is to have objects callable using the same key. Eg buffer tries to
always be
b
. So I can memory muscle like vim.
level 2
epicwisdom
2 points ·
1 year ago
I'm sure that's coming for stock emacs commands at some point.
I highly doubt the stock emacs commands are getting any major changes any
time soon. There are plenty of modes available which make emacs commands more composable (or at least more
ergonomic), without resorting to vim-style bindings, though.
level 2
honeywhite
4 points ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
I agree, vanilla Emacs keys DO have a sort of logic to them, but they do
twist my fingers up something foul. There's no accounting for taste (although I do like to hear people's
reasons) - but for me, arpeggios beat chords any day.
Composability is *definitely* a plus, although I'd actually argue that
Vi-style keys are less composable than Teco-style (they're missing the "reverse" capability that Teco
provides). For example, -10l does *not* mean "move ten left" in Vi; in Teco, on the other hand, "10c" and
"-10c" mean "move ten right" and "move ten left" respectively. Vi keys are paired (h = char. left, l = char.
right), while Teco keys are sometimes paired but almost always reversible (c = char right, -c = char left).
In Teco, it's quite possible to write a macro with a condition that
"switches" a command. Something like the following pseudocode, where n is a number of characters to move, c
is literally the letter c, and D is either null or a minus sign:
if Q-Reg $A = "back" let Q-Reg $D = "-"
let Q-Reg n = 6
nDc
In either case, you can write Turing-complete programs for text
processing, where literally every instruction is one character long (line 2 above would be
6un
for example - u is the Teco
let
command). As far as my experience goes, Teco macros are a
little bit shorter than Vi ones on average but not by much.
level 3
cbrachyrhynchos
1 point ·
1 year ago
I agree, vanilla Emacs keys DO have a sort of logic to them, but they
do twist my fingers up something foul.
Assuming you're not a one-handed typist and a standard US layout, almost
every two-key chord can be typed without a twist, and preferably without using the pinky. Keyboards that put
modal keys on one side are bad for this reason. Three-key chords are a bit trickier to reach, but can be
done. (Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft are annoying for putting "paste plain text" under a three-key chord
that's awkward enough to make me reach for the mouse half the time.)
level 1
dzecniv
3 points ·
1 year ago
I'm an middle-aged salt who learned emacs doing email support (in elm)
back in college 25 years ago. I primarily use emacs. I did second drafts of my disseration editing in vim.
During my thesis work I ended up with a bad case of RSI (keyboarding combined with knitting), which I still
manage. I still use vim now and then over ssh.
Vim bindings just seem to drop out of my head unless I'm using vim as a
daily driver. I keep a handful of keybindings I actually use remotely, but if I do serious editing I keep
running to documentation, or just switch out. Also I have a somewhat bad habit of forgetting which mode I'm
in, and mangling half of my config because I wasn't in insert mode. I think the idea that composable key
sequences, modes, and vim golf are more accessible to newbies than an open buffer is a bit ridiculous.
Earlier this year, I think I just gave up and switched
C-x C-e
in my shell to nano.
Since I do manage RSI in order to have a happy personal and professional
life, I've reached a pretty deep level of skepticism that RSI, a biomechanical problem involving bad
physical
design and bad technique can be fixed at the software layer
of remapping keys, much less the cults of home row or CUA which insist that everything would be all better
if everything was clustered around favorite keys. My suggestion: go to youtube and watch Victor Wooten and
see how much time his left hand spends in one point on the fretboard. Loosen up the shoulders and elbows,
and reach with them rather than painfully stretching the wrist and fingers. If you're starting RSI symptoms,
take a hard look at the mechanics of your keyboard, your desk, the kinds of work you're doing, and your
typing technique. Dvorak and vim might not save you.
The most important keybindings for me are
M-x
combined with search via ivy/counsel. If it's a frequently
repeated action it goes into a function. If it's boilerplate it goes into skeleton. It's one reason why I've
never stuck around with other editors.
level 1
ringingraptor
3 points ·
1 year ago
I began my Emacs journey with Spacemacs and vim bindings about 6 months
ago, but I recently switched to a custom config + Emacs bindings. I always felt like some part of the whole
Emacs system was being abstracted away from me in Spacemacs + Evil, and I wanted to get a more pure Emacs
experience and truly adopt the workflow.
I actually feel much more comfortable with Emacs bindings now, although I
was never
that
comfortable with Vim to begin with.
level 2
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
Yes, Spacemacs does abstract a part of the Emacs experience, but why
didn't you switch to pure Evil then? Again, I'm certainly not denigrating your choices; I simply wonder why
you'd intentionally give up a pure usability fix. I get the feeling that Spacemacs likes to do things a
certain way, and if you don't like to do things that exact way, it might not be a good fit (Emacs OOB gives
you more manoeuvring room in that sense). Evil, on the other hand, merely gives you key mappings that, in my
opinion, are light-years more ergonomic than stock.
level 3
ringingraptor
3 points ·
1 year ago
Since I was starting from scratch, I decided to try out Emacs bindings
while configuring my packages for the first time, and it just so happened that I quite liked them. By the
time I had my basic packages setup, I was already comfortable enough moving around with default bindings
that I had no desire to switch back to Evil. Like I said, I really wasn't that married to Vim/Evil bindings;
I had only been using Vim bindings in my editors for a few months, so the switch wasn't as much effort as I
imagine it would be for someone with more experience. I'm not saying that Emacs bindings are objectively
better of course; I just like the way they feel, which is completely subjective.
I also didn't have any problems with the way Spacemacs did things other
than that it does so much for you, if that makes any sense. I think it's a great thing for those who don't
want to spend so much time tinkering around or introducing people to Emacs. I like tinkering and wanted to
get more of that experience, which is why I switched.
level 1
bts
3 points ·
1 year ago
I've been using Emacs since version 18 or so; something around 1990? Some
of my .emacs is that old. At least one
(
anyway. The original
keybindings were built by people who lived in Emacs -- it's not like they were designed by a product manager
who'd never have to live in the thing, they were worked out by Gosling and Greenblatt and Stallman and all
as they went.
It's true, I've learned C-a and C-e and C-s and all, and appreciate many
of those choices. Here's some of what I see as a difference:
The core, original Emacs users are all touch-typists, and fast even
for that crowd. I expect a serious Emacs user to be able to comfortably type while looking away from the
screen, including comfortable command execution. After all, they have a model of the state-space of the
editor.
They're writing Lisp or prose: either way, typing speed isn't their
limit. Thinking speed dominates. Perhaps that's true of vi users too? But it means that a few extra keys
or whatever aren't actually slowing them down; those cover what would have been "dead" time anyway
because of pipelining between Kahneman's System II and a trained System I manipulation of the keyboard.
Chording keys are handled specially. These people aren't using
grid-layout keyboards; they're using descendants of the Space Cadet: Kineses-Ergo, for example, with all
the chording keys under the thumbs.
Long chords are for rare operations, or operations that will
necessarily have a big pause. C-x C-f signals "overwrite a filename I'm not going to tell you right now
with the contents of this buffer," so you'd better be
really sure
;
getting sure swamps the time to chord in an extra key.
I did start using Helm a few years ago, and may stick with it for a few
more or go back to ido-mode. I'm not really interested in Spacemacs. I think it's like using D instead of
C... when I'm over in Haskell. Great if all you've known is vim, and a sincere and honest improvement in the
on-ramp. I see Spacemacs bringing lots of folks to Emacs, and I see VS Code and similar web-based
high-latency editors doing so from the other side: one carrot, one stick. The on-ramp for me was >25 years
ago, so I'm interested in what makes the left lane experience smoother.
You've got some good points there. As you say, when writing code, speed
isn't really the issue, because I'm thinking more than typing. And modifiers aren't an issue if I'm
touch-typing at high speed, like working on a rough draft of an article, because then I'm not using Ctrl or
Alt.
So for me, the "emacs pinky" thing only comes in when editing -- moving
around a lot and cutting/pasting or deleting/inserting small amounts, even single characters. That's when I
might have my pinky on Ctrl more often than not, and it can get uncomfortable. But going modal for that work
isn't ideal for me either, because it seems like I spend half my time popping in and out of insert mode.
I'd note that there are more sophisticated movement commands in Emacs --
forward a word or sentence, for instance -- that I don't use as much as I could, even though they would cut
down on pinky work. I think that's because it's easier to mentally "move" with the cursor when I keep it
simple: up, down, left, right, beginning/end of line/file. It's most comfortable to have the cursor moving
with my eyes/thoughts.
So I'm fine with the commands and keystrokes as they are, but I might
look into one of those thumb-modifier keyboards. I used to think I should stick with a standard keyboard so
I wouldn't be awkward when using a different one, but I do nearly all my work from one system now, so it
could be worth it, if I could retrain myself.
level 2
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
Definitely a plausible explanation, but I would argue that your first
point applies just as well (or better) in the case of Vim/Spacemacs. I am a touch-typist myself; besides
Spacemacs, the other "text editor" I use is a semi-electric typewriter (a Hermes Ambassador with an electric
carriage return but manual keys).
Because they lack "bucky bits" (Escape, Meta, Alt, Ctrl, and Shift), Vim
or Teco can actually be represented just fine on a typewriter, and I'd argue they're closer to writing prose
than Emacs OOB is. Think about it this way: the English language uses just one modifier key, namely Shift
for the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns. When you hit the Escape key to change states in Spacemacs
or Teco, you're switching between the English language and the Vi language. Both English and Vi have "words"
that are chiefly alphabetic; I'd argue that this is the key difference between Emacs OotB and a Vi-speaking
editor like Vim, Spacemacs, or Evil. With Emacs OotB, you're making roughly the same number of keypresses,
but a lot of them are more than one key at a time; more importantly, Emacs-the-editor considers
text-insertion to be the "default" behaviour, while Vi considers editing (meaning deletions, moves,
searches) to be the default.
Where I take issue with your reasoning is that you're implying that
Vi-the-language is objectively less advanced than Emacs-the-language. Emacs-the-LispM
is
more advanced, which is the very reason I'm using it, but it's
false to say that
C-x C-s wibble-mode.el
is a more advanced way
to say "save to wibble-mode.el" than is
:w wibble-mode.el
. The
fact that Emacs has (or rather,
is
) a Turing complete language, like
Teco, is what makes it so advanced.
I don't know to what extent I agree with you about Spacemacs. It does
force you into a particular line or paradigm of thinking; whether this represents a "dumbing down" of the
same calibre as Lisp/Haskell > C, or whether it's simply a drastically different concept along the lines of
functional > imperative programming, is very much debatable. Notwithstanding the question of whether
Spacemacs is a slip-road improvement (on-ramp for you leftponders), it's unarguable that pure Evil, being
simply a re-mapping of keys, is just as good in the left lane as it is on the slip road, whether you use
Spacemacs or not.
I'd say the Vi
editor
language is
what kept me in Vim, while its
programming
language (if it could be
called that...) is what pushed me away. I'd always been envious of Emacs users being able to mould their
editor into an almost literal extension of their brains, but I absolutely refused to give up modal editing
for this, even if I'd be stuck with the utter
travesty
called
Vimscript. The minute I heard that Emacs had a modal editor, I switched and haven't looked back. I don't
know if I'll give up Spacemacs as I get more advanced, but one thing's for sure: pigs will fly and the earth
will melt beneath my feet before I transition to chords and non-modal editing.
level 1
WalterGR
5 points ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
The out-of-the-box experience of Emacs is absolutely horrible if you've
had experience with other editors or IDEs. It goes way beyond the default keybindings. Full stop.
I look at Emacs as a text editor construction kit. Or something of a text
editor kernel. You pull open the box, and you've got a bunch of parts built in the 80s that you need to
assemble yourself. It comes with a very thick manual. To use it as a modern tool, you've got to build a lot
of stuff on top of it. Much like a Linux distribution vs. the bare kernel. Users can do the work of building
a modern editor manually by doing the necessary research and building their .emacs by hand. Or users can use
a pre-built distribution like Spacemacs, Doom-emacs, or others.
EDIT: I think a lot of the pain comes from expecting Emacs to follow the
conventions of any other program. If you have the time and energy to invest in figuring out the 'Emacs Way',
and you don't mind submitting to what feels like almost intentionally baroque technology, then you'll be
golden, and you'll be the person who writes the, "Emacs is great and I don't know what your problem is,"
comments.
level 2
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
I fundamentally agree with this, except for the "text editor" part. Emacs
is more than a text editor construction kit; it's an
anything
construction kit. With Spacemacs, it now has an editor that I would call good; before Spacemacs, you were
expected to write your own editor, and with Vim and SciTeco available, I didn't see the point, at least for
my situation.
level 3
WalterGR
1 point ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
I didn't see the point, at least for my situation.
I feel you. I'm no longer a young man. And to submit myself to the BDSM
that is Emacs... I just... have better things to do.
I don't necessarily LIKE it, but it's just what I learned, and the amount
of difficulty switching to modal style bindings presents has just been too much for me to overcome every
time I've tried it.
level 2
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
"Objects in motion tend to stay in motion" - inertia, in other words.
level 1
redback-spider
2 points ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
First both input styles are bad vims or emacs, it's just that emacs is
slightly worse.
But a normal user that used gedit, joe, wordpad, notepad++, Eclipse
anything, will feel like its a nightmare if they use vim the first time.
Yes its modal mode has advantages but it still is not really ergonomic,
it both tends to give users RSI. Because hitting the escape key with your small finger over and over again
isn't healthy for your pinky like hitting C-c or C-x over and over again.
So the real solution would be to use something like ergoemacs mode or
flykeys-mode.
But back to your question, I don't use the normal keys nor do I use
Vimstyle keys.
But there are some advantages of emacs standard keys over vim or
ergoemacs style:
First if you use a mode that is not designed for vim it often comes with
preset key combs like C-c C-j C-* so you don't have to remap those to your style.
Second its pretty easy to remember the shortcuts, must emacs internal
start with C-x all mode-specific keys start with C-c then they often have 2nd layer lets say you edit a
clojure file. You want to do something with clojure it's a minor mode so it must start with C-c I guess C-c
C-c is reserved for something else, what would be the next letter that you think in closure well maybe not
the next but one good is R so every shortcut in that mode starts with
C-c C-r ...
Except sesman operations they start with:
C-c C-s (s for sesman)
from there on:
...C-s to start sesman
...C-u to unlink sesman
...C-q to quit...
b link with buffer
d link with directory
it's easy to remember. So that's the advantage of that, it's not easy to
press but easy to remember. So if you use a mode seldom this style is better because your major problem is
to remember shortcuts, if you use it often its bad because you get RSI and remembering is not the problem.
So it has a advantage it's easier to learn / remember. Hope that answers your question.
Also it does not collide with something very few minor modes that get
used in one buffer at the same time have conflicting shortcuts, with smaller keybindings you have keybinding
conflicts all the time.
A command mode with 1 layer keys has only a limited number of possible
operation. if you need more what do you do. with thousands of possible minor modes, that get developed
independent how do you want to make sure they don't conflict? They conflict with that too, but less often
than witth less layers.
level 2
honeywhite
1 point ·
1 year ago
I feel like for a notepad++ user, Emacs is quite a bit more familiar
(especially the GUI version). You don't need to enter a command to insert text, etc. Even CTRL/X, CTRL/S is
similar to Notepad++'s CTRL/S. In fact, I'd say the GUI version could replace Gedit and most people wouldn't
notice (File -> Save on both, etc.)
That said, Vi is certainly the most ergonomic out of the three. N++ has
single chords, Emacs has single or double chords for simple operation, and Vi has single keys and arpeggios
(sequential chords).
Yes, a command mode with only one layer of keys is limited in the number
of operations, but only if every key acts immediately. In Vi, you have "chords" just like in Emacs - they're
just not pressed *at the same time* but sequentially. Like for example, "delete to end of line" in Vi is d
$. Delete whole line is d d, delete 5 lines is 5 d d, delete until "sign" is d / sign [enter]. Under no
circumstances are two keys pressed at once.
level 3
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
1 point ·
1 year ago
Delete whole line is d d, delete 5 lines is 5 d d
Similar in Emacs:
C-k C-k
deletes whole line,
C-u 5 C-k
or
M-5 C-k
deletes 5 lines.
Under no circumstances are two keys pressed at once.
But you pay for that by having 2 modes. Emacs uses single-chord commands
in read-only buffers, but its unimodal operation is a much better match for modern user expectation of a GUI
program, IMO.
level 4
oantolin
2 points ·
1 year ago
Doesn't
C-k C-k
delete only
from point to the end of the line?
kill-whole-line
is bound to
C-M-<backspace>
.
level 5
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
1 point ·
1 year ago
Doesn't C-k C-k delete only from point to the end of the line?
It does, but what's your point?
level 6
oantolin
1 point ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
I had no point, just wanted to make sure I wasn't confused about
C-k C-k
.
(You seemed to be saying that
dd
in Vim did the same thing as
C-k C-k
in Emacs, I was just
clarifying that it doesn't but
C-M-<backspace>
does.)
level 7
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
3 points ·
1 year ago
No, the issue at hand was how Vim makes it easy to specify numeric
arguments to modify the command's behavior, whereas Emacs allegedly doesn't. Which is of course false. So I
gave an example of a similar feature in Emacs.
level 8
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
I don't believe I implied anything like what you think I said. What I
did
say, being largely unfamiliar with vanilla keys, was I didn't
know
if vanilla Emacs let you repeat a command like Vi-the-language
does. Thanks for telling me it does.
level 9
eli-zaretskii
GNU Emacs maintainer
3 points ·
1 year ago
FWIW, it's one of the first thing Emacs teaches in its tutorial.
level 4
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
It might match modern user
expectation
,
but it's definitely less
ergonomic
. Once you come to terms with the
concept of the mode, editing becomes as fast as writing in English. In fact, it gains many of the trappings
of an ordinary human language.
This is why I have an issue with your claim that you're "paying" for
one-key-at-a-time operation with modes. I'd say you pay for having two modes by having Vimscript as your
macro language. Having two modes is, for me, a highly desirable feature: it's like having arguments on a
command-line program, and, in my opinion, the Right Way to edit text.
In my Teco-inspired outlook, I see every text editing command as rather
like a command-line argument. For example, the Vim commands
10j
isometext[ESC] /wibble[ENTER] $ 2dd ?frodo[ENTER] 5x ibilbo[ESC]
could be thought of as:
The main problem for noobs of this editor is that they don't have their
normal C-cvx and other shortcuts. That they have no tabs but frames / buffers and stuff.
For the people that are willing to learn new shortcuts ergonomy is not
the first thing they think about, but getting productive with a editor. You will get faster productive with
emacs than with vi(m), because the shortcuts are designed to be easy to remember, and some are even easy for
gedit/notepad users as you said.
Then you have the 3rd kind of people that commit to use the editor a lot
and do tasks more than once. they can easily modify emacs to be more ergonomic than vim.
The only advantage Vim in my view has is its greater userbase. so you
have more mouth to mouth propaganda.
I guess one thing was also that ergonomic modes for emacs are only a few
years old, but then again evil mode is pretty old. I guess people had very weak machines with less than 8mb
ram so vim was their choice?
Well of course installing emacs + evilmode was 2 steps installing vim
directly only 1 step?
One thing vi(m) has going is that its pretty small and that it was
preinstalled on many distries I think in debian?
I think its pretty much peer pressure these days, I see no rational
reason non-social, non-historic why anybody would use vim over emacs.
Well except that you find it preinstalled on old machines or somethimes
new machines and emacs not.
But I missed a bit the point, I didn't say that emacs is more ergonomic
with default settings, I just said that both are bad depending on how you use them.
And compared to notepad++ I also slightly would disagree. It depends on
how often do you press certain shortcuts and how. So with vi you do everything with your keyboard and
pressing esc with the pinky is a far stretch. I never heard of people complaining about RSI that used
notepad++, but it's a thing for emacs and vim.
You claim that pressing keychords is the worst you can do, I disagree.
even C-x would be totaly fine keychord if you use your right side ctrl. Of course keychords are not ideal
ergonomy wise but there are worse and better keychords and pressing esc a lot if you don't use special
technics to press them and do it with your pinkey reaching to it from your home-row is very unergonomic.
The escape key had on older keyboards a different position that's why
they chose it, even pressing "tab" would not be ideal but much better than the escape key. the escape key is
probably the most painfull to press key on the keyboard with your hands on the homerow.
So yes its no key chords, but that doesn't make it automatically better.
level 1
bagtowneast
2 points ·
1 year ago
I use mostly vanilla keybindings, and when I've customized keys, I tend
to try to follow the vanilla patterns. Same with keybindings that come with various modes. I tend to leave
them as defaults.
Edit to add: and I do this because I'm mostly happy with it.
level 1
gammarray
2 points ·
1 year ago
I came from Mac OS to Linux and decided early on to swap ctrl and super
keys for muscle memory. I wasn't ready to move from a thumb based primary modifier to my pinky.
I learned Emacs' default keybindings with this layout. It felt quite
natural, but I did re-map some commonly used commands like save, close window, and copy/paste to be what I
was used to (C-s, C-w, C-c, and C-v).
I installed Keyfreq.el to see what commands I used most frequently and
added Hydras and Key Chords to reduce my keystrokes. The combination of default keybindings and targeted
customizations seems to working very well for me.
I liked Emacs so much, I switched to EXWM and now I get to use my
keybindings everywhere.
The "Emacs Way" of handling keybindings is hard to see the reasoning
behind until you've used a variety of modes and packages, but here is a common thread and well thought out
logic behind it. Some commands might be a bit verbose, but there are lots of options for making the
important ones faster and/or easier to type.
level 1
swagbyte
2 points ·
1 year ago
I switched from VIM to Emacs several months ago, after been using VIM for
several years. At first I tried Evil-mode, but found that the keybindings broke in some situations which
annoyed me. I also tried Spacemacs, but felt that I had less control over my config.
So I tried vanilla Emacs and liked it after a weeks usage. It's a bonus
that some of the bindings work directly in the terminal. My only fear initially was that there were waaay
too many keybindings to remember, which might change depending on the mode you're in. But you get use to
this rather quickly. Yes, there were times when I really missed the VIM bindings for manipulating text in
specific situations, but then I realized that there are Emacs packages that covers these things.
Now I feel liberated of not having to do
CTRL-[
all the time. The only thing I really miss from my VIM
days is the almighty repeat functionalty
.
, which pairs well
with the modal aspect of VIM.
level 2
oantolin
2 points ·
1 year ago
For Vim's
.
try the fabulous
dot-mode
. It works by automatically making a keyboard macro out
of strings of consecutive non-motion commands.
level 2
gammarray
1 point ·
1 year ago
While not as terse as . in vim, C-x z will repeat and then z will repeat
more.
level 3
oantolin
4 points ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
The problem is granularity. For example, in Vim changing a word is a
repeatable action. In Emacs if you delete a word, type the replacement and then press
C-x z
it just repeats typing the last letter. For a more vimmy
repeat, try the
dot-mode
package that repeats the last stretch
of non-motion commands.
level 1
emgee_1
2 points ·
1 year ago
There's still another argument ( be it weak) for using standard keys : as
a relative newbie I have to look up a lot of things. Before I discovered emacs own discover ability I
duckduckgoed a lot. Now if you choose the spacemacs flavor then searching for keybindings will get confusing
because most tutorials and blog posts use more or less default and different key bindings ; so for a
newcomer these batteries included configs also have draw back and in the long run you are better off not
modifying too much
level 1
rbtEngrDude
2 points ·
1 year ago
As someone who regularly has to use both (Emacs as my editor of choice,
vim where I have to, i.e. remote connections or boxes that don't have emacs installed), I legitimately
prefer emacs keybindings.
And I learned Vi first
!
Seriously though, while emacs gets bloated and complicated pretty
quickly, the raw editing power it has inherent in its bone stock defaults is worth the trouble. Yanking into
the minibuffer while C-
r/C-s
for something I'm trying to track down requires an imperceptible amount of mental context switching.
Memorizing the keybinds for moving a single character, a word, line, paragraph, or sexp is sort of a grind
at first, but ultimately makes moving through, marking, cutting/copying, and moving text SO MUCH EASIER.
There are so many little joyous tidbits in the default keybinds, if you
take the time to actually use them. If you're deadset on Evil, you'll get what you're used to. But you'll
miss out on what really makes Emacs Emacs, and not just a lisp machine with a bunch of addons.
level 2
honeywhite
2 points ·
1 year ago
Hah! Looks like there's a small but dedicated subcommunity of
Emacs-the-editor lovers. I never doubted that people loved the glorious LISP Machine that Emacs is - I'm now
one of those people as well, and really always was but got held back by the keys that I'm not used to. But I
always viewed the Emacs defaults as something to be tolerated rather than liked - and even that only until
one could learn to customise them. Even reading this thread, I see people saying they use the Emacs keys
because they're the default, or out of sheer inertia, or they use a customisation of the Emacs keys that
suits them and nobody else. Besides you, I noticed that Eli Zaretskii also seems to love the Emacs out of
the box commands.
The funny thing is that I have a machine that runs the Symbolics Genera
OS on top of Linux. Its editor, naturally, is Emacs. I've actually thought about forking Genera development
because it's such a nice OS, and at some point when I have time I'll probably do it. In any case, Genera
Emacs uses
Common
LISP instead of
GNU
LISP, and I'll either have to port Evil Mode to Common LISP or learn the Emacs keybinds. The latter
is easier. I don't think I'll ever switch fully to Emacs-the-editor, but I'll certainly learn it at some
point.
level 1
bastibe
2 points ·
1 year ago
I used to use Vim for a few years, then switched to Emacs. Since then,
the Vim bug still bites me every now and then, and I'll try out Evil for a day or two. But what invariably
brings me back to Emacs is its more intelligent commands, like
Search and replace lets you modify the replacement terms on the fly, and
interactively skip single replacements.
Find file has intelligent auto completion that searches my history.
If you regexp search, then regexp replace, your search term is pre-filled
with the previous search.
Things like this are just
better
in Emacs than in Vim. I tend to work at a higher level in Emacs than in Vim. Instead of text objects I mark
the symbol under point or expand-region. Instead of macros I use multiple cursors. Instead of searching for
function definitions I use the imenu (which works for function/class definitions, but also latex sections).
I could go on, but the point is, in Emacs it feels like I operate on
code, while Vim operates on characters. I prefer the Emacs way.
level 1
lawlist
3 points ·
1 year ago
If I had it to do all over again, I would learn the built-in default
keyboard shortcuts. With no user-configuration, I quite frequently try out my own answers to Emacs questions
before posting them; and I also try to reproduce bugs before submitting Emacs bug reports; and I verify the
problems are with my configuration versus the Lisp or C internals. When using Emacs without any
user-configuration, it ends up being a combination of
M-x ...
and a couple of default keyboard shortcuts because I never learned them all.
level 2
zipdry
2 points ·
1 year ago
I second that! An excellent package that displays the candidate commands
available to you.
level 2
WalterGR
1 point ·
1 year ago
When using Emacs without any user-configuration
Why does that happen for you a lot? Connecting to remote machines with
stock Emacs?
level 3
lawlist
3 points ·
1 year ago
It's basically the three scenarios mentioned above. (1) I participate
frequently by posting comments and answers to emacs.stackexchange.com and the Emacs tag on
stackoverflow.com, and it is prudent to test anything with no user-configuration so that the
answers/comments work for everyone under the same circumstances. (2) Over the years, I have filed quite a
few Emacs bug reports. To participate in submitting and helping to fix Emacs bugs when making or responding
to a bug report, the Emacs team will expect a reprodicible recipe without any user configuration. (3) When
something doesn't seem to be working right, I revert to using no user-configuration to see if Emacs behaves
that way out of the box -- that tells me if it's a bug or the expected behavior, or if my configuration is
the cause. I also work on a couple of my own feature requests (modifying C and Lisp internals) and often
check unexpected behavior of my modified Frankenstein Emacs version to the stock version to see if it is me,
or Emacs that caused the behavior at issue.
level 2
takethecannoli4
1 point ·
1 year ago
You can always try the command with M-x to check if there's a problem
with the keybinding
level 1
ax_reddit
GNU Emacs
1 point ·
1 year ago
Why would someone consciously, intentionally choose the stock key
layout? Who uses that layout?
Since you are coming vom Vim, you probably know that editing in Vim and
Emacs offers more or other possibilities than in a genuine CUA editor. One example is marking text and
jumping to different positions, brackets, etc. In Vim you have the visual mode, in Emacs you set the
mark-point and move to the end-point. I've never seen that with another editor.
On the other hand, I experienced multiple-cursor-mode in Sublime before
Emacs. Sublime had it on CTRL-D, Emacs also. Why? I don't know except it is easy to reach.
Or in general editors: Why is paste CTRL-V? Beacuse it's next to cut (x)
and copy (c). And CTRL-P is print. Keyboard shortcuts and the decisions to place them like they are is
manifold. Some work on english keyboards, some doesn't work on german ones, because keys are not reachable.
There is no need to say these are bad shortcuts. Emacs shortcuts were the
second ones I've learned. And they work on a Lenovo notebook (where Pos1 and End keys are randomly placed
and I use C-a and C-e) whereas working with Notepad++ is more tricky.
So you say "your" shortcuts are better than the default and I say the
default are better than the common ones.
level 1
Lord_Mhoram
1 point ·
1 year ago
I still use most of the default movement/editing controls, and like it
fine. I've been using Emacs long enough that my first keyboard didn't have an Alt key, so I learned to hit
(not hold) Escape for Meta, and still have that habit. What you've called "inertia" in this thread, I would
call "proficiency developed with practice over time." That's not something you toss away easily just because
something else might be better. I've thought about trying something like Evil, because I do use vi quite a
bit and appreciate the advantages of modal editing, but it just hasn't been a priority.
Most people I know who aren't power-users, if they need to edit a file,
load it in something like Notepad or Word, and use the arrow keys or mouse to move around. For cut and paste
they'll use the mouse and menu, or C-c/C-v if they're more advanced. That would be incredibly frustrating
for me, but it works for their needs. I can't say that learning a "real" editor like emacs or vi would be
worth it for them, considering the time they would have to put into retraining.
level 1
smonnier
1 point ·
1 year ago
BTW, could someone point me to a solution to this problem? [ AFAIK the
problem is a dichotomy between modal and non-modal UIs, as well as a lack of regularity due to historical
accidents accumulated over time. ] IOW, has someone written an Elisp package which provides new keybindings
with the following features
simple and regular structure (also called "composability")
two alternative modes (use leaving normal keys as self-inserting, and
the other avoiding keychords)
single-key to enter the no-keychords mode (like the ESC in VI)
all commands available in both modes with "isomorphic" bindings (i.e.
if you know the key-binding in one mode, you trivially also know the key-binding in the other mode, and
ideally your muscle-memory might also know how to translate from one to the other).
Closest to that is probably hydra. Not exactly, but if you haven't heard
about it, you should check it out.
abo-abo/hydra
level 1
lagooned
1 point ·
1 year ago
while vim commands compose much like english as a combination of a
subject/word object and a verb/movement, stock emacs is just a collection of keyboard shortcuts that do
slightly different basic actions based on whether you have ctrl, meta, or ctrl+meta pressed.
so in short i agree; it doesn't make sense for anyone to switch backwards
unless they are doing it for novelty or to have experience for those evil-mode edge cases where you have to
know a little emacs movement.
level 1
larsbrinkhoff
1 point ·
1 year ago
I like how Emacs has had essentially the same key bindings for at least
40 years. I can sit down at a 1978 EMACS and just work away.
level 1
gtmshrm
1 point ·
1 year ago
·
edited 1 year ago
While manipulating text, emacs users think of content
as code where as vim users think of it as text. We cannot say that vim bindings are better
than default emacs bindings (or vice-versa) in terms of speed because there are people who
edit in emacs just as fast as vimmers. But we can most certainly say that vim bindings are
less fatiguing for our fingers. It's just a matter of preference.
Emacs evil community is growing rapidly. All thanks to
spacemacs. Spacemacs is bloated but eases the pain of switching to emacs. Of-course there
are more holy users than evil users because evil users are mostly ex-vimmers. Very few of
the vimmers set aside their pride and try out emacs in evil mode. Emacs is obviously
difficult to master even for a vim user simply because in emacs, sky is the limit. Very
few of holy emacs users actually give a shot to evil mode and stick to it because making a
switch to modal editing takes time. Hope
Some editors are more useful or even custom tailored for specific languages or functional
areas, and naturally people who use those languages or work in those areas tend to gravitate
towards them.
Some languages (like java) are almost unusable without one of several popular editors,
which deal with a lot of the boilerplate and let you navigate around the kind of "a million
small pieces" type code you get with java. You can code java in vim if you want to, but
working on a large java project with vim is probably not a common practice (I'm sure several
counter-examples will be provided below).
Apple is probably the king of the designated editor group, with microsoft coming in at a
close second. These are relatively closed stacks and have purpose built (and pretty decent)
tools to work with them, so most people do.
And then some languages (scripting languages, c/c++) are edited commonly with just about
everything.
Outside specific editor features designed with a specific language in mind, or tools which
require a specific editor, I don't think anything drives someone to use one generic editor
over another one of similar capability. People chose vim vs emacs for non-language specific
reasons (for example: number of attached hands).
Also this is a really lame question. Does anyone really care about editor flame wars any
more? People use what they like, what works, or what they are mandated to.
There are more than 4000 Vim scripts out there. This is one of the reasons why Vim is so awesome. However, if you are starting
with Vim, you might wonder from where to begin. In this post we are going to talk about 5 plugins that can be found in almost any
vimrc.
Surround
Surround provides mappings to easily delete, change and add
surroundings in pairs. It's created by Tim Pope, and it's starred more than 800 times on GitHub.
The best way to explain it is to show some examples:
CommandT seems better to me: it is doing a real fuzzy search ex: "apmo" match apps/
models.py
with CommandT but not with Ctrlp. CommandT seems also faster.
Of cource I can be wrong, I didn't know Ctrlp before reading this thread.
Sanders' repository has been dead for over 2 years. Please consider using a community maintained fork of the project with many
improvements.
https://github.com/garbas/v...
I hadn't heard of BufferExplorer before. But after installing it, then reading the comments below, I removed it and Command-T
and went with ctrlp. A great post and awesome comments. Thanks all!
Another killer is gundo, let you explore your undo/redo *tree*, never lose a change anymore. Lusty is a greate alternative
to bufexplorer too. And for python development, i found python-mode to be of great value.
As an FYI, snipmate by msanders has ceased development. It is not clear from looking at msanders gitrepo, but garbas is the
new maintainer. See
https://github.com/garbas/v...
The :e# command can help you copy blocks of text from one file to another. When you call vim
with the names of several files as arguments, you can use :n to edit the next file, :e# to edit
the file you just edited, and :rew to rewind the sequence of files so that you are editing the
first file again.
As you move between files, you can copy text from one file into a buffer and
paste that text into another file. You can use :n! to force vim to close a file without writing
out changes before it opens the next file.
"... A buffer is a file loaded into memory for editing. All opened files are associated with a buffer. There are also buffers not associated with any file. ..."
You can use a Named buffer with any of the Delete, Yank, or Put commands. Each of the 26
Named buffers is named by a letter of the alphabet. Each Named buffer can store a different
block of text and you can recall each block as needed. Unlike the General-Purpose buffer, vim
does not change the contents of a Named buffer unless you issue a command that specifically
overwrites that buffer. The vim editor maintains the contents of the Named buffers throughout
an editing session.
The vim editor stores text in a Named buffer if you precede a Delete or Yank command with a
double quotation mark ( " ) and a buffer name (for example, " kyy
yanks a copy of the current line into buffer k ). You can put information from the Work buffer
into a Named buffer in two ways. First, if you give the name of the buffer as a lowercase
letter, vim overwrites the contents of the buffer when it deletes or yanks text into the
buffer. Second, if you use an uppercase letter for the buffer name, vim appends the newly
deleted or yanked text to the end of the buffer. This feature enables you to collect blocks of
text from various sections of a file and deposit them at one place in the file with a single
command. Named buffers are also useful when you are moving a section of a file and do not want
to give a Put command immediately after the corresponding Delete command, and when you want to
insert a paragraph, sentence, or phrase repeatedly in a document.
If you have one sentence you use throughout a document, you can yank that sentence into a
Named buffer and put it wherever you need it by using the following procedure: After entering
the first occurrence of the sentence and pressing ESCAPE to return to Command
mode, leave the cursor on the line containing the sentence. (The sentence must appear on a line
or lines by itself for this procedure to work.) Then yank the sentence into Named buffer a by
giving the " ayy command (or " a2yy if the sentence takes up two
lines). Now anytime you need the sentence, you can return to Command mode and give the command
" ap to put a copy of the sentence below the current line.
This technique provides a quick and easy way to insert text that you use frequently in a
document. For example, if you were editing a legal document, you might store the phrase The
Plaintiff alleges that the Defendant in a Named buffer to save yourself the trouble of typing
it every time you want to use it. Similarly, if you were creating a letter that frequently used
a long company name, such as National Standards Institute , you might put it into a Named
buffer.
Numbered Buffers
In addition to the 26 Named buffers and 1 General-Purpose buffer, 9 Numbered buffers are
available. They are, in one sense, readonly buffers. The vim editor fills them with the nine
most recently deleted chunks of text that are at least one line long. The most recently deleted
text is held in " 1 , the next most recent in " 2 , and so on. If you
delete a block of text and then give other vim commands so that you cannot reclaim the deleted
text with an Undo command, you can use " 1p to paste the most recently deleted
chunk of text below the location of the cursor. If you have deleted several blocks of text and
want to reclaim a specific one, proceed as follows: Paste the contents of the first buffer with
"1p . If the first buffer does not hold the text you are looking for, undo the paste operation
with u and then give the period ( . ) command to repeat the previous command. The Numbered
buffers work in a unique way with the period command: Instead of pasting the contents of buffer
" 1 , the period command pastes the contents of the next buffer ( " 2
). Another u and period would replace the contents of buffer " 2 with that of
buffer " 3 , and so on through the nine buffers.
What
is a Vim buffer?
A buffer is a file loaded into memory for editing. All opened files are associated with a
buffer. There are also buffers not associated with any file.
Vim buffers are identified using a name and a number. The name of the buffer is the name of
the file associated with that buffer. The buffer number is a unique sequential number assigned
by Vim. This buffer number will not change in a single Vim session.
When you open a file using any of the Vim commands, a buffer is automatically created. For
example, if you use :edit file to edit a file, a new buffer is automatically
created. An empty buffer can be created by entering :new or :vnew
.
How do I add a new buffer for a file to the buffer list without opening the file?
You can add a new buffer for a file without opening it, using the ":badd" command. For
example,
:badd f1.txt
:badd f2.txt
The above commands will add two new buffers for the files f1.txt and f2.txt to the buffer
list.
You can delete a buffer using the ":bdelete" command. You can use either the buffer name or
the buffer number to specify a buffer. For example,
:bdelete f1.txt
:bdelete 4
The above commands will delete the buffer named "f1.txt" and the fourth buffer in the buffer
list. The ":bdelete" command will remove the buffer from the buffer list.
When a buffer is deleted, the buffer becomes an unlisted-buffer and is no longer included in
the buffer list. But the buffer name and other information associated with the buffer is still
remembered. To completely delete the buffer, use the ":bwipeout" command. This command will
remove the buffer completely (i.e. the buffer will not become a unlisted buffer).
You can remove a buffer displayed in a window in several ways:
Close the window or edit another buffer/file in that window.
Use the ":bunload" command. This command will remove the buffer from the window and
unload the buffer contents from memory. The buffer will not be removed from the buffer
list.
How do I edit an existing buffer from the buffer list?
You can edit or jump to a buffer in the buffer list in several ways:
Use the ":buffer" command passing the name of an existing buffer or the buffer number.
Note that buffer name completion can be used here by pressing the <Tab> key.
You can enter the buffer number you want to jump/edit and press the Ctrl-^ key.
Use the ":sbuffer" command passing the name of the buffer or the buffer number. Vim will
split open a new window and open the specified buffer in that window.
You can enter the buffer number you want to jump/edit and press the Ctrl-W ^ or Ctrl-W
Ctrl-^ keys. This will open the specified buffer in a new window.
You can open all the loaded buffers in the buffer list using the ":unhide" or ":sunhide"
commands. Each buffer will be loaded in a separate new window.
You can open the next or a specific modified buffer using the ":bmodified" command. You can
open the next or a specific modified buffer in a new window using the ":sbmodified"
command.
Is there a simpler way for using the buffers under gvim (GUI Vim)?
Yes, use the 'Buffers' menu to list all the buffers. You can select a buffer name to edit
the buffer. You can also delete a buffer or browse the buffer list. Click the dashed line at
the top of the menu to tear it off so you can always see a list of the buffers.
Is it possible to save and restore the buffer list across Vim sessions?
Yes. To save and restore the buffer list across Vim session, include the '%' flag in the
'viminfo' option. Note that if Vim is invoked with a filename argument, then the buffer list
will not be restored from the last session. To use buffer lists across sessions, invoke Vim
without passing filename arguments.
The point is to overwrite the global setting by calling local setting after the 'viminfo'
setting, for example.
set viminfo='1025,f1,%1024
call SetLocalOptions(".")
How do I remove all the entries from the buffer list?
You can remove all the entries in the buffer list by starting Vim with a file argument. You
can also manually remove all the buffers using the ":bdelete" command.
What is a hidden buffer?
A hidden buffer is a buffer with some unsaved modifications and is not displayed in a
window. Hidden buffers are useful, if you want to edit multiple buffers without saving the
modifications made to a buffer while loading other buffers.
How do I load buffers in a window, which currently has a buffer with unsaved
modifications?
By setting the option 'hidden', you can load a buffer in a window that currently has a
modified buffer. Vim will remember your modifications to the buffer. When you quit Vim, you
will be asked to save the modified buffers. It is important to note that, if you have the
'hidden' option set, and you quit Vim forcibly, for example using ":quit!", then you will lose
all your modifications to the hidden buffers.
Is it possible to unload or delete a buffer when it becomes hidden?
By setting the 'bufhidden' option to either 'hide' or 'unload' or 'delete', you can control
what happens to a buffer when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'delete', the
buffer is deleted when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'unload', the buffer is
unloaded when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'hide', the buffer is hidden.
When I open an existing buffer from the buffer list, if the buffer is already displayed
in one of the existing windows, I want Vim to jump to that window instead of creating a new
window for this buffer. How do I do this?
When opening a buffer using one of the split open buffer commands (:sbuffer, :sbnext), Vim
will open the specified buffer in a new window. If the buffer is already opened in one of the
existing windows, then you will have two windows containing the same buffer. You can change
this behavior by setting the 'switchbuf' option to 'useopen'. With this setting, if a buffer is
already opened in one of the windows, Vim will jump to that window, instead of creating a new
window.
Every buffer in the buffer list contains information about the last cursor position, marks,
jump list, etc.
What is the difference between deleting a buffer and unloading a buffer?
When a buffer is unloaded, it is not removed from the buffer list. Only the file contents
associated with the buffer are removed from memory. When a buffer is deleted, it is unloaded
and removed from the buffer list. A deleted buffer becomes an 'unlisted' buffer.
Is it possible to configure Vim, by setting some option, to re-use the number of a
deleted buffer for a new buffer?
No. Vim will not re-use the buffer number of a deleted buffer for a new buffer. Vim will
always assign the next sequential number for a new buffer. The buffer number assignment is
implemented this way, so that you can always jump to a buffer using the same buffer number. One
method to achieve buffer number reordering is to restart Vim. If you restart Vim, it will
re-assign numbers sequentially to all the buffers in the buffer list (assuming you have
properly set 'viminfo' to save and restore the buffer list across Vim sessions).
This creates a temporary buffer which is not associated with a file, which does not have an
associated swap file, and which will be hidden when its window is closed. On exit, Vim discards
any text in a scratch buffer without warning.
Also you can use scratch.vim for creating a scratch
buffer.
How do I determine whether a buffer is modified or not?
There are several ways to find out whether a buffer is modified or not. The simplest way is
to look at the status line or the title bar. If the displayed string contains a '+' character,
then the buffer is modified. Another way is to check whether the 'modified' option is set or
not. If 'modified' is set, then the buffer is modified. To check the value of modified, use
:set modified?
You can also explicitly set the 'modified' option to mark the buffer as modified like
this:
To change two vertically split windows to horizontal split: Ctrl - WtCtrl - WK
Horizontally to vertically: Ctrl - WtCtrl - WH
Explanations:
Ctrl - W t -- makes the first (topleft) window current
Ctrl - W K -- moves the current window to full-width at the very
top
Ctrl - W H -- moves the current window to full-height at far
left
Note that the t is lowercase, and the K and H are uppercase.
Also, with only two windows, it seems like you can drop the Ctrl - Wt part because if you're already in one of only two windows, what's the point of
making it current?
Just toggle your NERDTree panel closed before 'rotating' the splits, then toggle it
back open. :NERDTreeToggle (I have it mapped to a function key for convenience).
The command ^W-o is great! I did not know it. –
Masi Aug 13 '09 at 2:20
add a comment | up vote 6
down vote The following ex commands will (re-)split
any number of windows:
To split vertically (e.g. make vertical dividers between windows), type :vertical
ball
To split horizontally, type :ball
If there are hidden buffers, issuing these commands will also make the hidden buffers
visible.
This is very ugly, but hey, it seems to do in one step exactly what I asked for (I tried). +1, and accepted. I was looking for
a native way to do this quickly but since there does not seem to be one, yours will do just fine. Thanks! –
greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 15:27
You're right, "very ugly" shoud have been "very unfamiliar". Your command is very handy, and I think I definitely going to carve
it in my .vimrc – greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 16:21
By "move a piece of text to a new file" I assume you mean cut that piece of text from the current file and create a new file containing
only that text.
Various examples:
:1,1 w new_file to create a new file containing only the text from line number 1
:5,50 w newfile to create a new file containing the text from line 5 to line 50
:'a,'b w newfile to create a new file containing the text from mark a to mark b
set your marks by using ma and mb where ever you like
The above only copies the text and creates a new file containing that text. You will then need to delete afterward.
This can be done using the same range and the d command:
:5,50 d to delete the text from line 5 to line 50
:'a,'b d to delete the text from mark a to mark b
Or by using dd for the single line case.
If you instead select the text using visual mode, and then hit : while the text is selected, you will see the
following on the command line:
:'<,'>
Which indicates the selected text. You can then expand the command to:
:'<,'>w >> old_file
Which will append the text to an existing file. Then delete as above.
One liner:
:2,3 d | new +put! "
The breakdown:
:2,3 d - delete lines 2 through 3
| - technically this redirects the output of the first command to the second command but since the first command
doesn't output anything, we're just chaining the commands together
new - opens a new buffer
+put! " - put the contents of the unnamed register ( " ) into the buffer
The bang ( ! ) is there so that the contents are put before the current line. This causes and
empty line at the end of the file. Without it, there is an empty line at the top of the file.
Your assumption is right. This looks good, I'm going to test. Could you explain 2. a bit more? I'm not very familiar with ranges.
EDIT: If I try this on the second line, it writes the first line to the other file, not the second line. –
greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 14:09
Ok, if I understand well, the trick is to use ranges to select and write in the same command. That's very similar to what I did.
+1 for the detailed explanation, but I don't think this is more efficient, since the trick with hitting ':' is what I do for the
moment. – greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 14:41
I have 4 steps for the moment: select, write, select, delete. With your method, I have 6 steps: select, delete, split, paste,
write, close. I asked for something more efficient :P – greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 13:42
That's better, but 5 still > 4 :P – greg0ireJan 23
'13 at 13:46
Based on @embedded.kyle's answer and this Q&A , I ended
up with this one liner to append a selection to a file and delete from current file. After selecting some lines with Shift+V
, hit : and run:
'<,'>w >> test | normal gvd
The first part appends selected lines. The second command enters normal mode and runs gvd to select the last selection
and then deletes.
Visual selection is a common feature in applications, but Vim's visual selection has several
benefits.
To cut-and-paste or copy-and-paste:
Position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to cut/copy.
Press v to begin character-based visual selection, or V to select whole
lines, or Ctrl-v or Ctrl-q to select a block.
Move the cursor to the end of the text to be cut/copied. While selecting text, you can
perform searches and other advanced movement.
Press d (delete) to cut, or y (yank) to copy.
Move the cursor to the desired paste location.
Press p to paste after the cursor, or P to paste before.
Visual selection (steps 1-3) can be performed using a mouse.
If you want to change the selected text, press c instead of d or y in
step 4. In a visual selection, pressing c performs a change by deleting the selected
text and entering insert mode so you can type the new text.
Pasting over a block of text
You can copy a block of text by pressing Ctrl-v (or Ctrl-q if you use Ctrl-v for paste),
then moving the cursor to select, and pressing y to yank. Now you can move
elsewhere and press p to paste the text after the cursor (or P to
paste before). The paste inserts a block (which might, for example, be 4 rows by 3
columns of text).
Instead of inserting the block, it is also possible to replace (paste over) the
destination. To do this, move to the target location then press 1vp (
1v selects an area equal to the original, and p pastes over it).
When a count is used before v , V , or ^V (character,
line or block selection), an area equal to the previous area, multiplied by the count, is
selected. See the paragraph after :help
<LeftRelease> .
Note that this will only work if you actually did something to the previous visual
selection, such as a yank, delete, or change operation. It will not work after visually
selecting an area and leaving visual mode without taking any actions.
NOTE: after selecting the visual copy mode, you can hold the shift key while selection
the region to get a multiple line copy. For example, to copy three lines, press V, then hold
down the Shift key while pressing the down arrow key twice. Then do your action on the
buffer.
I have struck out the above new comment because I think it is talking about something
that may apply to those who have used :behave mswin . To visually select
multiple lines, you type V , then press j (or cursor down). You
hold down Shift only to type the uppercase V . Do not press Shift after that. If
I am wrong, please explain here. JohnBeckett 10:48, October 7, 2010
(UTC)
If you just want to copy (yank) the visually marked text, you do not need to 'y'ank it.
Marking it will already copy it.
Using a mouse, you can insert it at another position by clicking the middle mouse
button.
This also works in across Vim applications on Windows systems (clipboard is inserted)
This is a really useful thing in Vim. I feel lost without it in any other editor. I have
some more points I'd like to add to this tip:
While in (any of the three) Visual mode(s), pressing 'o' will move the cursor to the
opposite end of the selection. In Visual Block mode, you can also press 'O', allowing you to
position the cursor in any of the four corners.
If you have some yanked text, pressing 'p' or 'P' while in Visual mode will replace the
selected text with the already yanked text. (After this, the previously selected text will be
yanked.)
Press 'gv' in Normal mode to restore your previous selection.
It's really worth it to check out the register functionality in Vim: ':help
registers'.
If you're still eager to use the mouse-juggling middle-mouse trick of common unix
copy-n-paste, or are into bending space and time with i_CTRL-R<reg>, consider checking
out ':set paste' and ':set pastetoggle'. (Or in the latter case, try with
i_CTRL-R_CTRL-O..)
You can replace a set of text in a visual block very easily by selecting a block, press c
and then make changes to the first line. Pressing <Esc> twice replaces all the text of
the original selection. See :help v_b_c .
On Windows the <mswin.vim> script seems to be getting sourced for many users.
Result: more Windows like behavior (ctrl-v is "paste", instead of visual-block selection).
Hunt down your system vimrc and remove sourcing thereof if you don't like that behavior (or
substitute <mrswin.vim> in its place, see VimTip63 .
With VimTip588 one can
sort lines or blocks based on visual-block selection.
With reference to the earlier post asking how to paste an inner block
Select the inner block to copy usint ctrl-v and highlighting with the hjkl keys
yank the visual region (y)
Select the inner block you want to overwrite (Ctrl-v then hightlight with hjkl keys)
paste the selection P (that is shift P) , this will overwrite keeping the block
formation
The "yank" buffers in Vim are not the same as the Windows clipboard (i.e., cut-and-paste)
buffers. If you're using the yank, it only puts it in a Vim buffer - that buffer is not
accessible to the Windows paste command. You'll want to use the Edit | Copy and Edit | Paste
(or their keyboard equivalents) if you're using the Windows GUI, or select with your mouse and
use your X-Windows cut-n-paste mouse buttons if you're running UNIX.
Double-quote and star gives one access to windows clippboard or the unix equivalent. as an
example if I wanted to yank the current line into the clipboard I would type "*yy
If I wanted to paste the contents of the clippboard into Vim at my current curser location I
would type "*p
The double-qoute and start trick work well with visual mode as well. ex: visual select text
to copy to clippboard and then type "*y
I find this very useful and I use it all the time but it is a bit slow typing "* all the
time so I am thinking about creating a macro to speed it up a bit.
Copy and Paste using the System Clipboard
There are some caveats regarding how the "*y (copy into System Clipboard) command works. We
have to be sure that we are using vim-full (sudo aptitude install vim-full on debian-based
systems) or a Vim that has X11 support enabled. Only then will the "*y command work.
For our convenience as we are all familiar with using Ctrl+c to copy a block of text in most
other GUI applications, we can also map Ctrl+c to "*y so that in Vim Visual Mode, we can simply
Ctrl+c to copy the block of text we want into our system buffer. To do that, we simply add this
line in our .vimrc file:
map <C-c> "+y<CR>
Restart our shell and we are good. Now whenever we are in Visual Mode, we can Ctrl+c to grab
what we want and paste it into another application or another editor in a convenient and
intuitive manner.
You are talking about text selecting and copying, I think that you should give a look to the
Vim Visual Mode .
In the visual mode, you are able to select text using Vim commands, then you can do
whatever you want with the selection.
Consider the following common scenarios:
You need to select to the next matching parenthesis.
You could do:
v% if the cursor is on the starting/ending parenthesis
vib if the cursor is inside the parenthesis block
You want to select text between quotes:
vi" for double quotes
vi' for single quotes
You want to select a curly brace block (very common on C-style languages):
viB
vi{
You want to select the entire file:
ggVG
Visual
block selection is another really useful feature, it allows you to select a rectangular
area of text, you just have to press Ctrl - V to start it, and then
select the text block you want and perform any type of operation such as yank, delete, paste,
edit, etc. It's great to edit column oriented text.
I have two files, say a.txt and b.txt , in the same session of vim
and I split the screen so I have file a.txt in the upper window and
b.txt in the lower window.
I want to move lines here and there from a.txt to b.txt : I
select a line with Shift + v , then I move to b.txt in the
lower window with Ctrl + w↓ , paste with p
, get back to a.txt with Ctrl + w↑ and I
can repeat the operation when I get to another line I want to move.
My question: is there a quicker way to say vim "send the line I am on (or the test I
selected) to the other window" ?
I presume that you're deleting the line that you've selected in a.txt . If not,
you'd be pasting something else into b.txt . If so, there's no need to select
the line first. – Anthony Geoghegan
Nov 24 '15 at 13:00
This sounds like a good use case for a macro. Macros are commands that can be recorded and
stored in a Vim register. Each register is identified by a letter from a to z.
Recording
To start recording, press q in Normal mode followed by a letter (a to z).
That starts recording keystrokes to the specified register. Vim displays
"recording" in the status line. Type any Normal mode commands, or enter Insert
mode and type text. To stop recording, again press q while in Normal mode.
For this particular macro, I chose the m (for move) register to store it.
I pressed qm to record the following commands:
dd to delete the current line (and save it to the default register)
CtrlWj to move to the window below
p to paste the contents of the default register
and CtrlWk to return to the window above.
When I typed q to finish recording the macro, the contents of the
m register were:
dd^Wjp^Wk
Usage
To move the current line, simply type @m in Normal mode.
To repeat the macro on a different line, @@ can be used to execute the most
recently used macro.
To execute the macro 5 times (i.e., move the current line with the following four lines
below it), use 5@m or 5@@ .
I asked to see if there is a command unknown to me that does the job: it seems there is none.
In absence of such a command, this can be a good solution. – brad
Nov 24 '15 at 14:26
@brad, you can find all the commands available to you in the documentation. If it's not there
it doesn't exist no need to ask random strangers. – romainl
Nov 26 '15 at 9:54
@romainl, yes, I know this but vim documentation is really huge and, although it doesn't
scare me, there is always the possibility to miss something. Moreover, it could also be that
you can obtain the effect using the combination of 2 commands and in this case it would be
hardly documented – brad
Nov 26 '15 at 10:17
I normally work with more than 5 files at a time. I use buffers to open different files. I
use commands such as :buf file1, :buf file2 etc. Is there a faster way to move to different
files?
Below I describe some excerpts from sections of my .vimrc . It includes mapping
the leader key, setting wilds tab completion, and finally my buffer nav key choices (all
mostly inspired by folks on the interweb, including romainl). Edit: Then I ramble on about my
shortcuts for windows and tabs.
" easier default keys {{{1
let mapleader=','
nnoremap <leader>2 :@"<CR>
The leader key is a prefix key for mostly user-defined key commands (some
plugins also use it). The default is \ , but many people suggest the easier to
reach , .
The second line there is a command to @ execute from the "
clipboard, in case you'd like to quickly try out various key bindings (without relying on
:so % ). (My nmeumonic is that Shift - 2 is @
.)
" wilds {{{1
set wildmenu wildmode=list:full
set wildcharm=<C-z>
set wildignore+=*~ wildignorecase
For built-in completion, wildmenu is probably the part that shows up yellow
on your Vim when using tab completion on command-line. wildmode is set to a
comma-separated list, each coming up in turn on each tab completion (that is, my list is
simply one element, list:full ). list shows rows and columns of
candidates. full 's meaning includes maintaining existence of the
wildmenu . wildcharm is the way to include Tab presses
in your macros. The *~ is for my use in :edit and
:find commands.
The ,3 is for switching between the "two" last buffers (Easier to reach than
built-in Ctrl - 6 ). Nmeuonic is Shift - 3 is
# , and # is the register symbol for last buffer. (See
:marks .)
,bh is to select from hidden buffers ( ! ).
,bw is to bwipeout buffers by number or name. For instance, you
can wipeout several while looking at the list, with ,bw 1 3 4 8 10 <CR> .
Note that wipeout is more destructive than :bdelete . They have their pros and
cons. For instance, :bdelete leaves the buffer in the hidden list, while
:bwipeout removes global marks (see :help marks , and the
description of uppercase marks).
I haven't settled on these keybindings, I would sort of prefer that my ,bb
was simply ,b (simply defining while leaving the others defined makes Vim pause
to see if you'll enter more).
Those shortcuts for :BufExplorer are actually the defaults for that plugin,
but I have it written out so I can change them if I want to start using ,b
without a hang.
You didn't ask for this:
If you still find Vim buffers a little awkward to use, try to combine the functionality
with tabs and windows (until you get more comfortable?).
Notice how nice ,w is for a prefix. Also, I reserve Ctrl key for
resizing, because Alt ( M- ) is hard to realize in all
environments, and I don't have a better way to resize. I'm fine using ,w to
switch windows.
" tabs {{{3
nnoremap <leader>t :tab
nnoremap <M-n> :tabn<cr>
nnoremap <M-p> :tabp<cr>
nnoremap <C-Tab> :tabn<cr>
nnoremap <C-S-Tab> :tabp<cr>
nnoremap tn :tabe<CR>
nnoremap te :tabe<Space><C-z><S-Tab>
nnoremap tf :tabf<Space>
nnoremap tc :tabc<CR>
nnoremap to :tabo<CR>
nnoremap tm :tabm<CR>
nnoremap ts :tabs<CR>
nnoremap th :tabr<CR>
nnoremap tj :tabn<CR>
nnoremap tk :tabp<CR>
nnoremap tl :tabl<CR>
" or, it may make more sense to use
" nnoremap th :tabp<CR>
" nnoremap tj :tabl<CR>
" nnoremap tk :tabr<CR>
" nnoremap tl :tabn<CR>
In summary of my window and tabs keys, I can navigate both of them with Alt ,
which is actually pretty easy to reach. In other words:
" (modifier) key choice explanation {{{3
"
" KEYS CTRL ALT
" hjkl resize windows switch windows
" np switch buffer switch tab
"
" (resize windows is hard to do otherwise, so we use ctrl which works across
" more environments. i can use ',w' for windowcmds o.w.. alt is comfortable
" enough for fast and gui nav in tabs and windows. we use np for navs that
" are more linear, hjkl for navs that are more planar.)
"
This way, if the Alt is working, you can actually hold it down while you find
your "open" buffer pretty quickly, amongst the tabs and windows.
,
There are many ways to solve. The best is the best that WORKS for YOU. You have lots of fuzzy
match plugins that help you navigate. The 2 things that impress me most are
The NERD tree allows you to explore your filesystem and to open files and directories. It presents the filesystem to you in
the form of a tree which you manipulate with the keyboard and/or mouse. It also allows you to perform simple filesystem operations.
The tree can be toggled easily with :NERDTreeToggle which can be mapped to a more suitable key. The keyboard shortcuts in the
NERD tree are also easy and intuitive.
For those of us not wanting to follow every link to find out about each plugin, care to furnish us with a brief synopsis? –
SpoonMeiserSep 17 '08
at 19:32
Pathogen is the FIRST plugin you have to install on every Vim installation! It resolves the plugin management problems every Vim
developer has. – Patrizio RulloSep 26
'11 at 12:11
A very nice grep replacement for GVim is Ack . A search plugin written
in Perl that beats Vim's internal grep implementation and externally invoked greps, too. It also by default skips any CVS directories
in the project directory, e.g. '.svn'.
This blog shows a way to integrate Ack with vim.
A.vim is a great little plugin. It allows you
to quickly switch between header and source files with a single command. The default is :A , but I remapped it to
F2 reduce keystrokes.
I really like the SuperTab plugin, it allows
you to use the tab key to do all your insert completions.
community wiki Greg Hewgill, Aug 25, 2008
at 19:23
I have recently started using a plugin that highlights differences in your buffer from a previous version in your RCS system (Subversion,
git, whatever). You just need to press a key to toggle the diff display on/off. You can find it here:
http://github.com/ghewgill/vim-scmdiff . Patches welcome!
It doesn't explicitly support bitkeeper at the moment, but as long as bitkeeper has a "diff" command that outputs a normal patch
file, it should be easy enough to add. – Greg HewgillSep 16 '08
at 9:26
@Yogesh: No, it doesn't support ClearCase at this time. However, if you can add ClearCase support, a patch would certainly be
accepted. – Greg HewgillMar 10
'10 at 1:39
Elegant (mini) buffer explorer - This
is the multiple file/buffer manager I use. Takes very little screen space. It looks just like most IDEs where you have a top
tab-bar with the files you've opened. I've tested some other similar plugins before, and this is my pick.
TagList - Small file explorer, without
the "extra" stuff the other file explorers have. Just lets you browse directories and open files with the "enter" key. Note
that this has already been noted by
previouscommenters
to your questions.
SuperTab - Already noted by
WMR in this
post, looks very promising. It's an auto-completion replacement key for Ctrl-P.
Moria color scheme - Another good, dark
one. Note that it's gVim only.
Enahcned Python syntax - If you're using
Python, this is an enhanced syntax version. Works better than the original. I'm not sure, but this might be already included
in the newest version. Nonetheless, it's worth adding to your syntax folder if you need it.
Not a plugin, but I advise any Mac user to switch to the MacVim
distribution which is vastly superior to the official port.
As for plugins, I used VIM-LaTeX for my thesis and was very
satisfied with the usability boost. I also like the Taglist
plugin which makes use of the ctags library.
clang complete - the best c++ code completion
I have seen so far. By using an actual compiler (that would be clang) the plugin is able to complete complex expressions including
STL and smart pointers.
With version 7.3, undo branches was added to vim. A very powerful feature, but hard to use, until
Steve Losh made
Gundo which makes this feature possible to use with a ascii
representation of the tree and a diff of the change. A must for using undo branches.
My latest favourite is Command-T . Granted, to install it
you need to have Ruby support and you'll need to compile a C extension for Vim. But oy-yoy-yoy does this plugin make a difference
in opening files in Vim!
Definitely! Let not the ruby + c compiling stop you, you will be amazed on how well this plugin enhances your toolset. I have
been ignoring this plugin for too long, installed it today and already find myself using NERDTree lesser and lesser. –
Victor FarazdagiApr 19
'11 at 19:16
just my 2 cents.. being a naive user of both plugins, with a few first characters of file name i saw a much better result with
commandt plugin and a lots of false positives for ctrlp. –
FUDDec
26 '12 at 4:48
Conque Shell : Run interactive commands inside a Vim buffer
Conque is a Vim plugin which allows you to run interactive programs, such as bash on linux or powershell.exe on Windows, inside
a Vim buffer. In other words it is a terminal emulator which uses a Vim buffer to display the program output.
The vcscommand plugin provides global ex commands
for manipulating version-controlled source files and it supports CVS,SVN and some other repositories.
You can do almost all repository related tasks from with in vim:
* Taking the diff of current buffer with repository copy
* Adding new files
* Reverting the current buffer to the repository copy by nullifying the local changes....
Just gonna name a few I didn't see here, but which I still find extremely helpful:
Gist plugin - Github Gists (Kind of
Githubs answer to Pastebin, integrated with Git for awesomeness!)
Mustang color scheme (Can't link directly due to low reputation, Google it!) - Dark, and beautiful color scheme. Looks
really good in the terminal, and even better in gVim! (Due to 256 color support)
One Plugin that is missing in the answers is NERDCommenter
, which let's you do almost anything with comments. For example {add, toggle, remove} comments. And more. See
this blog entry for some examples.
This script is based on the eclipse Task List. It will search the file for FIXME, TODO, and XXX (or a custom list) and put
them in a handy list for you to browse which at the same time will update the location in the document so you can see exactly
where the tag is located. Something like an interactive 'cw'
I really love the snippetsEmu Plugin. It emulates
some of the behaviour of Snippets from the OS X editor TextMate, in particular the variable bouncing and replacement behaviour.
For vim I like a little help with completions.
Vim has tons of completion modes, but really, I just want vim to complete anything it can, whenver it can.
I hate typing ending quotes, but fortunately
this plugin obviates the need for such misery.
Those two are my heavy hitters.
This one may step up to roam my code like
an unquiet shade, but I've yet to try it.
The Txtfmt plugin gives you a sort of "rich text" highlighting capability, similar to what is provided by RTF editors and word
processors. You can use it to add colors (foreground and background) and formatting attributes (all combinations of bold, underline,
italic, etc...) to your plain text documents in Vim.
The advantage of this plugin over something like Latex is that with Txtfmt, your highlighting changes are visible "in real
time", and as with a word processor, the highlighting is WYSIWYG. Txtfmt embeds special tokens directly in the file to accomplish
the highlighting, so the highlighting is unaffected when you move the file around, even from one computer to another. The special
tokens are hidden by the syntax; each appears as a single space. For those who have applied Vince Negri's conceal/ownsyntax patch,
the tokens can even be made "zero-width".
To copy two lines, it's even faster just to go yj or yk,
especially since you don't double up on one character. Plus, yk is a backwards
version that 2yy can't do, and you can put the number of lines to reach
backwards in y9j or y2k, etc.. Only difference is that your count
has to be n-1 for a total of n lines, but your head can learn that
anyway. – zelk
Mar 9 '14 at 13:29
If you would like to duplicate a line and paste it right away below the current like, just
like in Sublime Ctrl + Shift + D, then you can add this to
your .vimrc file.
y7yp (or 7yyp) is rarely useful; the cursor remains on the first line copied so that p pastes
the copied lines between the first and second line of the source. To duplicate a block of
lines use 7yyP – Nefrubyr
Jul 29 '14 at 14:09
For someone who doesn't know vi, some answers from above might mislead him with phrases like
"paste ... after/before current line ".
It's actually "paste ... after/before cursor ".
yy or Y to copy the line
or dd to delete the line
then
p to paste the copied or deleted text after the cursor
or P to paste the copied or deleted text before the cursor
For those starting to learn vi, here is a good introduction to vi by listing side by side vi
commands to typical Windows GUI Editor cursor movement and shortcut keys. It lists all the
basic commands including yy (copy line) and p (paste after) or
P (paste before).
When you press : in visual mode, it is transformed to '<,'>
so it pre-selects the line range the visual selection spanned over. So, in visual mode,
:t0 will copy the lines at the beginning. – Benoit
Jun 30 '12 at 14:17
For the record: when you type a colon (:) you go into command line mode where you can enter
Ex commands. vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/cmdline.html
Ex commands can be really powerful and terse. The yyp solutions are "Normal mode" commands.
If you want to copy/move/delete a far-away line or range of lines an Ex command can be a lot
faster. – Niels Bom
Jul 31 '12 at 8:21
Y is usually remapped to y$ (yank (copy) until end of line (from
current cursor position, not beginning of line)) though. With this line in
.vimrc : :nnoremap Y y$ – Aaron Thoma
Aug 22 '13 at 23:31
gives you the advantage of preserving the cursor position.
,Sep 18, 2008 at 20:32
You can also try <C-x><C-l> which will repeat the last line from insert mode and
brings you a completion window with all of the lines. It works almost like <C-p>
This is very useful, but to avoid having to press many keys I have mapped it to just CTRL-L,
this is my map: inoremap ^L ^X^L – Jorge Gajon
May 11 '09 at 6:38
1 gotcha: when you use "p" to put the line, it puts it after the line your cursor is
on, so if you want to add the line after the line you're yanking, don't move the cursor down
a line before putting the new line.
Use the > command. To indent 5 lines, 5>> . To mark a block of lines and indent it, Vjj>
to indent 3 lines (vim only). To indent a curly-braces block, put your cursor on one of the curly braces and use >%
.
If you're copying blocks of text around and need to align the indent of a block in its new location, use ]p
instead of just p . This aligns the pasted block with the surrounding text.
Also, the shiftwidth
setting allows you to control how many spaces to indent.
My problem(in gVim) is that the command > indents much more than 2 blanks (I want just two blanks but > indent something like
5 blanks) – Kamran Bigdely
Feb 28 '11 at 23:25
The problem with . in this situation is that you have to move your fingers. With @mike's solution (same one i use) you've already
got your fingers on the indent key and can just keep whacking it to keep indenting rather than switching and doing something else.
Using period takes longer because you have to move your hands and it requires more thought because it's a second, different, operation.
– masukomi
Dec 6 '13 at 21:24
I've an XML file and turned on syntax highlighting. Typing gg=G just puts every line starting from position 1. All
the white spaces have been removed. Is there anything else specific to XML? –
asgs
Jan 28 '14 at 21:57
This is cumbersome, but is the way to go if you do formatting outside of core VIM (for instance, using vim-prettier
instead of the default indenting engine). Using > will otherwise royally scew up the formatting done by Prettier.
– oligofren
Mar 27 at 15:23
I find it better than the accepted answer, as I can see what is happening, the lines I'm selecting and the action I'm doing, and
not just type some sort of vim incantation. – user4052054
Aug 17 at 17:50
Suppose | represents the position of the cursor in Vim. If the text to be indented is enclosed in a code block like:
int main() {
line1
line2|
line3
}
you can do >i{ which means " indent ( > ) inside ( i ) block ( { )
" and get:
int main() {
line1
line2|
line3
}
Now suppose the lines are contiguous but outside a block, like:
do
line2|
line3
line4
done
To indent lines 2 thru 4 you can visually select the lines and type > . Or even faster you can do >2j
to get:
do
line2|
line3
line4
done
Note that >Nj means indent from current line to N lines below. If the number of lines to be indented
is large, it could take some seconds for the user to count the proper value of N . To save valuable seconds you can
activate the option of relative number with set relativenumber (available since Vim version 7.3).
Not on my Solaris or AIX boxes it doesn't. The equals key has always been one of my standard ad hoc macro assignments. Are you
sure you're not looking at a vim that's been linked to as vi ? –
rojomoke
Jul 31 '14 at 10:09
In ex mode you can use :left or :le to align lines a specified amount. Specifically,
:left will Left align lines in the [range]. It sets the indent in the lines to [indent] (default 0).
:%le3 or :%le 3 or :%left3 or :%left 3 will align the entire file by padding
with three spaces.
:5,7 le 3 will align lines 5 through 7 by padding them with 3 spaces.
:le without any value or :le 0 will left align with a padding of 0.
Awesome, just what I was looking for (a way to insert a specific number of spaces -- 4 spaces for markdown code -- to override
my normal indent). In my case I wanted to indent a specific number of lines in visual mode, so shift-v to highlight the lines,
then :'<,'>le4 to insert the spaces. Thanks! –
Subfuzion
Aug 11 '17 at 22:02
There is one more way that hasn't been mentioned yet - you can use norm i command to insert given text at the beginning
of the line. To insert 10 spaces before lines 2-10:
:2,10norm 10i
Remember that there has to be space character at the end of the command - this will be the character we want to have inserted.
We can also indent line with any other text, for example to indent every line in file with 5 underscore characters:
:%norm 5i_
Or something even more fancy:
:%norm 2i[ ]
More practical example is commenting Bash/Python/etc code with # character:
:1,20norm i#
To re-indent use x instead of i . For example to remove first 5 characters from every line:
...what? 'indent by 4 spaces'? No, this jumps to line 4 and then indents everything from there to the end of the file, using the
currently selected indent mode (if any). – underscore_d
Oct 17 '15 at 19:35
There are clearly a lot of ways to solve this, but this is the easiest to implement, as line numbers show by default in vim and
it doesn't require math. – HoldOffHunger
Dec 5 '17 at 15:50
How to indent highlighted code in vi immediately by a # of spaces:
Option 1: Indent a block of code in vi to three spaces with Visual Block mode:
Select the block of code you want to indent. Do this using Ctrl+V in normal mode and arrowing down to select
text. While it is selected, enter : to give a command to the block of selected text.
The following will appear in the command line: :'<,'>
To set indent to 3 spaces, type le 3 and press enter. This is what appears: :'<,'>le 3
The selected text is immediately indented to 3 spaces.
Option 2: Indent a block of code in vi to three spaces with Visual Line mode:
Open your file in VI.
Put your cursor over some code
Be in normal mode press the following keys:
Vjjjj:le 3
Interpretation of what you did:
V means start selecting text.
jjjj arrows down 4 lines, highlighting 4 lines.
: tells vi you will enter an instruction for the highlighted text.
le 3 means indent highlighted text 3 lines.
The selected code is immediately increased or decreased to three spaces indentation.
Option 3: use Visual Block mode and special insert mode to increase indent:
Open your file in VI.
Put your cursor over some code
Be in normal mode press the following keys:
Ctrl+V
jjjj
(press spacebar 5 times)
EscShift+i
All the highlighted text is indented an additional 5 spaces.
This answer summarises the other answers and comments of this question, and adds extra information based on the
Vim documentation and the
Vim wiki . For conciseness, this answer doesn't distinguish between Vi and
Vim-specific commands.
In the commands below, "re-indent" means "indent lines according to your
indentation settings ."
shiftwidth is the
primary variable that controls indentation.
General Commands
>> Indent line by shiftwidth spaces
<< De-indent line by shiftwidth spaces
5>> Indent 5 lines
5== Re-indent 5 lines
>% Increase indent of a braced or bracketed block (place cursor on brace first)
=% Reindent a braced or bracketed block (cursor on brace)
<% Decrease indent of a braced or bracketed block (cursor on brace)
]p Paste text, aligning indentation with surroundings
=i{ Re-indent the 'inner block', i.e. the contents of the block
=a{ Re-indent 'a block', i.e. block and containing braces
=2a{ Re-indent '2 blocks', i.e. this block and containing block
>i{ Increase inner block indent
<i{ Decrease inner block indent
You can replace { with } or B, e.g. =iB is a valid block indent command.
Take a look at "Indent a Code Block" for a nice example
to try these commands out on.
Also, remember that
. Repeat last command
, so indentation commands can be easily and conveniently repeated.
Re-indenting complete files
Another common situation is requiring indentation to be fixed throughout a source file:
gg=G Re-indent entire buffer
You can extend this idea to multiple files:
" Re-indent all your c source code:
:args *.c
:argdo normal gg=G
:wall
Or multiple buffers:
" Re-indent all open buffers:
:bufdo normal gg=G:wall
In Visual Mode
Vjj> Visually mark and then indent 3 lines
In insert mode
These commands apply to the current line:
CTRL-t insert indent at start of line
CTRL-d remove indent at start of line
0 CTRL-d remove all indentation from line
Ex commands
These are useful when you want to indent a specific range of lines, without moving your cursor.
:< and :> Given a range, apply indentation e.g.
:4,8> indent lines 4 to 8, inclusive
set expandtab "Use softtabstop spaces instead of tab characters for indentation
set shiftwidth=4 "Indent by 4 spaces when using >>, <<, == etc.
set softtabstop=4 "Indent by 4 spaces when pressing <TAB>
set autoindent "Keep indentation from previous line
set smartindent "Automatically inserts indentation in some cases
set cindent "Like smartindent, but stricter and more customisable
Vim has intelligent indentation based on filetype. Try adding this to your .vimrc:
if has ("autocmd")
" File type detection. Indent based on filetype. Recommended.
filetype plugin indent on
endif
Both this answer and the one above it were great. But I +1'd this because it reminded me of the 'dot' operator, which repeats
the last command. This is extremely useful when needing to indent an entire block several shiftspaces (or indentations)
without needing to keep pressing >} . Thanks a long –
Amit
Aug 10 '11 at 13:26
5>> Indent 5 lines : This command indents the fifth line, not 5 lines. Could this be due to my VIM settings, or is your
wording incorrect? – Wipqozn
Aug 24 '11 at 16:00
Great summary! Also note that the "indent inside block" and "indent all block" (<i{ >a{ etc.) also works with parentheses and
brackets: >a( <i] etc. (And while I'm at it, in addition to <>'s, they also work with d,c,y etc.) –
aqn
Mar 6 '13 at 4:42
Using Python a lot, I find myself needing frequently needing to shift blocks by more than one indent. You can do this by using
any of the block selection methods, and then just enter the number of indents you wish to jump right before the >
Eg. V5j3> will indent 5 lines 3 times - which is 12 spaces if you use 4 spaces for indents
The beauty of vim's UI is that it's consistent. Editing commands are made up of the command and a cursor move. The cursor moves
are always the same:
H to top of screen, L to bottom, M to middle
n G to go to line n, G alone to bottom of file, gg to top
n to move to next search match, N to previous
} to end of paragraph
% to next matching bracket, either of the parentheses or the tag kind
enter to the next line
'x to mark x where x is a letter or another '
many more, including w and W for word, $ or 0 to tips of the
line, etc, that don't apply here because are not line movements.
So, in order to use vim you have to learn to move the cursor and remember a repertoire of commands like, for example, >
to indent (and < to "outdent").
Thus, for indenting the lines from the cursor position to the top of the screen you do >H, >G to indent
to the bottom of the file.
If, instead of typing >H, you type dH then you are deleting the same block of lines, cH
for replacing it, etc.
Some cursor movements fit better with specific commands. In particular, the % command is handy to indent a whole
HTML or XML block.
If the file has syntax highlighted ( :syn on ) then setting the cursor in the text of a tag (like, in the "i" of
<div> and entering >% will indent up to the closing </div> tag.
This is how vim works: one has to remember only the cursor movements and the commands, and how to mix them.
So my answer to this question would be "go to one end of the block of lines you want to indent, and then type the >
command and a movement to the other end of the block" if indent is interpreted as shifting the lines, =
if indent is interpreted as in pretty-printing.
When the 'expandtab' option is off (this is the default) Vim uses <Tab>s as much as possible to make the indent. ( :help :> )
– Kent Fredric
Mar 16 '11 at 8:36
The only tab/space related vim setting I've changed is :set tabstop=3. It's actually inserting this every time I use >>: "<tab><space><space>".
Same with indenting a block. Any ideas? – Shane
Reustle
Dec 2 '12 at 3:17
The three settings you want to look at for "spaces vs tabs" are 1. tabstop 2. shiftwidth 3. expandtab. You probably have "shiftwidth=5
noexpandtab", so a "tab" is 3 spaces, and an indentation level is "5" spaces, so it makes up the 5 with 1 tab, and 2 spaces. –
Kent Fredric
Dec 2 '12 at 17:08
For me, the MacVim (Visual) solution was, select with mouse and press ">", but after putting the following lines in "~/.vimrc"
since I like spaces instead of tabs:
set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
Also it's useful to be able to call MacVim from the command-line (Terminal.app), so since I have the following helper directory
"~/bin", where I place a script called "macvim":
#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/bin/open -a /Applications/MacPorts/MacVim.app $@
And of course in "~/.bashrc":
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
Macports messes with "~/.profile" a lot, so the PATH environment variable can get quite long.
A quick way to do this using VISUAL MODE uses the same process as commenting a block of code.
This is useful if you would prefer not to change your shiftwidth or use any set directives and is
flexible enough to work with TABS or SPACES or any other character.
Position cursor at the beginning on the block
v to switch to -- VISUAL MODE --
Select the text to be indented
Type : to switch to the prompt
Replacing with 3 leading spaces:
:'<,'>s/^/ /g
Or replacing with leading tabs:
:'<,'>s/^/\t/g
Brief Explanation:
'<,'> - Within the Visually Selected Range
s/^/ /g - Insert 3 spaces at the beginning of every line within the whole range
(or)
s/^/\t/g - Insert Tab at the beginning of every line within the whole range
Yup, and this is why one of my big peeves is white spaces on an otherwise empty line: they messes up vim's notion of a "paragraph".
– aqn
Mar 6 '13 at 4:47
In addition to the answer already given and accepted, it is also possible to place a marker and then indent everything from the
current cursor to the marker. Thus, enter ma where you want the top of your indented block, cursor down as far as
you need and then type >'a (note that " a " can be substituted for any valid marker name). This is sometimes
easier than 5>> or vjjj> .
And you can select the lines in visual mode, then press : to get :'<,'> (equivalent to the :1,3
part in your answer), and add mo N . If you want to move a single line, just :mo N . If you are really
lazy, you can omit the space (e.g. :mo5 ). Use marks with mo '{a-zA-Z} . –
Júda Ronén
Jan 18 '17 at 21:20
I've heard a lot about Vim, both pros and
cons. It really seems you should be (as a developer) faster with Vim than with any other
editor. I'm using Vim to do some basic stuff and I'm at best 10 times less
productive with Vim.
The only two things you should care about when you talk about speed (you may not care
enough about them, but you should) are:
Using alternatively left and right hands is the fastest way to use the keyboard.
Never touching the mouse is the second way to be as fast as possible. It takes ages for
you to move your hand, grab the mouse, move it, and bring it back to the keyboard (and you
often have to look at the keyboard to be sure you returned your hand properly to the right
place)
Here are two examples demonstrating why I'm far less productive with Vim.
Copy/Cut & paste. I do it all the time. With all the contemporary editors you press
Shift with the left hand, and you move the cursor with your right hand to select
text. Then Ctrl + C copies, you move the cursor and Ctrl +
V pastes.
With Vim it's horrible:
yy to copy one line (you almost never want the whole line!)
[number xx]yy to copy xx lines into the buffer. But you never
know exactly if you've selected what you wanted. I often have to do [number
xx]dd then u to undo!
Another example? Search & replace.
In PSPad :
Ctrl + f then type what you want you search for, then press
Enter .
In Vim: /, then type what you want to search for, then if there are some
special characters put \ before each special character, then press
Enter .
And everything with Vim is like that: it seems I don't know how to handle it the right
way.
You mention cutting with yy and complain that you almost never want to cut
whole lines. In fact programmers, editing source code, very often want to work on whole
lines, ranges of lines and blocks of code. However, yy is only one of many way
to yank text into the anonymous copy buffer (or "register" as it's called in vi ).
The "Zen" of vi is that you're speaking a language. The initial y is a verb.
The statement yy is a synonym for y_ . The y is
doubled up to make it easier to type, since it is such a common operation.
This can also be expressed as ddP (delete the current line and
paste a copy back into place; leaving a copy in the anonymous register as a side effect). The
y and d "verbs" take any movement as their "subject." Thus
yW is "yank from here (the cursor) to the end of the current/next (big) word"
and y'a is "yank from here to the line containing the mark named ' a
'."
If you only understand basic up, down, left, and right cursor movements then vi will be no
more productive than a copy of "notepad" for you. (Okay, you'll still have syntax
highlighting and the ability to handle files larger than a piddling ~45KB or so; but work
with me here).
vi has 26 "marks" and 26 "registers." A mark is set to any cursor location using the
m command. Each mark is designated by a single lower case letter. Thus
ma sets the ' a ' mark to the current location, and mz
sets the ' z ' mark. You can move to the line containing a mark using the
' (single quote) command. Thus 'a moves to the beginning of the
line containing the ' a ' mark. You can move to the precise location of any mark
using the ` (backquote) command. Thus `z will move directly to the
exact location of the ' z ' mark.
Because these are "movements" they can also be used as subjects for other
"statements."
So, one way to cut an arbitrary selection of text would be to drop a mark (I usually use '
a ' as my "first" mark, ' z ' as my next mark, ' b ' as another,
and ' e ' as yet another (I don't recall ever having interactively used more than
four marks in 15 years of using vi ; one creates one's own conventions regarding how marks
and registers are used by macros that don't disturb one's interactive context). Then we go to
the other end of our desired text; we can start at either end, it doesn't matter. Then we can
simply use d`a to cut or y`a to copy. Thus the whole process has a
5 keystrokes overhead (six if we started in "insert" mode and needed to Esc out
command mode). Once we've cut or copied then pasting in a copy is a single keystroke:
p .
I say that this is one way to cut or copy text. However, it is only one of many.
Frequently we can more succinctly describe the range of text without moving our cursor around
and dropping a mark. For example if I'm in a paragraph of text I can use { and
} movements to the beginning or end of the paragraph respectively. So, to move a
paragraph of text I cut it using {d} (3 keystrokes). (If I happen
to already be on the first or last line of the paragraph I can then simply use
d} or d{ respectively.
The notion of "paragraph" defaults to something which is usually intuitively reasonable.
Thus it often works for code as well as prose.
Frequently we know some pattern (regular expression) that marks one end or the other of
the text in which we're interested. Searching forwards or backwards are movements in vi .
Thus they can also be used as "subjects" in our "statements." So I can use d/foo
to cut from the current line to the next line containing the string "foo" and
y?bar to copy from the current line to the most recent (previous) line
containing "bar." If I don't want whole lines I can still use the search movements (as
statements of their own), drop my mark(s) and use the `x commands as described
previously.
In addition to "verbs" and "subjects" vi also has "objects" (in the grammatical sense of
the term). So far I've only described the use of the anonymous register. However, I can use
any of the 26 "named" registers by prefixing the "object" reference with
" (the double quote modifier). Thus if I use "add I'm cutting the
current line into the ' a ' register and if I use "by/foo then I'm
yanking a copy of the text from here to the next line containing "foo" into the ' b
' register. To paste from a register I simply prefix the paste with the same modifier
sequence: "ap pastes a copy of the ' a ' register's contents into the
text after the cursor and "bP pastes a copy from ' b ' to before the
current line.
This notion of "prefixes" also adds the analogs of grammatical "adjectives" and "adverbs'
to our text manipulation "language." Most commands (verbs) and movement (verbs or objects,
depending on context) can also take numeric prefixes. Thus 3J means "join the
next three lines" and d5} means "delete from the current line through the end of
the fifth paragraph down from here."
This is all intermediate level vi . None of it is Vim specific and there are far more
advanced tricks in vi if you're ready to learn them. If you were to master just these
intermediate concepts then you'd probably find that you rarely need to write any macros
because the text manipulation language is sufficiently concise and expressive to do most
things easily enough using the editor's "native" language.
A sampling of more advanced tricks:
There are a number of : commands, most notably the :%
s/foo/bar/g global substitution technique. (That's not advanced but other
: commands can be). The whole : set of commands was historically
inherited by vi 's previous incarnations as the ed (line editor) and later the ex (extended
line editor) utilities. In fact vi is so named because it's the visual interface to ex .
: commands normally operate over lines of text. ed and ex were written in an
era when terminal screens were uncommon and many terminals were "teletype" (TTY) devices. So
it was common to work from printed copies of the text, using commands through an extremely
terse interface (common connection speeds were 110 baud, or, roughly, 11 characters per
second -- which is slower than a fast typist; lags were common on multi-user interactive
sessions; additionally there was often some motivation to conserve paper).
So the syntax of most : commands includes an address or range of addresses
(line number) followed by a command. Naturally one could use literal line numbers:
:127,215 s/foo/bar to change the first occurrence of "foo" into "bar" on each
line between 127 and 215. One could also use some abbreviations such as . or
$ for current and last lines respectively. One could also use relative prefixes
+ and - to refer to offsets after or before the curent line,
respectively. Thus: :.,$j meaning "from the current line to the last line, join
them all into one line". :% is synonymous with :1,$ (all the
lines).
The :... g and :... v commands bear some explanation as they are
incredibly powerful. :... g is a prefix for "globally" applying a subsequent
command to all lines which match a pattern (regular expression) while :... v
applies such a command to all lines which do NOT match the given pattern ("v" from
"conVerse"). As with other ex commands these can be prefixed by addressing/range references.
Thus :.,+21g/foo/d means "delete any lines containing the string "foo" from the
current one through the next 21 lines" while :.,$v/bar/d means "from here to the
end of the file, delete any lines which DON'T contain the string "bar."
It's interesting that the common Unix command grep was actually inspired by this ex
command (and is named after the way in which it was documented). The ex command
:g/re/p (grep) was the way they documented how to "globally" "print" lines
containing a "regular expression" (re). When ed and ex were used, the :p command
was one of the first that anyone learned and often the first one used when editing any file.
It was how you printed the current contents (usually just one page full at a time using
:.,+25p or some such).
Note that :% g/.../d or (its reVerse/conVerse counterpart: :%
v/.../d are the most common usage patterns. However there are couple of other
ex commands which are worth remembering:
We can use m to move lines around, and j to join lines. For
example if you have a list and you want to separate all the stuff matching (or conversely NOT
matching some pattern) without deleting them, then you can use something like: :%
g/foo/m$ ... and all the "foo" lines will have been moved to the end of the file.
(Note the other tip about using the end of your file as a scratch space). This will have
preserved the relative order of all the "foo" lines while having extracted them from the rest
of the list. (This would be equivalent to doing something like: 1G!GGmap!Ggrep
foo<ENTER>1G:1,'a g/foo'/d (copy the file to its own tail, filter the tail
through grep, and delete all the stuff from the head).
To join lines usually I can find a pattern for all the lines which need to be joined to
their predecessor (all the lines which start with "^ " rather than "^ * " in some bullet
list, for example). For that case I'd use: :% g/^ /-1j (for every matching line,
go up one line and join them). (BTW: for bullet lists trying to search for the bullet lines
and join to the next doesn't work for a couple reasons ... it can join one bullet line to
another, and it won't join any bullet line to all of its continuations; it'll only
work pairwise on the matches).
Almost needless to mention you can use our old friend s (substitute) with the
g and v (global/converse-global) commands. Usually you don't need
to do so. However, consider some case where you want to perform a substitution only on lines
matching some other pattern. Often you can use a complicated pattern with captures and use
back references to preserve the portions of the lines that you DON'T want to change. However,
it will often be easier to separate the match from the substitution: :%
g/foo/s/bar/zzz/g -- for every line containing "foo" substitute all "bar" with "zzz."
(Something like :% s/\(.*foo.*\)bar\(.*\)/\1zzz\2/g would only work for the
cases those instances of "bar" which were PRECEDED by "foo" on the same line; it's ungainly
enough already, and would have to be mangled further to catch all the cases where "bar"
preceded "foo")
The point is that there are more than just p, s, and
d lines in the ex command set.
The : addresses can also refer to marks. Thus you can use:
:'a,'bg/foo/j to join any line containing the string foo to its subsequent line,
if it lies between the lines between the ' a ' and ' b ' marks. (Yes, all
of the preceding ex command examples can be limited to subsets of the file's
lines by prefixing with these sorts of addressing expressions).
That's pretty obscure (I've only used something like that a few times in the last 15
years). However, I'll freely admit that I've often done things iteratively and interactively
that could probably have been done more efficiently if I'd taken the time to think out the
correct incantation.
Another very useful vi or ex command is :r to read in the contents of another
file. Thus: :r foo inserts the contents of the file named "foo" at the current
line.
More powerful is the :r! command. This reads the results of a command. It's
the same as suspending the vi session, running a command, redirecting its output to a
temporary file, resuming your vi session, and reading in the contents from the temp.
file.
Even more powerful are the ! (bang) and :... ! ( ex bang)
commands. These also execute external commands and read the results into the current text.
However, they also filter selections of our text through the command! This we can sort all
the lines in our file using 1G!Gsort ( G is the vi "goto" command;
it defaults to going to the last line of the file, but can be prefixed by a line number, such
as 1, the first line). This is equivalent to the ex variant :1,$!sort . Writers
often use ! with the Unix fmt or fold utilities for reformating or "word
wrapping" selections of text. A very common macro is {!}fmt (reformat the
current paragraph). Programmers sometimes use it to run their code, or just portions of it,
through indent or other code reformatting tools.
Using the :r! and ! commands means that any external utility or
filter can be treated as an extension of our editor. I have occasionally used these with
scripts that pulled data from a database, or with wget or lynx commands that pulled data off
a website, or ssh commands that pulled data from remote systems.
Another useful ex command is :so (short for :source ). This
reads the contents of a file as a series of commands. When you start vi it normally,
implicitly, performs a :source on ~/.exinitrc file (and Vim usually
does this on ~/.vimrc, naturally enough). The use of this is that you can
change your editor profile on the fly by simply sourcing in a new set of macros,
abbreviations, and editor settings. If you're sneaky you can even use this as a trick for
storing sequences of ex editing commands to apply to files on demand.
For example I have a seven line file (36 characters) which runs a file through wc, and
inserts a C-style comment at the top of the file containing that word count data. I can apply
that "macro" to a file by using a command like: vim +'so mymacro.ex'
./mytarget
(The + command line option to vi and Vim is normally used to start the
editing session at a given line number. However it's a little known fact that one can follow
the + by any valid ex command/expression, such as a "source" command as I've
done here; for a simple example I have scripts which invoke: vi +'/foo/d|wq!'
~/.ssh/known_hosts to remove an entry from my SSH known hosts file non-interactively
while I'm re-imaging a set of servers).
Usually it's far easier to write such "macros" using Perl, AWK, sed (which is, in fact,
like grep a utility inspired by the ed command).
The @ command is probably the most obscure vi command. In occasionally
teaching advanced systems administration courses for close to a decade I've met very few
people who've ever used it. @ executes the contents of a register as if it were
a vi or ex command.
Example: I often use: :r!locate ... to find some file on my system and read its
name into my document. From there I delete any extraneous hits, leaving only the full path to
the file I'm interested in. Rather than laboriously Tab -ing through each
component of the path (or worse, if I happen to be stuck on a machine without Tab completion
support in its copy of vi ) I just use:
0i:r (to turn the current line into a valid :r command),
"cdd (to delete the line into the "c" register) and
@c execute that command.
That's only 10 keystrokes (and the expression "cdd@c is
effectively a finger macro for me, so I can type it almost as quickly as any common six
letter word).
A sobering thought
I've only scratched to surface of vi 's power and none of what I've described here is even
part of the "improvements" for which vim is named! All of what I've described here should
work on any old copy of vi from 20 or 30 years ago.
There are people who have used considerably more of vi 's power than I ever will.
@Wahnfieden -- grok is exactly what I meant: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok (It's apparently even in
the OED --- the closest we anglophones have to a canonical lexicon). To "grok" an editor is
to find yourself using its commands fluently ... as if they were your natural language.
– Jim
Dennis
Feb 12 '10 at 4:08
wow, a very well written answer! i couldn't agree more, although i use the @
command a lot (in combination with q : record macro) – knittl
Feb 27 '10 at 13:15
Superb answer that utterly redeems a really horrible question. I am going to upvote this
question, that normally I would downvote, just so that this answer becomes easier to find.
(And I'm an Emacs guy! But this way I'll have somewhere to point new folks who want a good
explanation of what vi power users find fun about vi. Then I'll tell them about Emacs and
they can decide.) – Brandon Rhodes
Mar 29 '10 at 15:26
Can you make a website and put this tutorial there, so it doesn't get burried here on
stackoverflow. I have yet to read better introduction to vi then this. – Marko
Apr 1 '10 at 14:47
You are talking about text selecting and copying, I think that you should give a look to the
Vim Visual Mode .
In the visual mode, you are able to select text using Vim commands, then you can do
whatever you want with the selection.
Consider the following common scenarios:
You need to select to the next matching parenthesis.
You could do:
v% if the cursor is on the starting/ending parenthesis
vib if the cursor is inside the parenthesis block
You want to select text between quotes:
vi" for double quotes
vi' for single quotes
You want to select a curly brace block (very common on C-style languages):
viB
vi{
You want to select the entire file:
ggVG
Visual
block selection is another really useful feature, it allows you to select a rectangular
area of text, you just have to press Ctrl - V to start it, and then
select the text block you want and perform any type of operation such as yank, delete, paste,
edit, etc. It's great to edit column oriented text.
Yes, but it was a specific complaint of the poster. Visual mode is Vim's best method of
direct text-selection and manipulation. And since vim's buffer traversal methods are superb,
I find text selection in vim fairly pleasurable. – guns
Aug 2 '09 at 9:54
I think it is also worth mentioning Ctrl-V to select a block - ie an arbitrary rectangle of
text. When you need it it's a lifesaver. – Hamish Downer
Mar 16 '10 at 13:34
Also, if you've got a visual selection and want to adjust it, o will hop to the
other end. So you can move both the beginning and the end of the selection as much as you
like. – Nathan Long
Mar 1 '11 at 19:05
* and # search for the word under the cursor
forward/backward.
w to the next word
W to the next space-separated word
b / e to the begin/end of the current word. ( B
/ E for space separated only)
gg / G jump to the begin/end of the file.
% jump to the matching { .. } or ( .. ), etc..
{ / } jump to next paragraph.
'. jump back to last edited line.
g; jump back to last edited position.
Quick editing commands
I insert at the begin.
A append to end.
o / O open a new line after/before the current.
v / V / Ctrl+V visual mode (to select
text!)
Shift+R replace text
C change remaining part of line.
Combining commands
Most commands accept a amount and direction, for example:
cW = change till end of word
3cW = change 3 words
BcW = to begin of full word, change full word
ciW = change inner word.
ci" = change inner between ".."
ci( = change text between ( .. )
ci< = change text between < .. > (needs set
matchpairs+=<:> in vimrc)
4dd = delete 4 lines
3x = delete 3 characters.
3s = substitute 3 characters.
Useful programmer commands
r replace one character (e.g. rd replaces the current char
with d ).
~ changes case.
J joins two lines
Ctrl+A / Ctrl+X increments/decrements a number.
. repeat last command (a simple macro)
== fix line indent
> indent block (in visual mode)
< unindent block (in visual mode)
Macro recording
Press q[ key ] to start recording.
Then hit q to stop recording.
The macro can be played with @[ key ] .
By using very specific commands and movements, VIM can replay those exact actions for the
next lines. (e.g. A for append-to-end, b / e to move the cursor to
the begin or end of a word respectively)
Example of well built settings
# reset to vim-defaults
if &compatible # only if not set before:
set nocompatible # use vim-defaults instead of vi-defaults (easier, more user friendly)
endif
# display settings
set background=dark # enable for dark terminals
set nowrap # dont wrap lines
set scrolloff=2 # 2 lines above/below cursor when scrolling
set number # show line numbers
set showmatch # show matching bracket (briefly jump)
set showmode # show mode in status bar (insert/replace/...)
set showcmd # show typed command in status bar
set ruler # show cursor position in status bar
set title # show file in titlebar
set wildmenu # completion with menu
set wildignore=*.o,*.obj,*.bak,*.exe,*.py[co],*.swp,*~,*.pyc,.svn
set laststatus=2 # use 2 lines for the status bar
set matchtime=2 # show matching bracket for 0.2 seconds
set matchpairs+=<:> # specially for html
# editor settings
set esckeys # map missed escape sequences (enables keypad keys)
set ignorecase # case insensitive searching
set smartcase # but become case sensitive if you type uppercase characters
set smartindent # smart auto indenting
set smarttab # smart tab handling for indenting
set magic # change the way backslashes are used in search patterns
set bs=indent,eol,start # Allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set tabstop=4 # number of spaces a tab counts for
set shiftwidth=4 # spaces for autoindents
#set expandtab # turn a tabs into spaces
set fileformat=unix # file mode is unix
#set fileformats=unix,dos # only detect unix file format, displays that ^M with dos files
# system settings
set lazyredraw # no redraws in macros
set confirm # get a dialog when :q, :w, or :wq fails
set nobackup # no backup~ files.
set viminfo='20,\"500 # remember copy registers after quitting in the .viminfo file -- 20 jump links, regs up to 500 lines'
set hidden # remember undo after quitting
set history=50 # keep 50 lines of command history
set mouse=v # use mouse in visual mode (not normal,insert,command,help mode
# color settings (if terminal/gui supports it)
if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
syntax on # enable colors
set hlsearch # highlight search (very useful!)
set incsearch # search incremently (search while typing)
endif
# paste mode toggle (needed when using autoindent/smartindent)
map <F10> :set paste<CR>
map <F11> :set nopaste<CR>
imap <F10> <C-O>:set paste<CR>
imap <F11> <nop>
set pastetoggle=<F11>
# Use of the filetype plugins, auto completion and indentation support
filetype plugin indent on
# file type specific settings
if has("autocmd")
# For debugging
#set verbose=9
# if bash is sh.
let bash_is_sh=1
# change to directory of current file automatically
autocmd BufEnter * lcd %:p:h
# Put these in an autocmd group, so that we can delete them easily.
augroup mysettings
au FileType xslt,xml,css,html,xhtml,javascript,sh,config,c,cpp,docbook set smartindent shiftwidth=2 softtabstop=2 expandtab
au FileType tex set wrap shiftwidth=2 softtabstop=2 expandtab
# Confirm to PEP8
au FileType python set tabstop=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab shiftwidth=4 cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class
augroup END
augroup perl
# reset (disable previous 'augroup perl' settings)
au!
au BufReadPre,BufNewFile
\ *.pl,*.pm
\ set formatoptions=croq smartindent shiftwidth=2 softtabstop=2 cindent cinkeys='0{,0},!^F,o,O,e' " tags=./tags,tags,~/devel/tags,~/devel/C
# formatoption:
# t - wrap text using textwidth
# c - wrap comments using textwidth (and auto insert comment leader)
# r - auto insert comment leader when pressing <return> in insert mode
# o - auto insert comment leader when pressing 'o' or 'O'.
# q - allow formatting of comments with "gq"
# a - auto formatting for paragraphs
# n - auto wrap numbered lists
#
augroup END
# Always jump to the last known cursor position.
# Don't do it when the position is invalid or when inside
# an event handler (happens when dropping a file on gvim).
autocmd BufReadPost *
\ if line("'\"") > 0 && line("'\"") <= line("$") |
\ exe "normal g`\"" |
\ endif
endif # has("autocmd")
The settings can be stored in ~/.vimrc, or system-wide in
/etc/vimrc.local and then by read from the /etc/vimrc file
using:
source /etc/vimrc.local
(you'll have to replace the # comment character with " to make
it work in VIM, I wanted to give proper syntax highlighting here).
The commands I've listed here are pretty basic, and the main ones I use so far. They
already make me quite more productive, without having to know all the fancy stuff.
Better than '. is g;, which jumps back through the
changelist . Goes to the last edited position, instead of last edited line
– naught101
Apr 28 '12 at 2:09
The Control + R mechanism is very useful :-) In either insert mode or
command mode (i.e. on the : line when typing commands), continue with a numbered
or named register:
a - z the named registers
" the unnamed register, containing the text of the last delete or
yank
% the current file name
# the alternate file name
* the clipboard contents (X11: primary selection)
+ the clipboard contents
/ the last search pattern
: the last command-line
. the last inserted text
- the last small (less than a line) delete
=5*5 insert 25 into text (mini-calculator)
See :help i_CTRL-R and :help c_CTRL-R for more details, and
snoop around nearby for more CTRL-R goodness.
+1 for current/alternate file name. Control-A also works in insert mode for last
inserted text, and Control-@ to both insert last inserted text and immediately
switch to normal mode. – Aryeh Leib Taurog
Feb 26 '12 at 19:06
There are a lot of good answers here, and one amazing one about the zen of vi. One thing I
don't see mentioned is that vim is extremely extensible via plugins. There are scripts and
plugins to make it do all kinds of crazy things the original author never considered. Here
are a few examples of incredibly handy vim plugins:
Rails.vim is a plugin written by tpope. It's an incredible tool for people doing rails
development. It does magical context-sensitive things that allow you to easily jump from a
method in a controller to the associated view, over to a model, and down to unit tests for
that model. It has saved dozens if not hundreds of hours as a rails
developer.
This plugin allows you to select a region of text in visual mode and type a quick command
to post it to gist.github.com . This
allows for easy pastebin access, which is incredibly handy if you're collaborating with
someone over IRC or IM.
This plugin provides special functionality to the spacebar. It turns the spacebar into
something analogous to the period, but instead of repeating actions it repeats motions. This
can be very handy for moving quickly through a file in a way you define on the
fly.
This plugin gives you the ability to work with text that is delimited in some fashion. It
gives you objects which denote things inside of parens, things inside of quotes, etc. It can
come in handy for manipulating delimited text.
This script brings fancy tab completion functionality to vim. The autocomplete stuff is
already there in the core of vim, but this brings it to a quick tab rather than multiple
different multikey shortcuts. Very handy, and incredibly fun to use. While it's not VS's
intellisense, it's a great step and brings a great deal of the functionality you'd like to
expect from a tab completion tool.
This tool brings external syntax checking commands into vim. I haven't used it personally,
but I've heard great things about it and the concept is hard to beat. Checking syntax without
having to do it manually is a great time saver and can help you catch syntactic bugs as you
introduce them rather than when you finally stop to test.
Direct access to git from inside of vim. Again, I haven't used this plugin, but I can see
the utility. Unfortunately I'm in a culture where svn is considered "new", so I won't likely
see git at work for quite some time.
A tree browser for vim. I started using this recently, and it's really handy. It lets you
put a treeview in a vertical split and open files easily. This is great for a project with a
lot of source files you frequently jump between.
This is an unmaintained plugin, but still incredibly useful. It provides the ability to
open files using a "fuzzy" descriptive syntax. It means that in a sparse tree of files you
need only type enough characters to disambiguate the files you're interested in from the rest
of the cruft.
Conclusion
There are a lot of incredible tools available for vim. I'm sure I've only scratched the
surface here, and it's well worth searching for tools applicable to your domain. The
combination of traditional vi's powerful toolset, vim's improvements on it, and plugins which
extend vim even further, it's one of the most powerful ways to edit text ever conceived. Vim
is easily as powerful as emacs, eclipse, visual studio, and textmate.
Thanks
Thanks to duwanis for his
vim configs from which I
have learned much and borrowed most of the plugins listed here.
The magical tests-to-class navigation in rails.vim is one of the more general things I wish
Vim had that TextMate absolutely nails across all languages: if I am working on Person.scala
and I do Cmd+T, usually the first thing in the list is PersonTest.scala. – Tom Morris
Apr 1 '10 at 8:50
@Benson Great list! I'd toss in snipMate as well. Very helpful
automation of common coding stuff. if<tab> instant if block, etc. – AlG
Sep 13 '11 at 17:37
Visual mode was mentioned previously, but block visual mode has saved me a lot of time
when editing fixed size columns in text file. (accessed with Ctrl-V).
Additionally, if you use a concise command (e.g. A for append-at-end) to edit the text, vim
can repeat that exact same action for the next line you press the . key at.
– vdboor
Apr 1 '10 at 8:34
Go to last edited location (very useful if you performed some searching and than want go
back to edit)
^P and ^N
Complete previous (^P) or next (^N) text.
^O and ^I
Go to previous ( ^O - "O" for old) location or to the next (
^I - "I" just near to "O" ). When you perform
searches, edit files etc., you can navigate through these "jumps" forward and back.
@Kungi `. will take you to the last edit `` will take you back to the position you were in
before the last 'jump' - which /might/ also be the position of the last edit. –
Grant
McLean
Aug 23 '11 at 8:21
It's pretty new and really really good. The guy who is running the site switched from
textmate to vim and hosts very good and concise casts on specific vim topics. Check it
out!
@SolutionYogi: Consider that you want to add line number to the beginning of each line.
Solution: ggI1<space><esc>0qqyawjP0<c-a>0q9999@q – hcs42
Feb 27 '10 at 19:05
Extremely useful with Vimperator, where it increments (or decrements, Ctrl-X) the last number
in the URL. Useful for quickly surfing through image galleries etc. – blueyed
Apr 1 '10 at 14:47
Whoa, I didn't know about the * and # (search forward/back for word under cursor) binding.
That's kinda cool. The f/F and t/T and ; commands are quick jumps to characters on the
current line. f/F put the cursor on the indicated character while t/T puts it just up "to"
the character (the character just before or after it according to the direction chosen. ;
simply repeats the most recent f/F/t/T jump (in the same direction). – Jim Dennis
Mar 14 '10 at 6:38
:) The tagline at the top of the tips page at vim.org: "Can you imagine how many keystrokes
could have been saved, if I only had known the "*" command in time?" - Juergen Salk,
1/19/2001" – Steve K
Apr 3 '10 at 23:50
As Jim mentioned, the "t/T" combo is often just as good, if not better, for example,
ct( will erase the word and put you in insert mode, but keep the parantheses!
– puk
Feb 24 '12 at 6:45
CTRL-A ;Add [count] to the number or alphabetic character at or after the cursor. {not
in Vi
CTRL-X ;Subtract [count] from the number or alphabetic character at or after the cursor.
{not in Vi}
b. Window key unmapping
In window, Ctrl-A already mapped for whole file selection you need to unmap in rc file.
mark mswin.vim CTRL-A mapping part as comment or add your rc file with unmap
c. With Macro
The CTRL-A command is very useful in a macro. Example: Use the following steps to make a
numbered list.
Create the first list entry, make sure it starts with a number.
Last week at work our project inherited a lot of Python code from another project.
Unfortunately the code did not fit into our existing architecture - it was all done with
global variables and functions, which would not work in a multi-threaded environment.
We had ~80 files that needed to be reworked to be object oriented - all the functions
moved into classes, parameters changed, import statements added, etc. We had a list of about
20 types of fix that needed to be done to each file. I would estimate that doing it by hand
one person could do maybe 2-4 per day.
So I did the first one by hand and then wrote a vim script to automate the changes. Most
of it was a list of vim commands e.g.
" delete an un-needed function "
g/someFunction(/ d
" add wibble parameter to function foo "
%s/foo(/foo( wibble,/
" convert all function calls bar(thing) into method calls thing.bar() "
g/bar(/ normal nmaf(ldi(`aPa.
The last one deserves a bit of explanation:
g/bar(/ executes the following command on every line that contains "bar("
normal execute the following text as if it was typed in in normal mode
n goes to the next match of "bar(" (since the :g command leaves the cursor position at the start of the line)
ma saves the cursor position in mark a
f( moves forward to the next opening bracket
l moves right one character, so the cursor is now inside the brackets
di( delete all the text inside the brackets
`a go back to the position saved as mark a (i.e. the first character of "bar")
P paste the deleted text before the current cursor position
a. go into insert mode and add a "."
For a couple of more complex transformations such as generating all the import statements
I embedded some python into the vim script.
After a few hours of working on it I had a script that will do at least 95% of the
conversion. I just open a file in vim then run :source fixit.vim and the file is
transformed in a blink of the eye.
We still have the work of changing the remaining 5% that was not worth automating and of
testing the results, but by spending a day writing this script I estimate we have saved weeks
of work.
Of course it would have been possible to automate this with a scripting language like
Python or Ruby, but it would have taken far longer to write and would be less flexible - the
last example would have been difficult since regex alone would not be able to handle nested
brackets, e.g. to convert bar(foo(xxx)) to foo(xxx).bar() . Vim was
perfect for the task.
@lpsquiggle: your suggestion would not handle complex expressions with more than one set of
brackets. e.g. if bar(foo(xxx)) or wibble(xxx): becomes if foo(xxx)) or
wibble(xxx.bar(): which is completely wrong. – Dave Kirby
Mar 23 '10 at 17:16
Use the builtin file explorer! The command is :Explore and it allows you to
navigate through your source code very very fast. I have these mapping in my
.vimrc :
I always thought the default methods for browsing kinda sucked for most stuff. It's just slow
to browse, if you know where you wanna go. LustyExplorer from vim.org's script section is a
much needed improvement. – Svend
Aug 2 '09 at 8:48
I recommend NERDtree instead of the built-in explorer. It has changed the way I used vim for
projects and made me much more productive. Just google for it. – kprobst
Apr 1 '10 at 3:53
I never feel the need to explore the source tree, I just use :find,
:tag and the various related keystrokes to jump around. (Maybe this is because
the source trees I work on are big and organized differently than I would have done? :) )
– dash-tom-bang
Aug 24 '11 at 0:35
I am a member of the American Cryptogram Association. The bimonthly magazine includes over
100 cryptograms of various sorts. Roughly 15 of these are "cryptarithms" - various types of
arithmetic problems with letters substituted for the digits. Two or three of these are
sudokus, except with letters instead of numbers. When the grid is completed, the nine
distinct letters will spell out a word or words, on some line, diagonal, spiral, etc.,
somewhere in the grid.
Rather than working with pencil, or typing the problems in by hand, I download the
problems from the members area of their website.
When working with these sudokus, I use vi, simply because I'm using facilities that vi has
that few other editors have. Mostly in converting the lettered grid into a numbered grid,
because I find it easier to solve, and then the completed numbered grid back into the
lettered grid to find the solution word or words.
The problem is formatted as nine groups of nine letters, with - s
representing the blanks, written in two lines. The first step is to format these into nine
lines of nine characters each. There's nothing special about this, just inserting eight
linebreaks in the appropriate places.
So, first step in converting this into numbers is to make a list of the distinct letters.
First, I make a copy of the block. I position the cursor at the top of the block, then type
:y}}p . : puts me in command mode, y yanks the next
movement command. Since } is a move to the end of the next paragraph,
y} yanks the paragraph. } then moves the cursor to the end of the
paragraph, and p pastes what we had yanked just after the cursor. So
y}}p creates a copy of the next paragraph, and ends up with the cursor between
the two copies.
Next, I to turn one of those copies into a list of distinct letters. That command is a bit
more complex:
: again puts me in command mode. ! indicates that the content of
the next yank should be piped through a command line. } yanks the next
paragraph, and the command line then uses the tr command to strip out everything
except for upper-case letters, the sed command to print each letter on a single
line, and the sort command to sort those lines, removing duplicates, and then
tr strips out the newlines, leaving the nine distinct letters in a single line,
replacing the nine lines that had made up the paragraph originally. In this case, the letters
are: ACELNOPST .
Next step is to make another copy of the grid. And then to use the letters I've just
identified to replace each of those letters with a digit from 1 to 9. That's simple:
:!}tr ACELNOPST 0-9 . The result is:
This can then be solved in the usual way, or entered into any sudoku solver you might
prefer. The completed solution can then be converted back into letters with :!}tr 1-9
ACELNOPST .
There is power in vi that is matched by very few others. The biggest problem is that only
a very few of the vi tutorial books, websites, help-files, etc., do more than barely touch
the surface of what is possible.
and an irritation is that some distros such as ubuntu has aliases from the word "vi" to "vim"
so people won't really see vi. Excellent example, have to try... +1 – hhh
Jan 14 '11 at 17:12
I'm baffled by this repeated error: you say you need : to go into command mode,
but then invariably you specify normal mode commands (like y}}p ) which
cannot possibly work from the command mode?! – sehe
Mar 4 '12 at 20:47
My take on the unique chars challenge: :se tw=1 fo= (preparation)
VG:s/./& /g (insert spaces), gvgq (split onto separate lines),
V{:sort u (sort and remove duplicates) – sehe
Mar 4 '12 at 20:56
I find the following trick increasingly useful ... for cases where you want to join lines
that match (or that do NOT match) some pattern to the previous line: :%
g/foo/-1j or :'a,'z v/bar/-1j for example (where the former is "all lines
and matching the pattern" while the latter is "lines between mark a and mark z which fail to
match the pattern"). The part after the patter in a g or v ex
command can be any other ex commmands, -1j is just a relative line movement and join command.
– Jim
Dennis
Feb 12 '10 at 4:15
of course, if you name your macro '2', then when it comes time to use it, you don't even have
to move your finger from the '@' key to the 'q' key. Probably saves 50 to 100 milliseconds
every time right there. =P – JustJeff
Feb 27 '10 at 12:54
I recently discovered q: . It opens the "command window" and shows your most
recent ex-mode (command-mode) commands. You can move as usual within the window, and pressing
<CR> executes the command. You can edit, etc. too. Priceless when you're
messing around with some complex command or regex and you don't want to retype the whole
thing, or if the complex thing you want to do was 3 commands back. It's almost like bash's
set -o vi, but for vim itself (heh!).
See :help q: for more interesting bits for going back and forth.
I just discovered Vim's omnicompletion the other day, and while I'll admit I'm a bit hazy on
what does which, I've had surprisingly good results just mashing either Ctrl +
xCtrl + u or Ctrl + n /
Ctrl + p in insert mode. It's not quite IntelliSense, but I'm still learning it.
<Ctrl> + W and j/k will let you navigate absolutely (j up, k down, as with normal vim).
This is great when you have 3+ splits. – Andrew Scagnelli
Apr 1 '10 at 2:58
after bashing my keyboard I have deduced that <C-w>n or
<C-w>s is new horizontal window, <C-w>b is bottom right
window, <C-w>c or <C-w>q is close window,
<C-w>x is increase and then decrease window width (??),
<C-w>p is last window, <C-w>backspace is move left(ish)
window – puk
Feb 24 '12 at 7:00
As several other people have said, visual mode is the answer to your copy/cut & paste
problem. Vim gives you 'v', 'V', and C-v. Lower case 'v' in vim is essentially the same as
the shift key in notepad. The nice thing is that you don't have to hold it down. You can use
any movement technique to navigate efficiently to the starting (or ending) point of your
selection. Then hit 'v', and use efficient movement techniques again to navigate to the other
end of your selection. Then 'd' or 'y' allows you to cut or copy that selection.
The advantage vim's visual mode has over Jim Dennis's description of cut/copy/paste in vi
is that you don't have to get the location exactly right. Sometimes it's more efficient to
use a quick movement to get to the general vicinity of where you want to go and then refine
that with other movements than to think up a more complex single movement command that gets
you exactly where you want to go.
The downside to using visual mode extensively in this manner is that it can become a
crutch that you use all the time which prevents you from learning new vi(m) commands that
might allow you to do things more efficiently. However, if you are very proactive about
learning new aspects of vi(m), then this probably won't affect you much.
I'll also re-emphasize that the visual line and visual block modes give you variations on
this same theme that can be very powerful...especially the visual block mode.
On Efficient Use of the Keyboard
I also disagree with your assertion that alternating hands is the fastest way to use the
keyboard. It has an element of truth in it. Speaking very generally, repeated use of the same
thing is slow. This most significant example of this principle is that consecutive keystrokes
typed with the same finger are very slow. Your assertion probably stems from the natural
tendency to use the s/finger/hand/ transformation on this pattern. To some extent it's
correct, but at the extremely high end of the efficiency spectrum it's incorrect.
Just ask any pianist. Ask them whether it's faster to play a succession of a few notes
alternating hands or using consecutive fingers of a single hand in sequence. The fastest way
to type 4 keystrokes is not to alternate hands, but to type them with 4 fingers of the same
hand in either ascending or descending order (call this a "run"). This should be self-evident
once you've considered this possibility.
The more difficult problem is optimizing for this. It's pretty easy to optimize for
absolute distance on the keyboard. Vim does that. It's much harder to optimize at the "run"
level, but vi(m) with it's modal editing gives you a better chance at being able to do it
than any non-modal approach (ahem, emacs) ever could.
On Emacs
Lest the emacs zealots completely disregard my whole post on account of that last
parenthetical comment, I feel I must describe the root of the difference between the emacs
and vim religions. I've never spoken up in the editor wars and I probably won't do it again,
but I've never heard anyone describe the differences this way, so here it goes. The
difference is the following tradeoff:
Vim gives you unmatched raw text editing efficiency Emacs gives you unmatched ability to
customize and program the editor
The blind vim zealots will claim that vim has a scripting language. But it's an obscure,
ad-hoc language that was designed to serve the editor. Emacs has Lisp! Enough said. If you
don't appreciate the significance of those last two sentences or have a desire to learn
enough about functional programming and Lisp to develop that appreciation, then you should
use vim.
The emacs zealots will claim that emacs has viper mode, and so it is a superset of vim.
But viper mode isn't standard. My understanding is that viper mode is not used by the
majority of emacs users. Since it's not the default, most emacs users probably don't develop
a true appreciation for the benefits of the modal paradigm.
In my opinion these differences are orthogonal. I believe the benefits of vim and emacs as
I have stated them are both valid. This means that the ultimate editor doesn't exist yet.
It's probably true that emacs would be the easiest platform on which to base the ultimate
editor. But modal editing is not entrenched in the emacs mindset. The emacs community could
move that way in the future, but that doesn't seem very likely.
So if you want raw editing efficiency, use vim. If you want the ultimate environment for
scripting and programming your editor use emacs. If you want some of both with an emphasis on
programmability, use emacs with viper mode (or program your own mode). If you want the best
of both worlds, you're out of luck for now.
Spend 30 mins doing the vim tutorial (run vimtutor instead of vim in terminal). You will
learn the basic movements, and some keystrokes, this will make you at least as productive
with vim as with the text editor you used before. After that, well, read Jim Dennis' answer
again :)
This is the first thing I thought of when reading the OP. It's obvious that the poster has
never run this; I ran through it when first learning vim two years ago and it cemented in my
mind the superiority of Vim to any of the other editors I've used (including, for me, Emacs
since the key combos are annoying to use on a Mac). – dash-tom-bang
Aug 24 '11 at 0:47
Use \c anywhere in a search to ignore case (overriding your ignorecase or
smartcase settings). E.g. /\cfoo or /foo\c will match
foo, Foo, fOO, FOO, etc.
Use \C anywhere in a search to force case matching. E.g. /\Cfoo
or /foo\C will only match foo.
Odd nobody's mentioned ctags. Download "exuberant ctags" and put it ahead of the crappy
preinstalled version you already have in your search path. Cd to the root of whatever you're
working on; for example the Android kernel distribution. Type "ctags -R ." to build an index
of source files anywhere beneath that dir in a file named "tags". This contains all tags,
nomatter the language nor where in the dir, in one file, so cross-language work is easy.
Then open vim in that folder and read :help ctags for some commands. A few I use
often:
Put cursor on a method call and type CTRL-] to go to the method definition.
You asked about productive shortcuts, but I think your real question is: Is vim worth it? The
answer to this stackoverflow question is -> "Yes"
You must have noticed two things. Vim is powerful, and vim is hard to learn. Much of it's
power lies in it's expandability and endless combination of commands. Don't feel overwhelmed.
Go slow. One command, one plugin at a time. Don't overdo it.
All that investment you put into vim will pay back a thousand fold. You're going to be
inside a text editor for many, many hours before you die. Vim will be your companion.
Multiple buffers, and in particular fast jumping between them to compare two files with
:bp and :bn (properly remapped to a single Shift +
p or Shift + n )
vimdiff mode (splits in two vertical buffers, with colors to show the
differences)
Area-copy with Ctrl + v
And finally, tab completion of identifiers (search for "mosh_tab_or_complete"). That's a
life changer.
Probably better to set the clipboard option to unnamed ( set
clipboard=unnamed in your .vimrc) to use the system clipboard by default. Or if you
still want the system clipboard separate from the unnamed register, use the appropriately
named clipboard register: "*p . – R. Martinho Fernandes
Apr 1 '10 at 3:17
Love it! After being exasperated by pasting code examples from the web and I was just
starting to feel proficient in vim. That was the command I dreamed up on the spot. This was
when vim totally hooked me. – kevpie
Oct 12 '10 at 22:38
There are a plethora of questions where people talk about common tricks, notably " Vim+ctags
tips and tricks ".
However, I don't refer to commonly used shortcuts that someone new to Vim would find cool.
I am talking about a seasoned Unix user (be they a developer, administrator, both, etc.), who
thinks they know something 99% of us never heard or dreamed about. Something that not only
makes their work easier, but also is COOL and hackish .
After all, Vim resides in
the most dark-corner-rich OS in the world, thus it should have intricacies that only a few
privileged know about and want to share with us.
Might not be one that 99% of Vim users don't know about, but it's something I use daily and
that any Linux+Vim poweruser must know.
Basic command, yet extremely useful.
:w !sudo tee %
I often forget to sudo before editing a file I don't have write permissions on. When I
come to save that file and get a permission error, I just issue that vim command in order to
save the file without the need to save it to a temp file and then copy it back again.
You obviously have to be on a system with sudo installed and have sudo rights.
Something I just discovered recently that I thought was very cool:
:earlier 15m
Reverts the document back to how it was 15 minutes ago. Can take various arguments for the
amount of time you want to roll back, and is dependent on undolevels. Can be reversed with
the opposite command :later
@skinp: If you undo and then make further changes from the undone state, you lose that redo
history. This lets you go back to a state which is no longer in the undo stack. –
ephemient
Apr 8 '09 at 16:15
Also very usefull is g+ and g- to go backward and forward in time. This is so much more
powerfull than an undo/redo stack since you don't loose the history when you do something
after an undo. – Etienne PIERRE
Jul 21 '09 at 13:53
You don't lose the redo history if you make a change after an undo. It's just not easily
accessed. There are plugins to help you visualize this, like Gundo.vim – Ehtesh Choudhury
Nov 29 '11 at 12:09
This is quite similar to :r! The only difference as far as I can tell is that :r! opens a new
line, :.! overwrites the current line. – saffsd
May 6 '09 at 14:41
An alternative to :.!date is to write "date" on a line and then run
!$sh (alternatively having the command followed by a blank line and run
!jsh ). This will pipe the line to the "sh" shell and substitute with the output
from the command. – hlovdal
Jan 25 '10 at 21:11
:.! is actually a special case of :{range}!, which filters a range
of lines (the current line when the range is . ) through a command and replaces
those lines with the output. I find :%! useful for filtering whole buffers.
– Nefrubyr
Mar 25 '10 at 16:24
And also note that '!' is like 'y', 'd', 'c' etc. i.e. you can do: !!, number!!, !motion
(e.g. !Gshell_command<cr> replace from current line to end of file ('G') with output of
shell_command). – aqn
Apr 26 '13 at 20:52
dab "delete arounb brackets", daB for around curly brackets, t for xml type tags,
combinations with normal commands are as expected cib/yaB/dit/vat etc – sjh
Apr 8 '09 at 15:33
This is possibly the biggest reason for me staying with Vim. That and its equivalent "change"
commands: ciw, ci(, ci", as well as dt<space> and ct<space> – thomasrutter
Apr 26 '09 at 11:11
de Delete everything till the end of the word by pressing . at your heart's desire.
ci(xyz[Esc] -- This is a weird one. Here, the 'i' does not mean insert mode. Instead it
means inside the parenthesis. So this sequence cuts the text inside parenthesis you're
standing in and replaces it with "xyz". It also works inside square and figure brackets --
just do ci[ or ci{ correspondingly. Naturally, you can do di (if you just want to delete all
text without typing anything. You can also do a instead of i if you
want to delete the parentheses as well and not just text inside them.
ci" - cuts the text in current quotes
ciw - cuts the current word. This works just like the previous one except that
( is replaced with w .
C - cut the rest of the line and switch to insert mode.
ZZ -- save and close current file (WAY faster than Ctrl-F4 to close the current tab!)
ddp - move current line one row down
xp -- move current character one position to the right
U - uppercase, so viwU upercases the word
~ - switches case, so viw~ will reverse casing of entire word
Ctrl+u / Ctrl+d scroll the page half-a-screen up or down. This seems to be more useful
than the usual full-screen paging as it makes it easier to see how the two screens relate.
For those who still want to scroll entire screen at a time there's Ctrl+f for Forward and
Ctrl+b for Backward. Ctrl+Y and Ctrl+E scroll down or up one line at a time.
Crazy but very useful command is zz -- it scrolls the screen to make this line appear in
the middle. This is excellent for putting the piece of code you're working on in the center
of your attention. Sibling commands -- zt and zb -- make this line the top or the bottom one
on the sreen which is not quite as useful.
% finds and jumps to the matching parenthesis.
de -- delete from cursor to the end of the word (you can also do dE to delete
until the next space)
bde -- delete the current word, from left to right delimiter
df[space] -- delete up until and including the next space
dt. -- delete until next dot
dd -- delete this entire line
ye (or yE) -- yanks text from here to the end of the word
ce - cuts through the end of the word
bye -- copies current word (makes me wonder what "hi" does!)
yy -- copies the current line
cc -- cuts the current line, you can also do S instead. There's also lower
cap s which cuts current character and switches to insert mode.
viwy or viwc . Yank or change current word. Hit w multiple times to keep
selecting each subsequent word, use b to move backwards
vi{ - select all text in figure brackets. va{ - select all text including {}s
vi(p - highlight everything inside the ()s and replace with the pasted text
b and e move the cursor word-by-word, similarly to how Ctrl+Arrows normally do . The
definition of word is a little different though, as several consecutive delmiters are treated
as one word. If you start at the middle of a word, pressing b will always get you to the
beginning of the current word, and each consecutive b will jump to the beginning of the next
word. Similarly, and easy to remember, e gets the cursor to the end of the
current, and each subsequent, word.
similar to b / e, capital B and E
move the cursor word-by-word using only whitespaces as delimiters.
capital D (take a deep breath) Deletes the rest of the line to the right of the cursor,
same as Shift+End/Del in normal editors (notice 2 keypresses -- Shift+D -- instead of 3)
All the things you're calling "cut" is "change". eg: C is change until the end of the line.
Vim's equivalent of "cut" is "delete", done with d/D. The main difference between change and
delete is that delete leaves you in normal mode but change puts you into a sort of insert
mode (though you're still in the change command which is handy as the whole change can be
repeated with . ). – Laurence Gonsalves
Feb 19 '11 at 23:49
One that I rarely find in most Vim tutorials, but it's INCREDIBLY useful (at least to me), is
the
g; and g,
to move (forward, backward) through the changelist.
Let me show how I use it. Sometimes I need to copy and paste a piece of code or string,
say a hex color code in a CSS file, so I search, jump (not caring where the match is), copy
it and then jump back (g;) to where I was editing the code to finally paste it. No need to
create marks. Simpler.
Ctrl-O and Ctrl-I (tab) will work similarly, but not the same. They move backward and forward
in the "jump list", which you can view by doing :jumps or :ju For more information do a :help
jumplist – Kimball Robinson
Apr 16 '10 at 0:29
@JoshLee: If one is careful not to traverse newlines, is it safe to not use the -b option? I
ask because sometimes I want to make a hex change, but I don't want to close and
reopen the file to do so. – dotancohen
Jun 7 '13 at 5:50
Sometimes a setting in your .vimrc will get overridden by a plugin or autocommand. To debug
this a useful trick is to use the :verbose command in conjunction with :set. For example, to
figure out where cindent got set/unset:
:verbose set cindent?
This will output something like:
cindent
Last set from /usr/share/vim/vim71/indent/c.vim
This also works with maps and highlights. (Thanks joeytwiddle for pointing this out.) For
example:
:verbose nmap U
n U <C-R>
Last set from ~/.vimrc
:verbose highlight Normal
Normal xxx guifg=#dddddd guibg=#111111 font=Inconsolata Medium 14
Last set from ~/src/vim-holodark/colors/holodark.vim
:verbose can also be used before nmap l or highlight
Normal to find out where the l keymap or the Normal
highlight were last defined. Very useful for debugging! – joeytwiddle
Jul 5 '14 at 22:08
When you get into creating custom mappings, this will save your ass so many times, probably
one of the most useful ones here (IMO)! – SidOfc
Sep 24 '17 at 11:26
Not sure if this counts as dark-corner-ish at all, but I've only just learnt it...
:g/match/y A
will yank (copy) all lines containing "match" into the "a / @a
register. (The capitalization as A makes vim append yankings instead of
replacing the previous register contents.) I used it a lot recently when making Internet
Explorer stylesheets.
Sometimes it's better to do what tsukimi said and just filter out lines that don't match your
pattern. An abbreviated version of that command though: :v/PATTERN/d
Explanation: :v is an abbreviation for :g!, and the
:g command applies any ex command to lines. :y[ank] works and so
does :normal, but here the most natural thing to do is just
:d[elete] . – pandubear
Oct 12 '13 at 8:39
You can also do :g/match/normal "Ayy -- the normal keyword lets you
tell it to run normal-mode commands (which you are probably more familiar with). –
Kimball
Robinson
Feb 5 '16 at 17:58
Hitting <C-f> after : or / (or any time you're in command mode) will bring up the same
history menu. So you can remap q: if you hit it accidentally a lot and still access this
awesome mode. – idbrii
Feb 23 '11 at 19:07
For me it didn't open the source; instead it apparently used elinks to dump rendered page
into a buffer, and then opened that. – Ivan Vučica
Sep 21 '10 at 8:07
@Vdt: It'd be useful if you posted your error. If it's this one: " error (netrw)
neither the wget nor the fetch command is available" you obviously need to make one of those
tools available from your PATH environment variable. – Isaac Remuant
Jun 3 '13 at 15:23
I find this one particularly useful when people send links to a paste service and forgot to
select a syntax highlighting, I generally just have to open the link in vim after appending
"&raw". – Dettorer
Oct 29 '14 at 13:47
I didn't know macros could repeat themselves. Cool. Note: qx starts recording into register x
(he uses qq for register q). 0 moves to the start of the line. dw delets a word. j moves down
a line. @q will run the macro again (defining a loop). But you forgot to end the recording
with a final "q", then actually run the macro by typing @q. – Kimball Robinson
Apr 16 '10 at 0:39
Another way of accomplishing this is to record a macro in register a that does some
transformation to a single line, then linewise highlight a bunch of lines with V and type
:normal! @a to applyyour macro to every line in your selection. –
Nathan Long
Aug 29 '11 at 15:33
I found this post googling recursive VIM macros. I could find no way to stop the macro other
than killing the VIM process. – dotancohen
May 14 '13 at 6:00
Assuming you have Perl and/or Ruby support compiled in, :rubydo and
:perldo will run a Ruby or Perl one-liner on every line in a range (defaults to
entire buffer), with $_ bound to the text of the current line (minus the
newline). Manipulating $_ will change the text of that line.
You can use this to do certain things that are easy to do in a scripting language but not
so obvious using Vim builtins. For example to reverse the order of the words in a line:
:perldo $_ = join ' ', reverse split
To insert a random string of 8 characters (A-Z) at the end of every line:
Sadly not, it just adds a funky control character to the end of the line. You could then use
a Vim search/replace to change all those control characters to real newlines though. –
Brian Carper
Jul 2 '09 at 17:26
Go to older/newer position. When you are moving through the file (by searching, moving
commands etc.) vim rember these "jumps", so you can repeat these jumps backward (^O - O for
old) and forward (^I - just next to I on keyboard). I find it very useful when writing code
and performing a lot of searches.
gi
Go to position where Insert mode was stopped last. I find myself often editing and then
searching for something. To return to editing place press gi.
gf
put cursor on file name (e.g. include header file), press gf and the file is opened
gF
similar to gf but recognizes format "[file name]:[line number]". Pressing gF will open
[file name] and set cursor to [line number].
^P and ^N
Auto complete text while editing (^P - previous match and ^N next match)
^X^L
While editing completes to the same line (useful for programming). You write code and then
you recall that you have the same code somewhere in file. Just press ^X^L and the full line
completed
^X^F
Complete file names. You write "/etc/pass" Hmm. You forgot the file name. Just press ^X^F
and the filename is completed
^Z or :sh
Move temporary to the shell. If you need a quick bashing:
press ^Z (to put vi in background) to return to original shell and press fg to return
to vim back
press :sh to go to sub shell and press ^D/exit to return to vi back
With ^X^F my pet peeve is that filenames include = signs, making it
do rotten things in many occasions (ini files, makefiles etc). I use se
isfname-== to end that nuisance – sehe
Mar 4 '12 at 21:50
This is a nice trick to reopen the current file with a different encoding:
:e ++enc=cp1250 %:p
Useful when you have to work with legacy encodings. The supported encodings are listed in
a table under encoding-values (see helpencoding-values ). Similar thing also works for ++ff, so that you
can reopen file with Windows/Unix line ends if you get it wrong for the first time (see
helpff ).
>, Apr 7, 2009 at 18:43
Never had to use this sort of a thing, but we'll certainly add to my arsenal of tricks...
– Sasha
Apr 7 '09 at 18:43
I have used this today, but I think I didn't need to specify "%:p"; just opening the file and
:e ++enc=cp1250 was enough. I – Ivan Vučica
Jul 8 '09 at 19:29
This is a terrific answer. Not the bit about creating the IP addresses, but the bit that
implies that VIM can use for loops in commands . – dotancohen
Nov 30 '14 at 14:56
No need, usually, to be exactly on the braces. Thought frequently I'd just =} or
vaBaB= because it is less dependent. Also, v}}:!astyle -bj matches
my code style better, but I can get it back into your style with a simple %!astyle
-aj – sehe
Mar 4 '12 at 22:03
I remapped capslock to esc instead, as it's an otherwise useless key. My mapping was OS wide
though, so it has the added benefit of never having to worry about accidentally hitting it.
The only drawback IS ITS HARDER TO YELL AT PEOPLE. :) – Alex
Oct 5 '09 at 5:32
@ojblass: Not sure how many people ever right matlab code in Vim, but ii and
jj are commonly used for counter variables, because i and
j are reserved for complex numbers. – brianmearns
Oct 3 '12 at 12:45
@rlbond - It comes down to how good is the regex engine in the IDE. Vim's regexes are pretty
powerful; others.. not so much sometimes. – romandas
Jun 19 '09 at 16:58
The * will be greedy, so this regex assumes you have just two columns. If you want it to be
nongreedy use {-} instead of * (see :help non-greedy for more information on the {}
multiplier) – Kimball Robinson
Apr 16 '10 at 0:32
Not exactly a dark secret, but I like to put the following mapping into my .vimrc file, so I
can hit "-" (minus) anytime to open the file explorer to show files adjacent to the one I
just edit . In the file explorer, I can hit another "-" to move up one directory,
providing seamless browsing of a complex directory structures (like the ones used by the MVC
frameworks nowadays):
map - :Explore<cr>
These may be also useful for somebody. I like to scroll the screen and advance the cursor
at the same time:
map <c-j> j<c-e>
map <c-k> k<c-y>
Tab navigation - I love tabs and I need to move easily between them:
I suppose it would override autochdir temporarily (until you switched buffers again).
Basically, it changes directory to the root directory of the current file. It gives me a bit
more manual control than autochdir does. – rampion
May 8 '09 at 2:55
:set autochdir //this also serves the same functionality and it changes the current directory
to that of file in buffer – Naga Kiran
Jul 8 '09 at 13:44
I like to use 'sudo bash', and my sysadmin hates this. He locked down 'sudo' so it could only
be used with a handful of commands (ls, chmod, chown, vi, etc), but I was able to use vim to
get a root shell anyway:
bash$ sudo vi +'silent !bash' +q
Password: ******
root#
yeah... I'd hate you too ;) you should only need a root shell VERY RARELY, unless you're
already in the habit of running too many commands as root which means your permissions are
all screwed up. – jnylen
Feb 22 '11 at 15:58
Don't forget you can prepend numbers to perform an action multiple times in Vim. So to expand
the current window height by 8 lines: 8<C-W>+ – joeytwiddle
Jan 29 '12 at 18:12
well, if you haven't done anything else to the file, you can simply type u for undo.
Otherwise, I haven't figured that out yet. – Grant Limberg
Jun 17 '09 at 19:29
Commented out code is probably one of the worst types of comment you could possibly put in
your code. There are better uses for the awesome block insert. – Braden Best
Feb 4 '16 at 16:23
I use vim for just about any text editing I do, so I often times use copy and paste. The
problem is that vim by default will often times distort imported text via paste. The way to
stop this is to use
:set paste
before pasting in your data. This will keep it from messing up.
Note that you will have to issue :set nopaste to recover auto-indentation.
Alternative ways of pasting pre-formatted text are the clipboard registers ( *
and + ), and :r!cat (you will have to end the pasted fragment with
^D).
It is also sometimes helpful to turn on a high contrast color scheme. This can be done
with
:color blue
I've noticed that it does not work on all the versions of vim I use but it does on
most.
The "distortion" is happening because you have some form of automatic indentation enabled.
Using set paste or specifying a key for the pastetoggle option is a
common way to work around this, but the same effect can be achieved with set
mouse=a as then Vim knows that the flood of text it sees is a paste triggered by the
mouse. – jamessan
Dec 28 '09 at 8:27
If you have gvim installed you can often (though it depends on what your options your distro
compiles vim with) use the X clipboard directly from vim through the * register. For example
"*p to paste from the X xlipboard. (It works from terminal vim, too, it's just
that you might need the gvim package if they're separate) – kyrias
Oct 19 '13 at 12:15
Here's something not obvious. If you have a lot of custom plugins / extensions in your $HOME
and you need to work from su / sudo / ... sometimes, then this might be useful.
In your ~/.bashrc:
export VIMINIT=":so $HOME/.vimrc"
In your ~/.vimrc:
if $HOME=='/root'
if $USER=='root'
if isdirectory('/home/your_typical_username')
let rtuser = 'your_typical_username'
elseif isdirectory('/home/your_other_username')
let rtuser = 'your_other_username'
endif
else
let rtuser = $USER
endif
let &runtimepath = substitute(&runtimepath, $HOME, '/home/'.rtuser, 'g')
endif
It will allow your local plugins to load - whatever way you use to change the user.
You might also like to take the *.swp files out of your current path and into ~/vimtmp
(this goes into .vimrc):
if ! isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
call mkdir(expand('~/vimtmp'))
endif
if isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
set directory=~/vimtmp
else
set directory=.,/var/tmp,/tmp
endif
Also, some mappings I use to make editing easier - makes ctrl+s work like escape and
ctrl+h/l switch the tabs:
I prefer never to run vim as root/under sudo - and would just run the command from vim e.g.
:!sudo tee %, :!sudo mv % /etc or even launch a login shell
:!sudo -i – shalomb
Aug 24 '15 at 8:02
Ctrl-n while in insert mode will auto complete whatever word you're typing based on all the
words that are in open buffers. If there is more than one match it will give you a list of
possible words that you can cycle through using ctrl-n and ctrl-p.
Ability to run Vim on a client/server based modes.
For example, suppose you're working on a project with a lot of buffers, tabs and other
info saved on a session file called session.vim.
You can open your session and create a server by issuing the following command:
vim --servername SAMPLESERVER -S session.vim
Note that you can open regular text files if you want to create a server and it doesn't
have to be necessarily a session.
Now, suppose you're in another terminal and need to open another file. If you open it
regularly by issuing:
vim new_file.txt
Your file would be opened in a separate Vim buffer, which is hard to do interactions with
the files on your session. In order to open new_file.txt in a new tab on your server use this
command:
vim --servername SAMPLESERVER --remote-tab-silent new_file.txt
If there's no server running, this file will be opened just like a regular file.
Since providing those flags every time you want to run them is very tedious, you can
create a separate alias for creating client and server.
I placed the followings on my bashrc file:
alias vims='vim --servername SAMPLESERVER'
alias vimc='vim --servername SAMPLESERVER --remote-tab-silent'
HOWTO: Auto-complete Ctags when using Vim in Bash. For anyone else who uses Vim and Ctags,
I've written a small auto-completer function for Bash. Add the following into your
~/.bash_completion file (create it if it does not exist):
Thanks go to stylishpants for his many fixes and improvements.
_vim_ctags() {
local cur prev
COMPREPLY=()
cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"
case "${prev}" in
-t)
# Avoid the complaint message when no tags file exists
if [ ! -r ./tags ]
then
return
fi
# Escape slashes to avoid confusing awk
cur=${cur////\\/}
COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "`awk -vORS=" " "/^${cur}/ { print \\$1 }" tags`" ) )
;;
*)
_filedir_xspec
;;
esac
}
# Files matching this pattern are excluded
excludelist='*.@(o|O|so|SO|so.!(conf)|SO.!(CONF)|a|A|rpm|RPM|deb|DEB|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|mp?(e)g|MP?(E)G|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)'
complete -F _vim_ctags -f -X "${excludelist}" vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview
Once you restart your Bash session (or create a new one) you can type:
Code:
~$ vim -t MyC<tab key>
and it will auto-complete the tag the same way it does for files and directories:
Code:
MyClass MyClassFactory
~$ vim -t MyC
I find it really useful when I'm jumping into a quick bug fix.
Auto reloads the current buffer..especially useful while viewing log files and it almost
serves the functionality of "tail" program in unix from within vim.
Checking for compile errors from within vim. set the makeprg variable depending on the
language let's say for perl
:setlocal makeprg = perl\ -c \ %
For PHP
set makeprg=php\ -l\ %
set errorformat=%m\ in\ %f\ on\ line\ %l
Issuing ":make" runs the associated makeprg and displays the compilation errors/warnings
in quickfix window and can easily navigate to the corresponding line numbers.
:make will run the makefile in the current directory, parse the compiler
output, you can then use :cn and :cp to step through the compiler
errors opening each file and seeking to the line number in question.
I was sure someone would have posted this already, but here goes.
Take any build system you please; make, mvn, ant, whatever. In the root of the project
directory, create a file of the commands you use all the time, like this:
mvn install
mvn clean install
... and so forth
To do a build, put the cursor on the line and type !!sh. I.e. filter that line; write it
to a shell and replace with the results.
The build log replaces the line, ready to scroll, search, whatever.
When you're done viewing the log, type u to undo and you're back to your file of
commands.
Why wouldn't you just set makeprg to the proper tool you use for your build (if
it isn't set already) and then use :make ? :copen will show you the
output of the build as well as allowing you to jump to any warnings/errors. –
jamessan
Dec 28 '09 at 8:29
==========================================================
In normal mode
==========================================================
gf ................ open file under cursor in same window --> see :h path
Ctrl-w f .......... open file under cursor in new window
Ctrl-w q .......... close current window
Ctrl-w 6 .......... open alternate file --> see :h #
gi ................ init insert mode in last insertion position
'0 ................ place the cursor where it was when the file was last edited
Due to the latency and lack of colors (I love color schemes :) I don't like programming on
remote machines in PuTTY .
So I developed this trick to work around this problem. I use it on Windows.
You will need
1x gVim
1x rsync on remote and local machines
1x SSH private key auth to the remote machine so you don't need to type the
password
Configure rsync to make your working directory accessible. I use an SSH tunnel and only
allow connections from the tunnel:
address = 127.0.0.1
hosts allow = 127.0.0.1
port = 40000
use chroot = false
[bledge_ce]
path = /home/xplasil/divine/bledge_ce
read only = false
Then start rsyncd: rsync --daemon --config=rsyncd.conf
Setting up local machine
Install rsync from Cygwin. Start Pageant and load your private key for the remote machine.
If you're using SSH tunelling, start PuTTY to create the tunnel. Create a batch file push.bat
in your working directory which will upload changed files to the remote machine using
rsync:
SConstruct is a build file for scons. Modify the list of files to suit your needs. Replace
localhost with the name of remote machine if you don't use SSH tunelling.
Configuring Vim That is now easy. We will use the quickfix feature (:make and error list),
but the compilation will run on the remote machine. So we need to set makeprg:
This will first start the push.bat task to upload the files and then execute the commands
on remote machine using SSH ( Plink from the PuTTY
suite). The command first changes directory to the working dir and then starts build (I use
scons).
The results of build will show conviniently in your local gVim errors list.
I use Vim for everything. When I'm editing an e-mail message, I use:
gqap (or gwap )
extensively to easily and correctly reformat on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, even with
quote leadin characters. In order to achieve this functionality, I also add:
-c 'set fo=tcrq' -c 'set tw=76'
to the command to invoke the editor externally. One noteworthy addition would be to add '
a ' to the fo (formatoptions) parameter. This will automatically reformat the paragraph as
you type and navigate the content, but may interfere or cause problems with errant or odd
formatting contained in the message.
autocmd FileType mail set tw=76 fo=tcrq in your ~/.vimrc will also
work, if you can't edit the external editor command. – Andrew Ferrier
Jul 14 '14 at 22:22
":e ." does the same thing for your current working directory which will be the same as your
current file's directory if you set autochdir – bpw1621
Feb 19 '11 at 15:13
retab 1. This sets the tab size to one. But it also goes through the code and adds extra
tabs and spaces so that the formatting does not move any of the actual text (ie the text
looks the same after ratab).
% s/^I/ /g: Note the ^I is tthe result of hitting tab. This searches for all tabs and
replaces them with a single space. Since we just did a retab this should not cause the
formatting to change but since putting tabs into a website is hit and miss it is good to
remove them.
% s/^/ /: Replace the beginning of the line with four spaces. Since you cant actually
replace the beginning of the line with anything it inserts four spaces at the beging of the
line (this is needed by SO formatting to make the code stand out).
Note that you can achieve the same thing with cat <file> | awk '{print " "
$line}' . So try :w ! awk '{print " " $line}' | xclip -i . That's
supposed to be four spaces between the "" – Braden Best
Feb 4 '16 at 16:40
When working on a project where the build process is slow I always build in the background
and pipe the output to a file called errors.err (something like make debug 2>&1
| tee errors.err ). This makes it possible for me to continue editing or reviewing the
source code during the build process. When it is ready (using pynotify on GTK to inform me
that it is complete) I can look at the result in vim using quickfix . Start by
issuing :cf[ile] which reads the error file and jumps to the first error. I personally like
to use cwindow to get the build result in a separate window.
A short explanation would be appreciated... I tried it and could be very usefull! You can
even do something like set colorcolumn=+1,+10,+20 :-) – Luc M
Oct 31 '12 at 15:12
colorcolumn allows you to specify columns that are highlighted (it's ideal for
making sure your lines aren't too long). In the original answer, set cc=+1
highlights the column after textwidth . See the documentation for
more information. – mjturner
Aug 19 '15 at 11:16
Yes, but that's like saying yank/paste functions make an editor "a little" more like an IDE.
Those are editor functions. Pretty much everything that goes with the editor that concerns
editing text and that particular area is an editor function. IDE functions would be, for
example, project/files management, connectivity with compiler&linker, error reporting,
building automation tools, debugger ... i.e. the stuff that doesn't actually do nothing with
editing text. Vim has some functions & plugins so he can gravitate a little more towards
being an IDE, but these are not the ones in question. – Rook
May 12 '09 at 21:25
Also, just FYI, vim has an option to set invnumber. That way you don't have to "set nu" and
"set nonu", i.e. remember two functions - you can just toggle. – Rook
May 12 '09 at 21:31
:ls lists all the currently opened buffers. :be opens a file in a
new buffer, :bn goes to the next buffer, :bp to the previous,
:b filename opens buffer filename (it auto-completes too). buffers are distinct
from tabs, which i'm told are more analogous to views. – Nona Urbiz
Dec 20 '10 at 8:25
In insert mode, ctrl + x, ctrl + p will complete
(with menu of possible completions if that's how you like it) the current long identifier
that you are typing.
if (SomeCall(LONG_ID_ <-- type c-x c-p here
[LONG_ID_I_CANT_POSSIBLY_REMEMBER]
LONG_ID_BUT_I_NEW_IT_WASNT_THIS_ONE
LONG_ID_GOSH_FORGOT_THIS
LONG_ID_ETC
∶
Neither of the following is really diehard, but I find it extremely useful.
Trivial bindings, but I just can't live without. It enables hjkl-style movement in insert
mode (using the ctrl key). In normal mode: ctrl-k/j scrolls half a screen up/down and
ctrl-l/h goes to the next/previous buffer. The µ and ù mappings are especially
for an AZERTY-keyboard and go to the next/previous make error.
A small function I wrote to highlight functions, globals, macro's, structs and typedefs.
(Might be slow on very large files). Each type gets different highlighting (see ":help
group-name" to get an idea of your current colortheme's settings) Usage: save the file with
ww (default "\ww"). You need ctags for this.
nmap <Leader>ww :call SaveCtagsHighlight()<CR>
"Based on: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/736701/class-function-names-highlighting-in-vim
function SaveCtagsHighlight()
write
let extension = expand("%:e")
if extension!="c" && extension!="cpp" && extension!="h" && extension!="hpp"
return
endif
silent !ctags --fields=+KS *
redraw!
let list = taglist('.*')
for item in list
let kind = item.kind
if kind == 'member'
let kw = 'Identifier'
elseif kind == 'function'
let kw = 'Function'
elseif kind == 'macro'
let kw = 'Macro'
elseif kind == 'struct'
let kw = 'Structure'
elseif kind == 'typedef'
let kw = 'Typedef'
else
continue
endif
let name = item.name
if name != 'operator=' && name != 'operator ='
exec 'syntax keyword '.kw.' '.name
endif
endfor
echo expand("%")." written, tags updated"
endfunction
I have the habit of writing lots of code and functions and I don't like to write
prototypes for them. So I made some function to generate a list of prototypes within a
C-style sourcefile. It comes in two flavors: one that removes the formal parameter's name and
one that preserves it. I just refresh the entire list every time I need to update the
prototypes. It avoids having out of sync prototypes and function definitions. Also needs
ctags.
"Usage: in normal mode, where you want the prototypes to be pasted:
":call GenerateProptotypes()
function GeneratePrototypes()
execute "silent !ctags --fields=+KS ".expand("%")
redraw!
let list = taglist('.*')
let line = line(".")
for item in list
if item.kind == "function" && item.name != "main"
let name = item.name
let retType = item.cmd
let retType = substitute( retType, '^/\^\s*','','' )
let retType = substitute( retType, '\s*'.name.'.*', '', '' )
if has_key( item, 'signature' )
let sig = item.signature
let sig = substitute( sig, '\s*\w\+\s*,', ',', 'g')
let sig = substitute( sig, '\s*\w\+\(\s)\)', '\1', '' )
else
let sig = '()'
endif
let proto = retType . "\t" . name . sig . ';'
call append( line, proto )
let line = line + 1
endif
endfor
endfunction
function GeneratePrototypesFullSignature()
"execute "silent !ctags --fields=+KS ".expand("%")
let dir = expand("%:p:h");
execute "silent !ctags --fields=+KSi --extra=+q".dir."/* "
redraw!
let list = taglist('.*')
let line = line(".")
for item in list
if item.kind == "function" && item.name != "main"
let name = item.name
let retType = item.cmd
let retType = substitute( retType, '^/\^\s*','','' )
let retType = substitute( retType, '\s*'.name.'.*', '', '' )
if has_key( item, 'signature' )
let sig = item.signature
else
let sig = '(void)'
endif
let proto = retType . "\t" . name . sig . ';'
call append( line, proto )
let line = line + 1
endif
endfor
endfunction
" Pasting in normal mode should append to the right of cursor
nmap <C-V> a<C-V><ESC>
" Saving
imap <C-S> <C-o>:up<CR>
nmap <C-S> :up<CR>
" Insert mode control delete
imap <C-Backspace> <C-W>
imap <C-Delete> <C-O>dw
nmap <Leader>o o<ESC>k
nmap <Leader>O O<ESC>j
" tired of my typo
nmap :W :w
I rather often find it useful to on-the-fly define some key mapping just like one would
define a macro. The twist here is, that the mapping is recursive and is executed
until it fails.
I am completely aware of all the downsides - it just so happens that I found it rather
useful in some occasions. Also it can be interesting to watch it at work ;).
Macros are also allowed to be recursive and work in pretty much the same fashion when they
are, so it's not particularly necessary to use a mapping for this. – 00dani
Aug 2 '13 at 11:25
"... The .vimrc settings should be heavily commented ..."
"... Look also at perl-support.vim (a Perl IDE for Vim/gVim). Comes with suggestions for customizing Vim (.vimrc), gVim (.gvimrc), ctags, perltidy, and Devel:SmallProf beside many other things. ..."
"... Perl Best Practices has an appendix on Editor Configurations . vim is the first editor listed. ..."
"... Andy Lester and others maintain the official Perl, Perl 6 and Pod support files for Vim on Github: https://github.com/vim-perl/vim-perl ..."
There are a lot of threads pertaining to how to configure Vim/GVim for Perl
development on PerlMonks.org .
My purpose in posting this question is to try to create, as much as possible, an ideal configuration for Perl development using
Vim/GVim. Please post your suggestions for .vimrc settings as well as useful plugins.
I will try to merge the recommendations into a set of .vimrc settings and to a list of recommended plugins, ftplugins
and syntax files.
.vimrc settings
"Create a command :Tidy to invoke perltidy"
"By default it operates on the whole file, but you can give it a"
"range or visual range as well if you know what you're doing."
command -range=% -nargs=* Tidy <line1>,<line2>!
\perltidy -your -preferred -default -options <args>
vmap <tab> >gv "make tab in v mode indent code"
vmap <s-tab> <gv
nmap <tab> I<tab><esc> "make tab in normal mode indent code"
nmap <s-tab> ^i<bs><esc>
let perl_include_pod = 1 "include pod.vim syntax file with perl.vim"
let perl_extended_vars = 1 "highlight complex expressions such as @{[$x, $y]}"
let perl_sync_dist = 250 "use more context for highlighting"
set nocompatible "Use Vim defaults"
set backspace=2 "Allow backspacing over everything in insert mode"
set autoindent "Always set auto-indenting on"
set expandtab "Insert spaces instead of tabs in insert mode. Use spaces for indents"
set tabstop=4 "Number of spaces that a <Tab> in the file counts for"
set shiftwidth=4 "Number of spaces to use for each step of (auto)indent"
set showmatch "When a bracket is inserted, briefly jump to the matching one"
@Manni: You are welcome. I have been using the same .vimrc for many years and a recent bunch of vim related questions
got me curious. I was too lazy to wade through everything that was posted on PerlMonks (and see what was current etc.), so I figured
we could put together something here. – Sinan Ünür
Oct 15 '09 at 20:02
Rather than closepairs, I would recommend delimitMate or one of the various autoclose plugins. (There are about three named autoclose,
I think.) The closepairs plugin can't handle a single apostrophe inside a string (i.e. print "This isn't so hard, is it?"
), but delimitMate and others can. github.com/Raimondi/delimitMate
– Telemachus
Jul 8 '10 at 0:40
Three hours later: turns out that the 'p' in that mapping is a really bad idea. It will bite you when vim's got something to paste.
– innaM
Oct 21 '09 at 13:22
@Manni: I just gave it a try: if you type, pt, vim waits for you to type something else (e.g. <cr>) as a signal that
the command is ended. Hitting, ptv will immediately format the region. So I would expect that vim recognizes that
there is overlap between the mappings, and waits for disambiguation before proceeding. –
Ether
Oct 21 '09 at 19:44
" Create a command :Tidy to invoke perltidy.
" By default it operates on the whole file, but you can give it a
" range or visual range as well if you know what you're doing.
command -range=% -nargs=* Tidy <line1>,<line2>!
\perltidy -your -preferred -default -options <args>
Look also at perl-support.vim (a Perl
IDE for Vim/gVim). Comes with suggestions for customizing Vim (.vimrc), gVim (.gvimrc), ctags, perltidy, and Devel:SmallProf beside
many other things.
I hate the fact that \$ is changed automatically to a "my $" declaration (same with \@ and \%). Does the author never use references
or what?! – sundar
Mar 11 '10 at 20:54
" Allow :make to run 'perl -c' on the current buffer, jumping to
" errors as appropriate
" My copy of vimparse: http://irc.peeron.com/~zigdon/misc/vimparse.pl
set makeprg=$HOME/bin/vimparse.pl\ -c\ %\ $*
" point at wherever you keep the output of pltags.pl, allowing use of ^-]
" to jump to function definitions.
set tags+=/path/to/tags
@sinan it enables quickfix - all it does is reformat the output of perl -c so that vim parses it as compiler errors. The the usual
quickfix commands work. – zigdon
Oct 16 '09 at 18:51
Here's an interesting module I found on the weekend:
App::EditorTools::Vim
. Its most interesting feature seems to be its ability to rename lexical variables. Unfortunately, my tests revealed that it doesn't
seem to be ready yet for any production use, but it sure seems worth to keep an eye on.
Here are a couple of my .vimrc settings. They may not be Perl specific, but I couldn't work without them:
set nocompatible " Use Vim defaults (much better!) "
set bs=2 " Allow backspacing over everything in insert mode "
set ai " Always set auto-indenting on "
set showmatch " show matching brackets "
" for quick scripts, just open a new buffer and type '_perls' "
iab _perls #!/usr/bin/perl<CR><BS><CR>use strict;<CR>use warnings;<CR>
The first one I know I picked up part of it from someone else, but I can't remember who. Sorry unknown person. Here's how I
made "C^N" auto complete work with Perl. Here's my .vimrc commands.
" to use CTRL+N with modules for autocomplete "
set iskeyword+=:
set complete+=k~/.vim_extras/installed_modules.dat
Then I set up a cron to create the installed_modules.dat file. Mine is for my mandriva system. Adjust accordingly.
locate *.pm | grep "perl5" | sed -e "s/\/usr\/lib\/perl5\///" | sed -e "s/5.8.8\///" | sed -e "s/5.8.7\///" | sed -e "s/vendor_perl\///" | sed -e "s/site_perl\///" | sed -e "s/x86_64-linux\///" | sed -e "s/\//::/g" | sed -e "s/\.pm//" >/home/jeremy/.vim_extras/installed_modules.dat
The second one allows me to use gf in Perl. Gf is a shortcut to other files. just place your cursor over the file and type
gf and it will open that file.
" To use gf with perl "
set path+=$PWD/**,
set path +=/usr/lib/perl5/*,
set path+=/CompanyCode/*, " directory containing work code "
autocmd BufRead *.p? set include=^use
autocmd BufRead *.pl set includeexpr=substitute(v:fname,'\\(.*\\)','\\1.pm','i')
I can't believe you want to turn recording off! I would show a really annoying popup 'Are you
sure?' if one asks to turn it off (or probably would like to give options like the Windows 10
update gives). – 0xc0de
Aug 12 '16 at 9:04
As seen other places, it's q followed by a register. A really cool (and possibly
non-intuitive) part of this is that these are the same registers used by things like
delete, yank, and put. This means that you can yank text from the editor into a register,
then execute it as a command. – Cascabel
Oct 6 '09 at 20:13
One more thing to note is you can hit any number before the @ to replay the recording that
many times like (100@<letter>) will play your actions 100 times – Tolga E
Aug 17 '13 at 3:07
You could add it afterward, by editing the register with put/yank. But I don't know why you'd
want to turn recording on or off as part of a macro. ('q' doesn't affect anything when typed
in insert mode.) – anisoptera
Dec 4 '14 at 9:43
*q* *recording*
q{0-9a-zA-Z"} Record typed characters into register {0-9a-zA-Z"}
(uppercase to append). The 'q' command is disabled
while executing a register, and it doesn't work inside
a mapping. {Vi: no recording}
q Stops recording. (Implementation note: The 'q' that
stops recording is not stored in the register, unless
it was the result of a mapping) {Vi: no recording}
*@*
@{0-9a-z".=*} Execute the contents of register {0-9a-z".=*} [count]
times. Note that register '%' (name of the current
file) and '#' (name of the alternate file) cannot be
used. For "@=" you are prompted to enter an
expression. The result of the expression is then
executed. See also |@:|. {Vi: only named registers}
only answer about "how to turn off" part of the question. Well, it makes recording
inaccessible, effectively turning it off - at least noone expects vi to have a separate
thread for this code, I guess, including me. – n611x007
Oct 4 '15 at 7:16
Actually, it's q{0-9a-zA-Z"} - you can record a macro into any register (named by digit,
letter, "). In case you actually want to use it... you execute the contents of a register
with @<register>. See :help q and :help @ if you're
interested in using it. – Cascabel
Oct 6 '09 at 20:08
Vim provides an incredibly powerful (and flexible) set of commands, which allow a set of
arbitrary commands to be executed against an entire list. In Vim parlance a "list" could be one
of the following: a group of open buffers, tabs, windows, and even Vim's argument list (which
I'll explain near the end of this chapter).
For each list type (buffer list, tab list, window list, argument list) Vim provides a
command which enables us to carry out actions in bulk (i.e., across multiple items). Let's take
a look at each of these commands in turn.
bufdo
windo
tabdo
argdo
bufdo
As we already know, when you open a file in Vim, you're, in fact, actually opening a buffer
that holds a copy of the file you requested. (If you're unsure, I suggest going back and
reading Chapter 3 ).
Every buffer we create in Vim is added into an internal buffer list. This internal list is
what allows Vim to keep track of the current buffer and facilitates commands such as bn and bp
, among others, for navigating back and forth among all open buffers.
If we wanted to execute the same command for each buffer that exists in our buffer list, we
would have to use the :bufdo command
. The flow of how this looks internally is something like the following:
:bf : Vim moves to the first buffer.
:{command} : Vim executes the command specified.
:bn : Vim moves to the next buffer in the list.
:{command} : Vim executes the command specified.
. . . etc. . . .
At this point, if an error occurs, Vim will stop processing the buffers and return the
error. If, on the other hand, Vim manages to process all the buffers, the last one becomes the
current buffer within the viewport.
Simple Example
Now that we have an understanding of what a buffer list is, we can look at how the bufdo
command works. Let's consider a simple example, in which we have a set of buffers already open
within Vim and we've made changes to each of the buffers already.
We want to exit Vim, but as we do, we have to make sure that each buffer is written back to
the relevant file it corresponds to, so we don't lose any of our changes. The following command
demonstrates how to do this:
:bufdo wq
Effectively, we've told Vim to process each buffer (using the bufdo command), and within
each buffer, we want Vim to execute the command wq (meaning we want it to first write the
buffer, then close the buffer).
Note In the preceding example, you can also achieve the same result with :wa ( :h :wa ),
which effectively allows you to write only the buffers that have been changed in some way.
Vim's Visual mode allows us to define a selection of text and then operate upon it. This
should feel pretty intuitive, since it is the model that most editing software follows. But
Vim's take is characteristically different, so we'll start by making sure we grok Visual mode (
Tip
20 ).
Vim has three variants of Visual mode involving working with characters, lines, or
rectangular blocks of text. We'll explore ways of switching between these modes as well as some
useful tricks for modifying the bounds of a selection ( Tip
21 ).
We'll see that the dot command can be used to repeat Visual mode commands, but that it's
especially effective when operating on line-wise regions. When working with character-wise
selections, the dot command can sometimes fall short of our expectations. We'll see that in
these scenarios, operator commands may be preferable.
Visual-Block mode is rather special in that it allows us to operate on rectangular columns
of text. You'll find many uses for this feature, but we'll focus on three tips that demonstrate
some of its capabilities.
Visual mode allows us to select a range of text and then operate upon it. However intuitive
this might seem, Vim's perspective on selecting text is different from other text editors.
Suppose for a minute that we're not working with Vim but instead filling out a text area on
a web page. We've written the word "March," but it should read "April," so using the mouse, we
double-click the word to select it. Having highlighted the word, we could hit the backspace key
to delete it and then type out the correct month as a replacement.
You probably already know that there's no need to hit the backspace key in this example.
With the word "March" selected, we would only have to type the letter "A" and it would replace
the selection, preparing the way so that we could type out the rest of the word "April." It's
not much, but a keystroke saved is a keystroke earned.
If you expect this behavior to carry over to Vim's Visual mode, you're in for a surprise.
The clue is right there in the name: Visual mode is just another mode, which means that each
key performs a different function.
Many of the commands that you are familiar with from Normal mode work just the same in
Visual mode. We can still use h , j , k , and l as cursor keys. We can use f{char} to jump to a
character on the current line and then repeat or reverse the jump with the ; and , commands,
respectively. We can even use the search command (and n / N ) to jump to pattern matches. Each
time we move our cursor in Visual mode, we change the bounds of the selection.
Some Visual mode commands perform the same basic function as in Normal mode but with a
slight twist. For example, the c command is consistent in both modes in that it deletes the
specified text and then switches to Insert mode. The difference is in how we specify the range
on which to act. From Normal mode, we trigger the change command first and then specify the
range as a motion. This, if you'll remember from Tip 12 , is
called an operator command. Whereas in Visual mode, we start off by making the selection and
then trigger the change command. This inversion of control can be generalized for all operator
commands (see Table 2,
Vim's Operator Commands
). For most people, the Visual mode approach feels more intuitive.
Let's revisit the simple example where we wanted to change the word "March" to "April." This
time, suppose that we have left the confines of the text area on a web page and we're
comfortably back inside Vim. We place our cursor somewhere on the word "March" and run viw to
visually select the word. Now, we can't just type the word "April" because that would trigger
the A command and append the text "pril"! Instead, we'll use the c command to change the
selection, deleting the word and dropping us into Insert mode, where we can type out the word
"April" in full. This pattern of usage is similar to our original example, except that we use
the c key instead of backspace.
Meet Select Mode
In a typical text editing environment, selected text is deleted when we type any printable
character. Vim's Visual mode doesn't follow this convention -- but Select mode does. According
to Vim's built-in documentation, it "resembles the selection mode in Microsoft Windows" (see
Select-mode ⓘ ). Printable characters
cause the selection to be deleted, Vim enters Insert mode, and the typed character is
inserted.
We can toggle between Visual and Select modes by pressing <C-g> . The only visible
difference is the message at the bottom of screen, which switches between -- VISUAL -- and --
SELECT -- . But if we type any printable character in Select mode, it will replace the
selection and switch to Insert mode. Of course, from Visual mode you could just as well use the
c key to change the selection.
If you are happy to embrace the modal nature of Vim, then you should find little use for
Select mode, which holds the hand of users who want to make Vim behave more like other text
editors. I can think of only one place where I consistently use Select mode: when using a
plugin that emulates TextMate's snippet functionality, Select mode highlights the active
placeholder.
I have been using vim for quite some time and am aware that selecting blocks of text in
visual mode is as simple as SHIFT + V and moving the arrow key up or
down line-by-line until I reach the end of the block of text that I want selected.
My question is - is there a faster way in visual mode to select a block of text for
example by SHIFT + V followed by specifying the line number in which I
want the selection to stop? (via :35 for example, where 35 is the line number I
want to select up to - this obviously does not work so my question is to find how if
something similar to this can be done...)
+1 Good question as I have found myself doing something like this often. I am wondering if
perhaps this isn't the place start using using v% or v/pattern or
something else? – user786653
Sep 13 '11 at 19:08
V35G will visually select from current line to line 35, also V10j
or V10k will visually select the next or previous 10 lines – Stephan
Sep 29 '14 at 22:49
for line selecting I use shortcut: nnoremap <Space> V . When in visual
line mode just right-click with mouse to define selection (at least on linux it is so).
Anyway, more effective than with keyboard only. – Mikhail V
Mar 27 '15 at 16:52
In addition to what others have said, you can also expand your selection using pattern
searches.
For example, v/foo will select from your current position to the next instance
of "foo." If you actually wanted to expand to the next instance of "foo," on line
35, for example, just press n to expand selection to the next instance, and so
on.
update
I don't often do it, but I know that some people use marks extensively to make visual
selections. For example, if I'm on line 5 and I want to select to line 35, I might press
ma to place mark a on line 5, then :35 to move to line 35.
Shift + v to enter linewise visual mode, and finally `a to
select back to mark a .
@DanielPark To select the current word, use viw . If
you want to select the current contiguous non-whitespace, use viShift + w . The difference would be when the caret is here
MyCla|ss.Method , the first combo would select MyClass and second
would select the whole thing. – Jay
Oct 31 '13 at 0:18
G Goto line [count], default last line, on the first
non-blank character linewise. If 'startofline' not
set, keep the same column.
G is a one of jump-motions.
Vim is a language. To really understand Vim, you have to know the language. Many commands are
verbs, and vim also has objects and prepositions.
V100G
V100gg
This means "select the current line up to and including line 100."
Text objects are where a lot of the power is at. They introduce more objects with
prepositions.
Vap
This means "select around the current paragraph", that is select the current paragraph and
the blank line following it.
V2ap
This means "select around the current paragraph and the next paragraph."
}V-2ap
This means "go to the end of the current paragraph and then visually select it and the
preceding paragraph."
Understanding Vim as a language will help you to get the best mileage out of it.
After you have selecting down, then you can combine with other commands:
Vapd
With the above command, you can select around a paragraph and delete it. Change the
d to a y to copy or to a c to change or to a
p to paste over.
Once you get the hang of how all these commands work together, then you will eventually
not need to visually select anything. Instead of visually selecting and then deleting a
paragraph, you can just delete the paragraph with the dap command.
I've compiled a list of essential Vim commands that I use every day. I then give a
few instructions on how to making Vim as great as it should be, because it's painful without
configuration.
##Cursor movement (Inside command/normal mode)
w - jump by start of words (punctuation considered words)
W - jump by words (spaces separate words)
e - jump to end of words (punctuation considered words)
E - jump to end of words (no punctuation)
b - jump backward by words (punctuation considered words)
B - jump backward by words (no punctuation)
0 - (zero) start of line
^ - first non-blank character of line (same as 0w)
$ - end of line
Advanced (in order of what I find useful)
Ctrl+d - move down half a page
Ctrl+u - move up half a page
} - go forward by paragraph (the next blank line)
{ - go backward by paragraph (the next blank line)
gg - go to the top of the page
G - go the bottom of the page
: [num] [enter] - Go To that line in the document
Searching
f [char] - Move to the next char on the current line after the
cursor
F [char] - Move to the next char on the current line before the
cursor
t [char] - Move to before the next char on the current line after
the cursor
T [char] - Move to before the next char on the current line before
the cursor
All these commands can be followed by ; (semicolon) to go to the
next searched item, and , (comma) to go the the previous searched
item
##Insert/Appending/Editing Text
Results in insert mode
i - start insert mode at cursor
I - insert at the beginning of the line
a - append after the cursor
A - append at the end of the line
o - open (append) blank line below current line (no need to press
return)
O - open blank line above current line
cc - change (replace) an entire line
c [movement command] - change (replace) from the cursor to the move-to
point.
ex. ce changes from the cursor to the end of the cursor word
Esc or Ctrl+[ - exit insert mode
r [char] - replace a single character with the specified char (does not use
insert mode)
d - delete
d - [movement command] deletes from the cursor to the move-to
point.
ex. de deletes from the cursor to the end of the current word
dd - delete the current line
Advanced
J - join line below to the current one
##Marking text (visual mode)
v - starts visual mode
From here you can move around as in normal mode (hjkl, etc.) and can then do a
command (such as y , d , or c )
V - starts linewise visual mode
Ctrl+v - start visual block mode
Esc or Ctrl+[ - exit visual mode
Advanced
O - move to Other corner of block
o - move to other end of marked area
##Visual commands Type any of these while some text is selected to apply the action
y - yank (copy) marked text
d - delete marked text
c - delete the marked text and go into insert mode (like c does above)
##Cut and Paste
yy - yank (copy) a line
p - put (paste) the clipboard after cursor
P - put (paste) before cursor
dd - delete (cut) a line
x - delete (cut) current character
X - delete previous character (like backspace)
##Exiting
:w - write (save) the file, but don't exit
:wq - write (save) and quit
:q - quit (fails if anything has changed)
:q! - quit and throw away changes
##Search/Replace
/pattern - search for pattern
?pattern - search backward for pattern
n - repeat search in same direction
N - repeat search in opposite direction
:%s/old/new/g - replace all old with new throughout file ( gn is better though)
:%s/old/new/gc - replace all old with new throughout file with
confirmations
##Working with multiple files
:e filename - Edit a file
:tabe - Make a new tab
gt - Go to the next tab
gT - Go to the previous tab
Advanced
:vsp - vertically split windows
ctrl+ws - Split windows horizontally
ctrl+wv - Split windows vertically
ctrl+ww - switch between windows
ctrl+wq - Quit a window
##Marks Marks allow you to jump to designated points in your code.
m{a-z} - Set mark {a-z} at cursor position
A capital mark {A-Z} sets a global mark and will work between files
'{a-z} - move the cursor to the start of the line where the mark was
set
'' - go back to the previous jump location
##General
u - undo
Ctrl+r - redo
. - repeat last command
#Making Vim actually useful Vim is quite unpleasant out of the box. For example, typeing
:w for every file save is awkward and copying and pasting to the system clipboard
does not work. But a few changes will get you much closer to the editor of your dreams.
##.vimrc
My
.vimrc file has some pretty great ideas I haven't seen elsewhere.
This is a minimal vimrc that focuses on three priorities:
adding options that are strictly better (like more information showing in
autocomplete)
more convenient keystrokes (like [space]w for write, instead of :w
[enter] )
a similar workflow to normal text editors (like enabling the mouse)
Installation
Copy this to your home directory and restart Vim. Read through it to see what you can now
do (like [space]w to save a file)
Mac users - making a hidden normal file is suprisingly tricky. Here's one way:
in the command line, go to the home directory
type nano .vimrc
paste in the contents of the .vimrc file
ctrl+x , y , [enter] to save
You should now be able to press [space]w in normal mode to save a file.
[space]p should paste from the system clipboard (outside of Vim).
If you can't paste, it's probably because Vim was not built with the system clipboard
option. To check, run vim --version and see if +clipboard
exists. If it says -clipboard , you will not be able to copy from outside of
Vim.
For Mac users, homebrew install Vim with the clipboard option. Install homebrew and
then run brew install vim .
then move the old Vim binary: $ mv /usr/bin/vim /usr/bin/vimold
restart your terminal and you should see vim --version now with
+clipboard
##Plugins
The easiest way to make Vim more powerful is to use Vintageous in Sublime Text (version
3). This gives you Vim mode inside sublime. I suggest this (or a similar setup with the Atom
editor) if you aren't a Vim master. Check out Advanced Vim if you are.
Vintageous is great, but I suggest you change a few settings to make it better.
Clone this
repository to ~/.config/sublime-text-3/Packages/Vintageous , or similar.
Then check out the "custom" branch.
Alternatively, you can get a more updated Vintageous version by cloning
the official
repository and then copying over
this patch .
Change the user settings ( User/Preferences.sublime-settings ) to
include:
"caret_style": "solid"
This will make the cursor not blink, like in Vim.
Sublime Text might freeze when you do this. It's a bug; just restart Sublime Text
after changing the file.
ctrl+r in Vim means "redo". But there is a handy Ctrl + R shortcut in
Sublime Text that gives an "outline" of a file. I remapped it to alt+r by putting this
in the User keymap
Mac users: you will not have the ability to hold down a navigation key (like holding
j to go down). To fix this, run the commands specified here: https://gist.github.com/kconragan/2510186
Now you should be able to restart sublime and have a great vim environment! Sweet
Dude.
##Switch Caps Lock and Escape
I highly recommend you switch the mapping of your caps lock and escape keys. You'll love
it, promise! Switching the two keys is platform dependent; Google should get you the
answer
##Other I don't personally use these yet, but I've heard other people do!
:wqa - Write and quit all open tabs (thanks Brian Zick)
ZZ Exit, saving changes t<x> Up to <x> forward
Q Enter ex mode T<x> Back up to <x>
<ESC> End of insert <x>| Go to column <x>
:<cmd> Execute ex command w,W Forward one word
:!<cmd> Shell command b,B Back one word
^g Show filename/size e,E End of word
^f Forward one screen ^h Erase last character
^b Back one screen ^w Erase last word
^d Forward half screen ^? Interrupt
^u Backward half screen ~ Toggle character case
<x>G Go to line <x> a Append after
/<x> Search forward for <x> i,I Insert before
?<x> Search backward for <x> A Append at end of line
n Repeat last search o Open line below
N Reverse last search O Open line above
]] Next section/function r Replace character
[[ Previous section/function R Replace characters
% Find matching () { or } d Delete
^l Redraw screen dd Delete line
^r Refresh screen c Change
z<CR> Current line at top y Yank lines to buffer
z- Current line at bottom C Change rest of line
^e Scroll down one line D Delete rest of line
^y Scroll up one line s Substitute character
`` Previous context S Substitute lines
H Home window line J Join lines
L Last window line x Delete after
M Middle window line X Delete before
+ Next line Y Yank current line
hjkl Cursor movement: p Put back lines
left/down/up/right P Put before
0 Beginning of line << Shift line left
$ End of line >> Shift line right
f<x> Find <x> forward u Undo last change
F<x> Find <x> backward U Restore current line
Ex mode commands:
q Quit set <x> Enable option
q! Quit, discard changes set no<v> Disable option
r <f> Read in file <f> set all Show all options
sh Invoke shell
vi Vi mode
wq Write and quit
w <f> Write file <f>
w! <f> Overwrite file <f>
Options:
autoindent Automatic line indentation
autowrite Write before quit
ignorecase Ignore case in searches
number Display line numbers
showmatch Show matches to ) and } as typed
terse Quiet mode
wrapscan Wraparound in searches
wrapmargin Automatic line splitting
The book "Unix in a Nutshell" discusses about accessing multiple files on pages 572-573.
There seem to be very useful commands such as ":e", ":e #", ":e new_file", ":n files",
":args", ":prev" and ":n!". The commands confuse me:
":n Edit next file in the list of files."
":args Display list of files to be edited."
":prev Edit previous file in the list of files."
I cannot see no real list when I do ":args". There is only a small text at the corner. I
would like to see all files that I accessed with ":e", ie a list of files in the buffer.
Where can I see the list when I do the command ":n files"? What are the commands ":prev"
and ":n" supposed to do? I got the error message:
Regarding the last part: If you have only one buffer open, then you cannot toggle through
them ('cause there is only one open). – Rook
Apr 19 '09 at 3:25
Is the notation of buffer the same as in Emacs? Interestingly, the book defines buffer only
for Emacs :( It states "When you open a file in Emacs, the file is put into a Buffer. -- The
view of the buffer contents that you have at any point in time is called a window." Are the
buffers and windows different to the things in Vim? – Léo
Léopold Hertz 준영
Apr 19 '09 at 3:57
Yes, you could say that. There are some differences in types of available buffers, but in
principle, that's it. I'm not sure about emacs, he has windows/frames .., while vim has
windows/tabs. Regarding vim: a window is only y method of showing what vim has in a buffer. A
tab is a method of showing several windows on screen (tabs in vim have only recently been
introduced). – Rook
Apr 19 '09 at 11:08
In addition to what Jonathan Leffler said, if you don't invoke Vim with multiple files from
the commandline, you can set Vim's argument list after Vim is open via:
:args *.c
Note that the argument list is different from the list of open buffers you get from
:ls . Even if you close all open buffers in Vim, the argument list stays the
same. :n and :prev may open a brand new buffer in Vim (if a buffer
for that file isn't already open), or may take you to an existing buffer.
Similarly you can open multiple buffers in Vim without affecting the argument list (or
even if the arg list is empty). :e opens a new buffer but doesn't necessarily
affect the argument list. The list of open buffers and the argument list are independent. If
you want to iterate through the list of open buffers rather than iterate through the argument
list, use :bn and :bp and friends.
The :n :p :ar :rew :last operate on the command line argument list.
E.g.
> touch aaa.txt bbb.txt ccc.txt
> gvim *.txt
vim opens in aaa.txt
:ar gives a status line
[aaa.txt] bbb.txt ccc.txt
:n moves to bbb.txt
:ar gives the status line
aaa.txt [bbb.txt] ccc.txt
:rew rewinds us back to the start of the command line arg list to aaa.txt
:last sends us to ccc.txt
:e ddd.txt edits a new file ddd.txt
:ar gives the status line
aaa.txt bbb.txt [ccc.txt]
So the command set only operates on the initial command line argument list.
,
To clarify, Vim has the argument list, the buffer list, windows, and tab pages. The argument
list is the list of files you invoked vim with (e.g. vim file1 file2); the :n and :p commands
work with this. The buffer list is the list of in-memory copies of the files you are editing,
just like emacs. Note that all the files loaded at start (in the argument list) are also in
the buffer list. Try :help buffer-list for more information on both.
Windows are viewports for buffers. Think of windows as "desks" on which you can put
buffers to work on them. Windows can be empty or be displaying buffers that can also be
displayed in other windows, which you can use for example to look at two different areas of
the same buffer at the same time. Try :help windows for more info.
Tabs are collections of windows. For example, you can have one tab with one window, and
another tab with two windows vertically split. Try :help tabpage for more info
This tip shows how to apply a command multiple times using
:argdo
(all files in argument list), or
:bufdo
(all buffers), or
:tabdo
(all tabs), or
:windo
(all windows in the
current tab). See
search and replace in multiple buffers
for the common requirement to perform a substitute multiple times.
You may want to perform the same operation on each buffer. For example, you may have
recorded a macro
to register
a
and want
to apply the macro to each buffer. You could do that by entering:
:bufdo execute "normal! @a" | w
The
w
will write each buffer to disk (whether the buffer was changed or not). To only write if
changed, use:
:bufdo execute "normal! @a" | update
An alternative is to set the
'autowrite'
option so changed buffers are automatically saved when
switching to another buffer:
:set autowrite
:bufdo normal! @a
Yet another alternative is to set the
'hidden'
option so buffers do not need to be saved, then use
:wa
to save all changes (only changed buffers are written):
:set hidden
:bufdo normal! @a
:wa
TO DO
Refactor following.
The command to do normal commands from the command-line is "normal" and I wanted to run the macro recorded in
register
a
, so that explains the "normal @a".
I also wanted to do this over multiple buffers, which explains the "bufdo".
However, I also wanted to make the changes and then save the file so it moved happily onto the next buffer and
everything was saved. This required the use of the | w. Initially I tried:
:bufdo normal @a | w
but that didn't work as the "| w" part was interpreted as a normal command, so that's where the exe command
comes from.
The commands bufdo, windo and tabdo are great for operating on all buffers or windows or tabs. However, the
commands finish in a different place from where you started.
These versions (Bufdo, Windo and Tabdo) restore the current window or buffer or tab, when the command is
finished.
For example, to turn on line numbers everywhere, I use
:Windo set nu
. Using
:windo set nu
does the same, but the cursor finishes in a different window.
" Like windo but restore the current window.
function! WinDo(command)
let currwin=winnr()
execute 'windo ' . a:command
execute currwin . 'wincmd w'
endfunction
com! -nargs=+ -complete=command Windo call WinDo(<q-args>)
" Like bufdo but restore the current buffer.
function! BufDo(command)
let currBuff=bufnr("%")
execute 'bufdo ' . a:command
execute 'buffer ' . currBuff
endfunction
com! -nargs=+ -complete=command Bufdo call BufDo(<q-args>)
" Like tabdo but restore the current tab.
function! TabDo(command)
let currTab=tabpagenr()
execute 'tabdo ' . a:command
execute 'tabn ' . currTab
endfunction
com! -nargs=+ -complete=command Tabdo call TabDo(<q-args>)
If you care about the alternate window or buffer as well, you can save these along with the current window or
buffer:
" Like windo but restore the current window.
function! WinDo(command)
let currwin=winnr()
let curaltwin=winnr('#')
execute 'windo ' . a:command
" restore previous/alt window
execute curaltwin . 'wincmd w'
" restore current window
execute currwin . 'wincmd w'
endfunction
com! -nargs=+ -complete=command Windo call WinDo(<q-args>)
Tips 1160 and 1161 have some interesting code (although I would never use it). Tip 1160 mentions 'autowrite',
and can be used as a 'see also' here. Although perhaps my new examples are sufficient?
Tip 1161 has a WinDo command. Perhaps move anything useful from there to here (or perhaps move all the "Xdo and
restore" from here to there?).
Need to explain argdo somewhere, and need a little more on windo and tabdo. Should start this tip with
something that does not use 'normal' (which requires the tricky execute when using bar).
If you're like me and don't keep your buffer list very tidy, or just work on multiple things at once in a
single Vim, bufdo is rarely useful. If you want to act on a bunch of files, too many to readily open a new tab
with a window for each of them, then windo is not very useful either. argdo shines for quickly doing a command
on a large batch of files when you're already using Vim with a bunch of buffers unrelated to the task. For
example, I recently had to:
cd /doc/directory/of/unnamed/tool
args *.html
argdo 0put ='<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html1/DTD/html-trad.dtd\">' | w
A tool which will remain unnamed because they ought to know better, distributed their tool with HTML
documentation which is broken partially due to the lack of a doctype causing IE8 to parse it in "quirks mode"
(even though they specifically targeted this browser version for the tool itself). So, I used the above command
to very quickly correct the problem on every html file in their documentation directory in my install location.
Truth be told, in reality I did not use argdo, I instead recorded a macro to do
ggP:wnext<CR>
and just pressed @@ on each file (because I wanted to check for a doctype on each before adding one). But, were
I confident I needed to do this on ALL the files, I would have used argdo as above.
I wanted to put the cursor on the next occurrence of pattern in each buffer, but I found that
:bufdo
normal! n
or other search attempts did not work. I thought I had searched before, but I could not make it
work without the trick above. Any insight?
JohnBeckett
08:15, August 12,
2011 (UTC)
No idea, I would expect this to work. Maybe you've got some autocmd in your .vimrc to restore a search or
something when loading a buffer? I note that search history is in the .viminfo file, but that should only be
loaded on startup.
It seems to work for me, though for some reason the current buffer jumps the cursor to the line containing
the match, but not to the match itself. Probably that's something in my config.
Very strange, I just tried it again and there was no problem. Must have been a blunder or some temporary
config glitch. Thanks. I'm getting converted to argdo, and I'm planning a rewrite featuring argdo, and
mentioning the others.
JohnBeckett
10:37, August 13, 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I almost never used the arglist until I discovered
:args
and
:argl
. Now I use it almost exclusively when doing batch edits. Although, I normally use
:next
and
:wnext
rather than
:argdo
.
Fritzophrenic
15:33, August 15, 2011 (UTC)
The "files" is not strictly correct since it might be just a buffer with no file. However, for simplicity (and
Google searching), using "files" for the title seems best?
JohnBeckett
10:37, August 13,
2011 (UTC)
I'm all for simplicity. But what about making the actual tip say "buffers" and make a redirect with
"files"? I'm not sure how well Google handles that but obviously the wikia search handles it well. That way we
can satisfy both the pedantic and those searching for an answer. --
Fritzophrenic
15:33, August 15, 2011 (UTC)
OK. Tips will be "buffers", and redirects "files". Will do, and will remove these comments.
JohnBeckett
03:52, August
16, 2011 (UTC)
created 2001 · complexity basic · author Yegappan
· version 6.0
Vim provides various commands and options to support editing multiple buffers. This document
covers some of the questions asked about using multiple buffers with Vim. You can get more
detailed information about Vim buffer support using the :help windows.txt command in
Vim. You can also use the help keywords mentioned in this document to read more about a
particular command or option. To read more about a particular command or option use the ":help
<helpkeyword>" command (replace helpkeyword with the command or option name).
Vim buffers are identified using a name and a number. The name of the buffer is the name of
the file associated with that buffer. The buffer number is a unique sequential number assigned
by Vim. This buffer number will not change in a single Vim session.
When you open a file using any of the Vim commands, a buffer is automatically created. For
example, if you use :edit file to edit a file, a new buffer is automatically
created. An empty buffer can be created by entering :new or :vnew
.
How do I add a new buffer for a file to the buffer list without opening the file?
You can add a new buffer for a file without opening it, using the ":badd" command. For
example,
:badd f1.txt
:badd f2.txt
The above commands will add two new buffers for the files f1.txt and f2.txt to the buffer
list.
You can delete a buffer using the ":bdelete" command. You can use either the buffer name or
the buffer number to specify a buffer. For example,
:bdelete f1.txt
:bdelete 4
The above commands will delete the buffer named "f1.txt" and the fourth buffer in the buffer
list. The ":bdelete" command will remove the buffer from the buffer list.
When a buffer is deleted, the buffer becomes an unlisted-buffer and is no longer included in
the buffer list. But the buffer name and other information associated with the buffer is still
remembered. To completely delete the buffer, use the ":bwipeout" command. This command will
remove the buffer completely (i.e. the buffer will not become a unlisted buffer).
You can remove a buffer displayed in a window in several ways:
Close the window or edit another buffer/file in that window.
Use the ":bunload" command. This command will remove the buffer from the window and
unload the buffer contents from memory. The buffer will not be removed from the buffer
list.
How do I edit an existing buffer from the buffer list?
You can edit or jump to a buffer in the buffer list in several ways:
Use the ":buffer" command passing the name of an existing buffer or the buffer number.
Note that buffer name completion can be used here by pressing the <Tab> key.
You can enter the buffer number you want to jump/edit and press the Ctrl-^ key.
Use the ":sbuffer" command passing the name of the buffer or the buffer number. Vim will
split open a new window and open the specified buffer in that window.
You can enter the buffer number you want to jump/edit and press the Ctrl-W ^ or Ctrl-W
Ctrl-^ keys. This will open the specified buffer in a new window.
You can open all the loaded buffers in the buffer list using the ":unhide" or ":sunhide"
commands. Each buffer will be loaded in a separate new window.
You can open the next or a specific modified buffer using the ":bmodified" command. You can
open the next or a specific modified buffer in a new window using the ":sbmodified"
command.
Is there a simpler way for using the buffers under gvim (GUI Vim)?
Yes, use the 'Buffers' menu to list all the buffers. You can select a buffer name to edit
the buffer. You can also delete a buffer or browse the buffer list. Click the dashed line at
the top of the menu to tear it off so you can always see a list of the buffers.
Is it possible to save and restore the buffer list across Vim sessions?
Yes. To save and restore the buffer list across Vim session, include the '%' flag in the
'viminfo' option. Note that if Vim is invoked with a filename argument, then the buffer list
will not be restored from the last session. To use buffer lists across sessions, invoke Vim
without passing filename arguments.
The point is to overwrite the global setting by calling local setting after the 'viminfo'
setting, for example.
set viminfo='1025,f1,%1024
call SetLocalOptions(".")
How do I remove all the entries from the buffer list?
You can remove all the entries in the buffer list by starting Vim with a file argument. You
can also manually remove all the buffers using the ":bdelete" command.
What is a hidden buffer?
A hidden buffer is a buffer with some unsaved modifications and is not displayed in a
window. Hidden buffers are useful, if you want to edit multiple buffers without saving the
modifications made to a buffer while loading other buffers.
How do I load buffers in a window, which currently has a buffer with unsaved
modifications?
By setting the option 'hidden', you can load a buffer in a window that currently has a
modified buffer. Vim will remember your modifications to the buffer. When you quit Vim, you
will be asked to save the modified buffers. It is important to note that, if you have the
'hidden' option set, and you quit Vim forcibly, for example using ":quit!", then you will lose
all your modifications to the hidden buffers.
Is it possible to unload or delete a buffer when it becomes hidden?
By setting the 'bufhidden' option to either 'hide' or 'unload' or 'delete', you can control
what happens to a buffer when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'delete', the
buffer is deleted when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'unload', the buffer is
unloaded when it becomes hidden. When 'bufhidden' is set to 'hide', the buffer is hidden.
When I open an existing buffer from the buffer list, if the buffer is already displayed
in one of the existing windows, I want Vim to jump to that window instead of creating a new
window for this buffer. How do I do this?
When opening a buffer using one of the split open buffer commands (:sbuffer, :sbnext), Vim
will open the specified buffer in a new window. If the buffer is already opened in one of the
existing windows, then you will have two windows containing the same buffer. You can change
this behavior by setting the 'switchbuf' option to 'useopen'. With this setting, if a buffer is
already opened in one of the windows, Vim will jump to that window, instead of creating a new
window.
Every buffer in the buffer list contains information about the last cursor position, marks,
jump list, etc.
What is the difference between deleting a buffer and unloading a buffer?
When a buffer is unloaded, it is not removed from the buffer list. Only the file contents
associated with the buffer are removed from memory. When a buffer is deleted, it is unloaded
and removed from the buffer list. A deleted buffer becomes an 'unlisted' buffer.
Is it possible to configure Vim, by setting some option, to re-use the number of a
deleted buffer for a new buffer?
No. Vim will not re-use the buffer number of a deleted buffer for a new buffer. Vim will
always assign the next sequential number for a new buffer. The buffer number assignment is
implemented this way, so that you can always jump to a buffer using the same buffer number. One
method to achieve buffer number reordering is to restart Vim. If you restart Vim, it will
re-assign numbers sequentially to all the buffers in the buffer list (assuming you have
properly set 'viminfo' to save and restore the buffer list across Vim sessions).
This creates a temporary buffer which is not associated with a file, which does not have an
associated swap file, and which will be hidden when its window is closed. On exit, Vim discards
any text in a scratch buffer without warning.
Also you can use scratch.vim for creating a scratch
buffer.
How do I determine whether a buffer is modified or not?
There are several ways to find out whether a buffer is modified or not. The simplest way is
to look at the status line or the title bar. If the displayed string contains a '+' character,
then the buffer is modified. Another way is to check whether the 'modified' option is set or
not. If 'modified' is set, then the buffer is modified. To check the value of modified, use
:set modified?
You can also explicitly set the 'modified' option to mark the buffer as modified like
this:
How does one execute a command in a new buffer? For example, execute :tj from the function
you're on, in a new buffer window? This is very useful if you don't want to close the buffer
you're on, but want to open a new buffer where the code is located.
You're confusing the terminology. What you're really asking for is not a new
buffer, but a new window. You can get a new window in many ways. See :help opening-window for
the basic commands. In addition, there are many commands (like :tj ) that also
have a duplicate command that automatically splits the window first (like :stj
). -- Fritzophrenic 19:36, September 3, 2010
(UTC)
How can one take all open buffers and merge content into a single Buffer? I will try a small
script to walk through the bufferlist yank'ing the data to a single buffer but if anyone has a
neater way... then thanks in advance. -- Chumbawumba69 06:22, October 5, 2011 (UTC)
(sorry if answered but could not find)
I don't think such an answer would belong in an FAQ, but you can probably accomplish this
using the Bufdo command,
combined with :yank . -- Fritzophrenic 17:39, October 5, 2011
(UTC)
Try uppercase register to keep appending conent like "Ayy and then put "ap. Try also
articles on the wiki about the global command Power_of_g
Regarding the section on "creating" a scratch buffer, do those commands actually
create a buffer, or do they simply transform an existing buffer into a scratch
buffer? (I believe it's the latter.) -- Joe Sewell ( talk ) 19:59, April 8, 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. I edited the section to clarify. JohnBeckett ( talk ) 11:50, April 9, 2014 (UTC)
How do I
open and edit multiple files on a VIM text editor running under Ubuntu Linux / UNIX-like
operating systems to improve my productivity?
Vim offers multiple file editing with the help of windows. You can easily open multiple
files and edit them using the concept of buffers.
Understanding vim buffer
A buffer is nothing but a file loaded into memory for editing. The original file remains
unchanged until you write the buffer to the file using w or other file saving
related commands.
Understanding vim window
A window is noting but a viewport onto a buffer. You can use multiple windows on one buffer,
or several windows on different buffers. By default, Vim starts with one window, for example
open /etc/passwd file, enter: $ vim /etc/passwd
Open two windows using vim at shell promot
Start vim as follows to open two windows stacked, i.e. split horizontally : $ vim -o /etc/passwd /etc/hosts
OR $ vim -o file1.txt resume.txt
Sample outputs:
(Fig.01: split horizontal windows under VIM)
The -O option allows you to open two windows side by side, i.e. split vertically ,
enter: $ vim -O /etc/passwd /etc/hostsHow do I switch or jump between open
windows?
This operation is also known as moving cursor to other windows. You need to use the
following keys:
Press CTRL + W + <Left arrow key> to activate left windows
Press CTRL + W + <Right arrow key> to activate right windows
Press CTRL + W + <Up arrow key> to activate to windows above current one
Press CTRL + W + <Down arrow key> to activate to windows down current one
Press CTRL-W + CTRL-W (hit CTRL+W twice) to move quickly between all open windows
How do I edit current buffer?
Use all your regular vim command such as i, w and so on for editing and saving
text.
How do I close windows?
Press CTRL+W CTRL-Q to close the current windows. You can also press [ESC]+:q to
quit current window.
How do I open new empty window?
Press CTRL+W + n to create a new window and start editing an empty file in
it.
Press [ESC]+:new /path/to/file. This will create a new window and start editing file
/path/to/file in it. For example, open file called /etc/hosts.deny, enter: :new /etc/hosts.deny
Sample outputs:
(Fig.02: Create a new window and start editing file /etc/hosts.deny in it.)
(Fig.03: Two files opened in a two windows)
How do I resize Window?
You can increase or decrease windows size by N number. For example, increase windows size by
5, press [ESC] + 5 + CTRL + W+ + . To decrease windows size by 5, press [ESC]+
5 + CTRL+ W + - .
Moving windows cheat sheet
Key combination
Action
CTRL-W h
move to the window on the left
CTRL-W j
move to the window below
CTRL-W k
move to the window above
CTRL-W l
move to the window on the right
CTRL-W t
move to the TOP window
CTRL-W b
move to the BOTTOM window
How do I quit all windows?
Type the following command (also known as quit all command): :qall
If any of the windows contain changes, Vim will not exit. The cursor will automatically be
positioned in a window with changes. You can then either use ":write" to save the changes: :write
or ":quit!" to throw them away: :quit!
How do save and quit all windows?
To save all changes in all windows and quite , use this command: :wqall
This writes all modified files and quits Vim. Finally, there is a command that quits Vim and
throws away all changes: :qall!
Further readings:
Refer "Splitting windows" help by typing :help under vim itself.
"... Text Editor Pro - powerful text editing tool with syntax highlighting support for
programming languages and scripts, over 100 options for customizing, over 100 ready made skins,
unicode character map, numerical unit convert tool, SQL formatter, and support for multiple
directories and search results ...": http://texteditor.pro/
I was using notepad++. Then I tried PSPad after seeing it here. Found it is much more user friendly,
the settings and highlighter editing are much easier than notpad++. The menus are also quite
nice. I got used to it instantly. So, it's my new favorite piece of software.
I've looked at all the editors mentioned in the comments as well as the article. RJ TextEd
(mentioned in comments) and PSPad are about equal. Each has some features lacking in the other,
but both are better (in my opinion) than Notepad++.
But I was shocked to see that neither the main article, nor the comments, mentioned
SynWrite
This editor stands head and shoulders
above the others, with a full compliment of features. The author is very responsive; new
features get added; bugs get fixed.
Please consider reviewing this editor. Your readers will be glad you did.
"... Komodo Edit is my favorite text web editor. It includes a lot of great features for HTML and CSS development. Additionally, you can get extensions to add language support or other helpful features, like special characters. ..."
"... Komodo doesn't outshine as the best HTML editor, but it's great for for the price, especially if you build in XML where it truly excels. I use Komodo Edit every day for my work in XML, and I use it a lot for basic HTML editing as well. This is one editor I'd be lost without. ..."
There are two versions of Komodo
available - Komodo Edit
and Komodo IDE. Komodo Edit is open source and free to download. It is a trimmed down
counterpart to IDE.
Komodo Edit is my favorite text web editor. It includes a lot of great features for HTML and
CSS development. Additionally, you can get extensions to add language support or other helpful
features, like special characters.
Komodo doesn't outshine as the best HTML editor, but it's great for for the price,
especially if you build in XML where it truly excels. I use Komodo Edit every day for my work in XML, and I
use it a lot for basic HTML editing as well. This is one editor I'd be lost without.
To open multiple files, command would be same as is for a single file; we just add the file
name for second file as well.
$ vi file1 file2 file 3
Now to browse to next file, we can use
$ :n
or we can also use
$ :e filename
Run external commands inside the editor
We can run external Linux/Unix commands from inside the vi editor, i.e. without exiting the
editor. To issue a command from editor, go back to Command Mode if in Insert mode & we use
the BANG i.e. '!' followed by the command that needs to be used. Syntax for running a command
is,
$ :! command
An example for this would be
$ :! df -H
Searching for a pattern
To search for a word or pattern in the text file, we use following two commands in command
mode,
command '/' searches the pattern in forward direction
command '?' searched the pattern in backward direction
Both of these commands are used for same purpose, only difference being the direction they
search in. An example would be,
$ :/ search pattern (If at beginning of the file)
$ :/ search pattern (If at the end of the file)
Searching & replacing a
pattern
We might be required to search & replace a word or a pattern from our text files. So
rather than finding the occurrence of word from whole text file & replace it, we can issue
a command from the command mode to replace the word automatically. Syntax for using search
& replacement is,
$ :s/pattern_to_be_found/New_pattern/g
Suppose we want to find word "alpha" & replace it with word "beta", the command would
be
$ :s/alpha/beta/g
If we want to only replace the first occurrence of word "alpha", then the command would
be
$ :s/alpha/beta/
Using Set commands
We can also customize the behaviour, the and feel of the vi/vim editor by using the set
command. Here is a list of some options that can be use set command to modify the behaviour of
vi/vim editor,
$ :set ic ignores cases while searching
$ :set smartcase enforce case sensitive search
$ :set nu display line number at the begining of the line
$ :set hlsearch highlights the matching words
$ : set ro change the file type to read only
$ : set term prints the terminal type
$ : set ai sets auto-indent
$ :set noai unsets the auto-indent
Some other commands to modify vi editors are,
$ :colorscheme its used to change the color scheme for the editor. (for VIM editor only)
$ :syntax on will turn on the color syntax for .xml, .html files etc. (for VIM editor
only)
This complete our tutorial, do mention your queries/questions or suggestions in the comment
box below.
Posted on Vim will show you
the decimal, octal, and hex index of the character under the cursor if you type ga
in normal mode. Keying this on an ASCII a character yields the following in the
status bar:
<a> 97, Hex 61, Octal 141
This information can be useful, but it's worth it to extend it to include some other
relevant information, including the Unicode point and name of the character, its HTML entity
name (if applicable), and any digraph entry method . This
can be done by installing the characterize plugin by Tim Pope .
With this plugin installed, pressing ga over a yields a bit more
information:
<a> 97, \141, U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
This really shines however when inspecting characters that are available as HTML entities,
or as Vim digraphs, particularly commonly used characters like an EM DASH:
Note that ga shows you all the Unicode information for the character, along
with any methods to type it as a digraph, and an appropriate HTML entity if applicable.
If you work with multibyte characters a lot, whether for internationalization reasons or for
typographical correctness in web pages, this may be very useful to you.
You can tell a lot about a shell user by looking at their prompt. Most shell users
will use whatever the system's default prompt is for their entire career. Under many GNU/Linux
distributions, this prompt includes the username, the hostname, and the current working
directory, along with a $ sigil for regular users, and a # for
root .
tom@sanctum:~$
This format works well for most users, and it's so common that it's often used in tutorials
to represent the user's prompt in lieu of the single-character standard $ and
# . It shows up as the basis for many of the custom prompt setups you'll find
online.
Some users may have made the modest steps of perhaps adding some brackets around the prompt,
or adding the time or date:
[10:11][tom@sanctum:~]$
Still others make the prompt into a grand multi-line report of their shell's state, or
indeed their entire system, full of sound and fury and signifying way too much:
Then there are the BSD users and other minimalist contrarians who can't abide anything more
than a single character cluttering their screens:
$
Getting your prompt to work right isn't simply a cosmetic thing, however. If done right and
in a style consistent with how you work, it can provide valuable feedback on how the system is
reacting to what you're doing with it, and also provide you with visual cues that could save
you a lot of confusion -- or even prevent your making costly mistakes.
I'll be working in Bash. Many of these principles work well for Zsh as well, but Zsh users
might want to read Steve Losh's article on his prompt setup first to
get an idea of the syntactical differences.
Why is this important?
One of the primary differences between terminals and windowed applications is that there
tends to be much less emphasis on showing metadata about the running program and its
environment. For the most part, to get information about what's going on, you need to
request it with calls like pwd , whoami ,
readlink , env , jobs , and echo $? .
The habit of keeping metadata out of the terminal like this unless requested may appeal to a
sense of minimalism, but like a lot of things in the command line world, it's partly the olden
days holding us back. When mainframes and other dinosaurs roamed the earth, terminal screens
were small, and a long or complex prompt amounted to a waste of space and cycles (or even
paper). In our futuristic 64-bit world, where tiny CRTs are a thing of the past and we think
nothing of throwing gigabytes of RAM at a single process, this is much less of a problem.
Customising the prompt doesn't have many "best practices" to it like a lot of things in the
shell; there isn't really a right way to do it. Some users will insist it's valuable to have
the path to the terminal device before every prompt, which I think is crazy as I almost never
need that information, and when I do, I can get it with a call to tty . Others
will suggest that including the working directory makes the length of the prompt too variable
and distracting, whereas I would struggle to work without it. It's worth the effort to design a
prompt that reflects your working style, and includes the information that's consistently
important to you on the system.
So, don't feel like you're wasting time setting up your prompt to get it just right, and
don't be so readily impressed by people with gargantuan prompts in illegible rainbow colors
that they copied off some no-name wiki. If you use Bash a lot, you'll be staring at your prompt
for several hours a day. You may as well spend an hour or two to make it useful, or at least
easier on the eyes.
The basics
The primary Bash prompt is stored in the variable PS1 . Its main function is to
signal to the user that the shell is done with its latest foreground task, and is ready to
accept input. PS1 takes the form of a string that can contain escape
sequences for certain common prompt elements like usernames and hostnames, and which is
evaluated at printing time for escape sequences, variables, and command or function
calls within it.
You can inspect your current prompt definition with echo . If you're using
GNU/Linux, it will probably look similar to this:
tom@sanctum:~$ echo $PS1
\u@\h:\w\$
PS1 works like any other Bash variable; you can assign it a new value, append
to it, and apply substitutions to it. To add the text bash to the start of my
prompt, I could do this:
There are other prompts -- PS2 is used for "continued line" prompts, such as
when you start writing a for loop and continue another part of it on a new line,
or terminate your previous line with a backslash to denote the next line continues on from it.
By default this prompt is often a right angle bracket > :
$ for f in a b c; do
> do echo "$f"
> done
There are a couple more prompt strings which are much more rarely seen. PS3 is
used by the select structure in shell scripts; PS4 is used while
tracing output with set -x . Ramesh Natarajan breaks this down very well in his
article on the Bash prompt . Personally, I only ever modify PS1 , because I
see the other prompts so rarely that the defaults work fine for me.
As PS1 is a property of interactive shells, it makes the most sense to put its
definitions in $HOME/.bashrc on GNU/Linux or BSD systems. It's likely there's
already code in there doing just that. For Mac OS X, you'll likely need to put it into
$HOME/.bash_profile instead.
Escapes
Bash will perform some substitutions for you in the first pass of its evaluation of your
prompt string, replacing escape sequences with appropriate elements of information
that are often useful in prompts. Below are the escape sequences as taken from the Bash
man page:
\a an ASCII bell character (07)
\d the date in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May 26")
\D{format}
the format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into
the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time
representation. The braces are required
\e an ASCII escape character (033)
\h the hostname up to the first `.'
\H the hostname
\j the number of jobs currently managed by the shell
\l the basename of the shell's terminal device name
\n newline
\r carriage return
\s the name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following
the final slash)
\t the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
\T the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
\@ the current time in 12-hour am/pm format
\A the current time in 24-hour HH:MM format
\u the username of the current user
\v the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V the release of bash, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0)
\w the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde
(uses the value of the PROMPT_DIRTRIM variable)
\W the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME
abbreviated with a tilde
\! the history number of this command
\# the command number of this command
\$ if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
\nnn the character corresponding to the octal number nnn
\\ a backslash
\[ begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to
embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt
\] end a sequence of non-printing characters
As an example, the default PS1 definition on many GNU/Linux systems uses four
of these codes:
\u@\h:\w\$
The \! escape sequence, which expands to the history item number of the current
command, is worth a look in particular. Including this in your prompt allows you to quickly
refer to other commands you may have entered in your current session by history number with a
! prefix, without having to actually consult history :
$ PS1="(\!)\$"
(6705)$ echo "test"
test
(6706)$ !6705
echo "test"
test
Keep in mind that you can refer to history commands
relatively rather than by absolute number. The previous command can be referenced by using
!! or !-1 , and the one before that by !-2 , and so on,
provided that you have left the histexpand option on.
Also of particular interest are the delimiters \[ and \] . You can
use these to delimit sections of "non-printing characters", typically things like terminal
control characters to do things like moving the cursor around, starting to print in another
color, or changing properties of the terminal emulator such as the title of the window. Placing
these non-printing characters within these delimiters prevents the terminal from assuming an
actual character has been printed, and hence correctly manages things like the user deleting
characters on the command line.
Colors
There are two schools of thought on the use of color in prompts, very much a matter of
opinion:
Focus should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt, and using color in the
prompt makes it distracting, particularly when output from some programs may also be in
color.
The prompt standing out from actual program output is a good thing, and judicious use of
color conveys useful information rather than being purely decorative.
If you agree more with the first opinion than the second, you can probably just skip to the
next section of this article.
Printing text in color in terminals is done with escape sequences, prefixed with the
\e character as above. Within one escape sequence, the foreground, background, and
any styles for the characters that follow can be set.
For example, to include only your username in red text as your prompt, you might use the
following PS1 definition:
PS1='\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[0m\]'
Broken down, the opening sequence works as follows:
\[ -- Open a series of non-printing characters, in this case, an escape
sequence.
\e -- An ASCII escape character, used to confer special meaning to the
characters that follow it, normally to control the terminal rather than to enter any
characters.
[31m -- Defines a display attribute, corresponding to foreground red, for
the text to follow; opened with a [ character and terminated with an
m .
\] -- Close the series of non-printing characters.
The terminating sequence is very similar, except it uses the 0 display
attribute to reset the text that follows back to the terminal defaults.
The valid display attributes for 16-color terminals are:
Style
0 -- Reset all attributes
1 -- Bright
2 -- Dim
4 -- Underscore
5 -- Blink
7 -- Reverse
8 -- Hidden
Foreground
30 -- Black
31 -- Red
32 -- Green
33 -- Yellow
34 -- Blue
35 -- Magenta
36 -- Cyan
37 -- White
Background
40 -- Black
41 -- Red
42 -- Green
43 -- Yellow
44 -- Blue
45 -- Magenta
46 -- Cyan
47 -- White
Note that blink may not work on a lot of terminals, often by design, as it tends to be
unduly distracting. It'll work on a linux console, though. Also keep in mind that
for a lot of terminal emulators, by default "bright" colors are printed in bold.
More than one of these display attributes can be applied in one hit by separating them with
semicolons. The below will give you underlined white text on a blue background, after first
resetting any existing attributes:
\[\e[0;4;37;44m\]
It's helpful to think of these awkward syntaxes in terms of opening and closing, rather like
HTML tags, so that you open before and then reset after all the attributes of a section of
styled text. This usually amounts to printing \[\e[0m\] after each such
passage.
These sequences are annoying to read and to type, so it helps to put commonly used styles
into variables:
This may be preferable if you use some esoteric terminal types, as it queries the
terminfo or termcap databases to generate the appropriate escapes for
your terminal.
The set of eight colors -- or sixteen, depending on how you look at it -- can be extended to 256
colors in most modern terminal emulators with a little extra setup. The escape sequences
are not very different, but their range is vastly increased to accommodate the larger
palette.
A useful application for prompt color can be a quick visual indication of the privileges
available to the current user. The following code changes the prompt to green text for a normal
user, red for root , and yellow for any other user attained via sudo
:
color_root=$(tput setaf 1)
color_user=$(tput setaf 2)
color_sudo=$(tput setaf 3)
color_reset=$(tput sgr0)
if (( EUID == 0 )); then
PS1="\\[$color_root\\]$PS1\\[$color_reset\\]"
elif [[ $SUDO_USER ]]; then
PS1="\\[$color_sudo\\]$PS1\\[$color_reset\\]"
else
PS1="\\[$color_user\\]$PS1\\[$color_reset\\]"
fi
Otherwise, you could simply use color to make different regions of your prompt more or less
visually prominent.
Variables
Provided the promptvars option is enabled, you can reference Bash variables
like $? to get the return value of the previous command in your prompt string.
Some people find this valuable to show error codes in the prompt when the previous command
given fails:
$ shopt -s promptvars
$ PS1='$? \$'
1 $ echo "test"
test
0 $ fail
-bash: fail: command not found
127 $
The usual environment variables like USER and HOME will work too,
though it's preferable to use the escape sequences above for those particular variables. Note
that it's important to quote the variable references as well, so that they're
evaluated at runtime, and not during the assignment itself.
Commands
If the information you want in your prompt isn't covered by any of the escape codes, you can
include the output of commands in your prompt as well, using command substitution with the syntax
$(command) :
This requires the promptvars option to be set, the same way variables in the
prompt do. Again, note that you need to use single quotes so that the command is run when the
prompt is being formed, and not immediately as part of the assignment.
This can include pipes to format the data with tools like awk or
cut , if you only need a certain part of the output:
Note that as a normal part of command substitution, trailing newlines are stripped from the
output of the command, so here the output of uptime appears on a single line.
A common usage of this pattern is showing metadata about the current directory, particularly
if it happens to be a version control repository or working copy; you can use this syntax with
functions to show the type of version control system, the current branch, and whether any
changes require committing. Working with Git, Mercurial, and Subversion most often, I include
the relevant logic as part of my prompt
function .
When appended to my PS1 string, $(prompt vcs) gives me prompts
that look like the following when I'm in directories running under the appropriate VCS. The
exclamation marks denote that there are uncommitted changes in the repositories.
In general, where this really shines is adding pieces to your prompt conditionally
, to make them collapsible. Certain sections of your prompt therefore only show up if they're
relevant. This snippet, for example, prints the number of jobs running in the background of the
current interactive shell in curly brackets, but only if the count is non-zero:
prompt_jobs() {
local jobc
while read -r _; do
((jobc++))
done < <(jobs -p)
if ((jobc > 0)); then
printf '{%d}' "$jobc"
fi
}
It's important to make sure that none of what your prompt does takes too long to run; an
unresponsive prompt can make your terminal sessions feel very clunky.
Note that you can also arrange to run a set of commands before the prompt is
evaluated and printed, using the PROMPT_COMMAND . This tends to be a good place to
put commands that don't actually print anything, but that do need to be run before or after
each command, such as operations working with history :
PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'
Switching
If you have a very elaborate or perhaps even computationally expensive prompt, it may
occasionally be necessary to turn it off to revert to a simpler one. I like to handle this by
using functions, one of which sets up my usual prompt and is run by default, and another which
changes the prompt to the minimal $ or # character so often used in
terminal demonstrations. Something like the below works well:
You can then switch your prompt whenever you need to by typing prompt_on and
prompt_off .
This can also be very useful if you want to copy text from your terminal into documentation,
or into an IM or email message; it removes your distracting prompt from the text, where it
would otherwise almost certainly differ from that of the user following your instructions. This
is also occasionally helpful if your prompt does not work on a particular machine, or the
machine is suffering a very high load average that means your prompt is too slow to
load.
Further reading
Predefined prompt strings are all over the web, but the above will hopefully enable you to
dissect what they're actually doing more easily and design your own. To take a look at some
examples, the relevant page on the Arch Wiki is
a great start. Ramesh Natarajan over at The Geek Stuff has a great article with some examples
as well, with the curious theme of making your prompt as
well-equipped as Angelina Jolie .
Finally, please feel free to share your prompt setup in the comments (whether you're a Bash
user or not). It would be particularly welcome if you explain why certain sections of your
prompt are so useful to you for your particular work.
"... Update 2016: Recent Hacker News discussion has reminded me of my long-standing mistake in asserting that ed(1) is included in every Unix and Unix-like system's base installation. This is not even close to true–many others exclude it–and the claim has been removed, which I should have done years ago. ..."
"... Thanks to A. Pedro Cunha for a couple of fixes to show correct typical output. ..."
The classic ed
editor is a really good example of a sparse, minimal, standard Unix tool that does one thing, and
does it well. Because there are so many good screen-oriented editors for Unix, there's seldom
very much call for using ed , unless you're working on very old or very limited
hardware that won't run anything else.
However, if part of the reason you use vi is because you think it will always
be there (it may not be), then you should learn ed too. If your terminal is broken
and neither vi nor nano will work, or you break it some other way,
your choices may well be between cat and ed . Or even the grand
heresy of sed -i
Not a friendly editor
Even more than its uppity grandchild ex / vi , ed has
developed a reputation as terse and intimidating to newcomers. When you type ed at
the command line, nothing happens, and the only error message presented by default is
? . If you're reading this, it's likely your first and only experience with
ed went something like this:
$ ed
help
?
h
Invalid command suffix
?
?
^C
?
exit
?
quit
?
^Z
$ killall ed
$ vi
So, ed is not a terribly intuitive editor. However, it's not nearly as hard to
learn as it might seem, especially if you're a veteran vi user and thereby
comfortable with the ex command set. With a little practice, you can actually get
rather quick with it; there's an elegance to its almost brutal simplicity.
It's also very interesting to learn how ed works and how to use it, not just
because it might very well be useful for you one day, but because it occupies an important
position in the heritage of the sed stream editor, the ex line
editor, the vi visual editor, the grep tool, and many other
contexts.
Why is ed so terse?
When ed was developed, the usual method of accessing a Unix system was via a
teletype device, on which it wouldn't have been possible to use a screen-oriented editor like
vi . Similarly, modems were slow, and memory was precious; using abbreviated
commands and terse error messages made a lot of sense, because the user would otherwise be
wasting a lot of time waiting for the terminal to react to commands, and didn't have a whole
lot of memory to throw around for anything besides the buffer of text itself.
Of course, this is almost a non-issue for most Unix-like systems nowadays, so one of the
first things we'll do is make ed a little bit less terse and more
user-friendly.
Error messages
Start ed up the usual way:
$ ed
We'll start by deliberately doing something wrong. Type b and press Enter:
b
?
There's that tremendously unhelpful ? again. But if you press h ,
you can see what went wrong:
h
Unknown command
Of course, since it's the future now, we can spare the terminal cycles to have
ed print the error message for us every time. You can set this up by pressing
H :
H
b
?
Unknown command
That's a bit more useful, and should make things easier.
Quitting
You can quit ed with q . Go ahead and do that. If you had unsaved
changes in a buffer, you could type Q to quit unconditionally. Repeating yourself
works too:
q
?
Warning: buffer modified
q
Command prompt
Let's invoke ed again, but this time we'll use the -p option to
specify a command prompt :
$ ed -p\*
*
We'll use that from now on, which will make things clearer both for interpreting this
tutorial and for remembering whether we're in command mode, or entering text. It might even be
a good idea to make it into a function
:
$ ed() { command ed -p\* "$@" ; }
Basic text input
We'll start by adding a couple of lines of text to the new buffer. When you start
ed with no filename, it starts an empty buffer for you, much like vi
does.
Because there are no lines at all at present, press a to start adding some at
the editor's current position:
*a
Start typing a few lines.
Anything you want, really.
Just go right ahead.
When you're done, just type a period by itself.
.
That's added four new lines to the buffer, and left the editor on line 4. You can tell
that's the case because typing p for print, just by itself, prints the fourth
line:
*p
When you're done, just type a period by itself.
A little more useful is n (or pn in some versions), which will
show both the line number and the contents of the line:
*n
4 When you're done, just type a period by itself.
So just like in ex , the current line is the default for most
commands. You can make this explicit by referring to the current line as . :
*.n
4 When you're done, just type a period by itself.
You can move to a line just by typing its number, which will also print it as a side
effect:
*3
Just go right ahead.
*.n
3 Just go right ahead.
Pressing a like you did before will start inserting lines after the current
line:
*a
Entering another line.
.
*n
4 Entering another line.
Pressing i will allow you to insert lines before the current line:
*i
A line before the current line.
.
*n
4 A line before the current line.
You can replace a line with c :
*c
I decided I like this line better.
.
*n
4 I decided I like this line better.
You can delete lines with d :
*6d
And join two or more lines together with j :
*1,2j
You can prepend an actual line number to any of these commands to move to that line before
running the command on it:
*1c
Here's a replacement line.
.
*1n
1 Here's a replacement line.
For most of these commands, the last line to be changed will become the new current
line.
Ranges
You can select the entire buffer with 1,$ or , for short (
% works too):
*,p
Here's a replacement line.
Just go right ahead.
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
Or a limited range of specific lines:
*2,3p
Just go right ahead.
I decided I liked this line better.
These ranges can include a reference to the current line with . :
*2
Just go right ahead.
*.,4p
Just go right ahead.
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
They can also include relative line numbers, prefixed with + or
- :
*2
*-1,+1p
Here's a replacement line.
Just go right ahead.
I decided I liked this line better.
You can drop a mark on a line with k followed by a lowercase letter such as
a , and you're then able to refer to it in ranges as 'a :
*3ka
*'ap
I decided I liked this line better.
Moving and copying
Move a line or range of lines to after a target line with m :
*1,2m$
*,p
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
Here's a replacement line.
Just go right ahead.
Copy lines to after a target line with t :
*2t4
*,p
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
Here's a replacement line.
Just go right ahead.
Entering another line.
Regular expressions
You can select lines based on classic regular expressions with the g operator.
To print all lines matching the regular expression /re/ :
*g/re/p
Here's a replacement line.
(Hmm, where have I seen that command before?)
You can invert the match to work with lines that don't match the expression with
v :
*v/re/p
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
Just go right ahead.
Entering another line.
Just like numbered line ranges, ranges selected with regular expressions can have other
operations applied to them. To move every line containing the expression /re/ to
the bottom of the file:
*g/re/m$
*,p
I decided I liked this line better.
Entering another line.
Just go right ahead.
Entering another line.
Here's a replacement line.
Searching
You can move to the next line after the current one matching a regular expression with
/ . Again, this will print the line's contents as a side effect.
*/like
I decided I like this line better.
You can search backward with ? :
*?Here
Here's a replacement line.
Substituting
You can substitute for the first occurrence per line of an expression within a range of
lines with the s command:
*1s/i/j
I decjded I like this line better.
You can substitute for all the matches on each line by adding the /g
suffix:
*1s/i/j/g
*p
I decjded I ljke thjs ljne better.
Reading and writing
You can write the current buffer to a file with w , which will also print the
total number of bytes written:
*w ed.txt
129
Having done this once, you can omit the filename for the rest of the session:
*w
129
Like most ed commands, w can be prefixed with a range to write
only a subset of lines to the file. This would write lines 1 to 4 to the file
ed.txt :
*1,4w ed.txt
102
You can use W to append to a file, rather than replace it. This would
write lines 3 to 5 to the end of the file ed.txt :
*3,5W
71
You can read in the contents of another file after the current line (or any other line) with
r . Again, this will print the number of bytes read.
*r /etc/hosts
205
The output of a command can be included by prefixing it with ! :
*r !ps -e
5571
If you just want to load the contents of a file or the output of a command into the buffer,
replacing what's already there, use e , or E if you've got an
unmodified buffer and don't care about replacing it:
*E ed.txt
173
If you don't like seeing the byte counts each time, you can start ed with the
-s option for "quiet mode".
Familiar syntax
Almost all of the above command sets will actually be familiar to vi users who
know a little about ex , or Vimscript in Vim. It will also be familiar to those
who have used sed at least occasionally.
Once you get good with ed , it's possible you'll find yourself using it now and
then to make quick edits to files, even on systems where your favourite screen-based editor
will load promptly. You could even try using ex .
Update 2016: Recent Hacker News discussion has reminded me of my long-standing mistake
in asserting that ed(1) is included in every Unix and Unix-like system's base
installation. This is not even close to true–many others exclude it–and the claim
has been removed, which I should have done years ago.
Thanks to A. Pedro Cunha for a couple of fixes to show correct typical output.
Posted on Registers in Vim
are best thought of as scratch spaces for text, some of which are automatically filled by the
editor in response to certain actions. Learning how to use registers fluently has a lot of
subtle benefits, although it takes some getting used to because the syntax for using them is a
little awkward.
If you're reasonably fluent with Vim by now, it's likely you're already familiar with the
basic usage of the 26 named registers , corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. These are
commonly used for recording macros ; for example, to
record a series of keystrokes into register a , you might start recording with
qa , and finish with q ; your keystrokes could then be executed with
@a .
Similarly, we can store text from the buffer itself rather than commands in these registers,
by prepending "a to any command which uses a register, such as the c
, d , and y commands:
"ayy -- Read current line into register a .
"bP -- Paste contents of register b above current line.
"cc3w -- Change three words, putting the previous three words into register
c .
Like many things in Vim, there's a great deal more functionality to registers for those
willing to explore.
Note that here I'll be specifically ignoring the * , + , and
~ registers; that's another post about the generally unpleasant business of making
Vim play nice with system clipboards. Instead, I'll be focussing on stuff that only applies
within a Vim session. All of this is documented in :help registers
.
Capital registers
Yanking and deleting text into registers normally replaces the previous contents of
that register. In some cases it would be preferable to append to a register, for
example while cherry-picking different lines from the file to be pasted elsewhere. This can be
done by simply capitalizing the name of the register as it's referenced:
"ayy -- Replace the contents of register a with the
current line.
"Ayy -- Append the current line to register a .
This works for any context in which an alphabetical register can be used. Similarly, to
append to a macro already recorded in register a , we can start recording with
qA to add more keystrokes to it.
Viewing register contents
A good way to start getting a feel for how all the other registers work is to view a list of
them with their contents during an editing session with :registers . This will
show the contents of any register used in the editing session. It might look something like
this, a little inscrutable at first:
:registers
--- Registers ---
"" Note that much of it includes
"0 execut
"1 ^J^J
"2 16 Oct (2 days ago)^J^Jto Jeff, Alan ^JHi Jeff (cc Alan);^J^JPlease
"3 <?php^Jheader("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8");^J?>^J.^J
"4 ^J
"5 Business-+InternationalTrade-TelegraphicTransfers-ReceivingInternati
"6 ../^J
"7 diff = auto^J status = auto^J branch = auto^J interacti
"8 ^J[color]^J ui = auto^J diff = auto^J status = auto^J br
"9 ui = true^J
"a escrow
"b 03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j
"c a
"e dui{<80>kb^[^[
"g ^[gqqJgqqjkV>JgqqJV>^[Gkkkjohttp://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/^[I[4]: ^[k
"h ^[^Wh:w^Mgg:w^M^L:w^Mjk/src^Mllhh
"j jjjkkkA Goo<80>kb<80>kb<80>kbThis one is good pio<80>kbped through a
"- Note that much of it includes
". OIt<80>kb<80>kb<80>kbIt might looks <80>kb<80>kb something like thi
": register
"% advanced-vim-registers.markdown
"/ Frij
The first column contains the name of the register, and the second its contents. The
contents of any of these registers can be pasted into the buffer with "ap , where
a is the name of any of them. Note that there are considerably more registers than
just the named alphabetical ones mentioned above.
Unnamed register
The unnamed register is special in that it's always written to in operations, no matter
whether you specified another register or not. Thus if you delete a line with dd ,
the line's contents are put into the unnamed register; if you delete it with "add
, the line's contents are put into both the unnamed register and into register
a .
If you need to explicitly reference the contents of this register, you can use
" , meaning you'd reference it by tapping " twice: "" .
One handy application for this is that you can yank text into the unnamed register and execute
it directly as a macro with @" .
Man, and you thought Perl looked like line noise.
Black hole register
Another simple register worth mentioning is the black hole register , referenced with
"_ . This register is special in that everything written to it is discarded. It's
the /dev/null of the Vim world; you can put your all into it, and it'll never give
anything back. A pretty toxic relationship.
This may not seem immediately useful, but it does come in handy when running an operation
that you don't want to clobber the existing contents of the unnamed register. For example, if
you deleted three lines into the unnamed register with 3dd with the intent of
pasting them elsewhere with p , but you wanted to delete another line before doing
so, you could do that with "_dd ; line gone, and no harm done.
Numbered
registers
The read-only registers 0 through 9 are your "historical record"
registers. The register 0 will always contain the most recently yanked text , but
never deleted text; this is handy for performing a yank operation, at least one delete
operation, and then pasting the text originally yanked with "0p .
The registers 1 through 9 are for deleted text , with
"1 referencing the most recently deleted text, "2 the text deleted
before that, and so on up to "9 .
The small delete register
This read-only register, referenced by "- , stores any text that you deleted or
changed that was less than one line in length, unless you specifically did so into some other
named register. So if you just deleted three characters with 3x , you'll find it
in here.
Last inserted text register
The read-only register ". contains the text that you last inserted. Don't make
the mistake of using this to repeat an insert operation, though; just tap . for
that after you leave insert mode, or have the foresight to prepend a number to your insert
operation; for example, 6i .
Filename registers
The read-only register "% contains the name of the current buffer's file.
Similarly, the "# register contains the name of the alternate buffer's
file.
Command registers
The read-only register ": contains the most recently executed :
command, such as :w or :help . This is likely only of interest to you
if you're wanting to paste your most recent command into your Vim buffer. For everything else,
such as repeating or editing previous commands, you will almost certainly want to use the
command
window .
Search registers
The read-only register / contains the most recent search pattern; this can be
handy for inserting the search pattern on the command line, by pressing Ctrl-R and
then / -- very useful for performing substitutions using the last search
pattern.
Expression register
Here's the black sheep of the bunch. The expression register = is used to treat
the results of arbitrary expressions in register context. What that means in actual real words
is that you can use it as a calculator, and the result is returned from the register.
Whenever the expression register is referenced, the cursor is put on the command line to
input an expression, such as 2+2 , which is ended with a carriage return.
This means in normal mode you can type "=2+2<Enter>p , and 4
will be placed after the cursor; in insert or command mode you can use Ctrl-R then
=2+2<Enter> for the same result. If you don't find this syntax as impossibly
awkward as I do, then this may well suit you for quick inline calculations personally, I'd drop
to a shell and bust out bc for this.
Posted on
February 1, 2012 by Tom
Ryder The autocompletion for filenames in Vim in command mode is very useful, but by default
it's a bit confusing for people accustomed to tab completion in Bash because it doesn't quite work
the same way. Pressing Tab will complete the filename to the first match, and subsequent presses
will not elicit any list of possible completions that might otherwise be expected; for that, by default
you need to press Ctrl+D rather than Tab. Tab then tab
Fortunately, this is easily changed by using Vim's wildmenu , in an appropriate mode.
Set the following options in your .vimrc :
set wildmenu
set wildmode=longest,list
You should now find that when you complete filenames after commands like :w and
:e , the paths expand in a similar manner to the way they do in the shell. If you'd
prefer to only press Tab once to get both the longest matching unique string and a list
of possible complete matches,
that's possible
to arrange in both Bash and Vim as well.
Ignoring file types
There are probably certain filetypes in your directories that you'll never want to edit with Vim.
There's hence no point in making them options for the autocompletion, and you can exclude them by
pattern to make searching for the right file a bit quicker. This is done using the wildignore
pattern. I use the following settings:
set wildignore+=*.a,*.o
set wildignore+=*.bmp,*.gif,*.ico,*.jpg,*.png
set wildignore+=.DS_Store,.git,.hg,.svn
set wildignore+=*~,*.swp,*.tmp
Compatibility
For the sake of keeping my .vimrcconsistent
and compatible on both older and newer machines, I like to wrap these options in a conditional
block checking that the wildmenu feature is actually available:
" Wildmenu
if has("wildmenu")
set wildignore+=*.a,*.o
set wildignore+=*.bmp,*.gif,*.ico,*.jpg,*.png
set wildignore+=.DS_Store,.git,.hg,.svn
set wildignore+=*~,*.swp,*.tmp
set wildmenu
set wildmode=longest,list
endif
Insert mode
You can also complete file paths and names in insert mode with Ctrl+X Ctrl+F. It can be handy
to map this to Tab if you don't use it for anything else:
Posted on
February 2, 2012 by Tom
Ryder Certain files on a UNIX-like system, such as /etc/passwd and /etc/sudoers
, are integral for managing login and authentication, and it's thus necessary to be very careful
while editing them using sudo not to accidentally leave them in a corrupted state, or
to allow others to edit them at the same time as you. In the worst case scenario it's possible to
lock yourself out of a system or out of root privileges in doing this, and things can only be fixed
via physical access to the server or someone who knows the actual root password, which you may not
necessarily know as a sudo user.
You should therefore never edit /etc/passwd , /etc/group ,
or /etc/sudoers by simply invoking them in your editor of choice. A set of simple utilities
exist to help you make these edits safely.
vipw and vigr
If you want to safely edit the /etc/passwd file, for which you'll need to have root
privileges, you should use the vipw tool. It doesn't require an argument.
# vipw
This will load a temporary copy of the file into your $EDITOR , and allow you to
make changes. If all is well after you save and quit, you'll see a message like:
You have modified /etc/passwd.
You may need to modify /etc/shadow for consistency.
Please use the command 'vipw -s' to do so.
If you've made changes which might require changing something in the /etc/shadow
file, you should follow these instructions too.
The command to edit groups, vigr , works in much the same way:
# vigr
visudo
The analogous tool for editing the /etc/sudoers file is visudo . This
file not only does the necessary lock and file corruption checking as vipw does, it
also does some basic checking of the syntax of the file after you save it.
# visudo
If the changes you make to this file work correctly, you'll simply be returned to your prompt.
However, if you've made some sort of edit that means sudo won't be able to correctly
parse the file, you'll get warned and prompted for an appropriate action:
visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 28 <<<
visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 29 <<<
visudo: >>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 29 <<<
What now?
If you press ? here and then Enter, you'll get a list of the actions you can take:
Options are:
(e)dit sudoers file again
e(x)it without saving changes to sudoers file
(Q)uit and save changes to sudoers file (DANGER!)
You'll probably want the first one, to edit your changes again and make them work properly, but
you may want to hose them and start again via the second option. You should only choose the third
if you absolutely know what you're doing.
sudoedit
In general, you can edit root-owned files using sudoedit , or sudo -e
, which will operate on temporary copies of the file and overwrite the original if changes are detected:
$ sudo -e /etc/network/interfaces
This has the added bonus of preserving all of your environment variables for the editing session,
which may not be the case when invoking an editor and file via sudo . This turns out
to be handy for newer versions of sudo which do not preserve the user's $HOME
directory by default, meaning that configuration files for your editor, such as .vimrc
, might not be read.
Entering
search patterns and replacement strings in Vim can sometimes be a pain, particularly if the
search or replacement text is already available in a register or under the cursor. There are a
few ways to make working with search and replace in Vim quicker and less cumbersome for some
common operations, and thereby save a bit of error-prone typing. Insert contents of a
register
As in command mode or insert mode, you can insert the contents of any register by pressing
Ctrl+R and then the register key. For example, to directly insert the contents of
register a , you can type Ctrl+R and then a while typing
a search pattern or replacement string.
Reference contents of a register
Similarly, if you want to use the contents of a register in a pattern or replacement but
don't want to directly insert it, you can instead reference the contents of register
a with \=@a :
:s/search/\=@a/
Both of the above tips work for both the search and replacement patterns, and for special
registers like " (default unnamed register) and / (last searched
text) as well as the alphabetical ones.
Insert word under cursor
If you happen to be hovering over a word that you want to use as as a search or replacement
string, as a special case of the above you can do so by typing Ctrl+R and then
Ctrl+W for a normal word, or Ctrl+R and then Ctrl+A for
a space-delimited word.
Empty search string
You can use the previous search as a search pattern or replacement string by including it
from the special / register, in the same way as any other register above, by
inserting it with Ctrl+R and then / , or representing it with
\=@/ . There's a convenient shorthand for this however in just using an empty
search string:
:s//replacement/
This will replace all occurences of the previous search string with replacement
. It turns out to be a particularly convenient shorthand when searching for words by pressing
* or # .
"... Thanks to user bairui for suggesting a safer alternative for yanking macro lines from buffers, which I've changed. He's written a whole blog post replying to this one. It's a good read if you're interested in going in to even more depth about when to use macros in Vim. ..."
Vim's massive command set in
both normal and command mode makes the concept of a macro especially powerful. Most Vim users,
if they ever use macros at all, will perhaps quickly record an edit to one line, starting with
qq and finishing with q , executing with @q , and
otherwise never give the concept much thought.
For slightly more advanced Vim users, macros may be more frequently useful, but they perhaps
still believe that macros are a niche Vim function unto themselves, and not really open to the
deft manipulation of text that pretty much everything else in Vim is.
As is typical in Vim, the rabbit hole of functionality goes much deeper than most users will
ever plumb.
Vanilla Vim macros
Suppose I had a plaintext table loaded into a Vim buffer containing the name, subject matter
expertise, birth year, and nationality of a few well-known programmers:
Stallman Richard GNU 1953 USA
Wall Larry Perl 1954 USA
Moolenar Bram Vim 1961 Netherlands
Tridgell Andrew Samba 1967 Australia
Matsumoto Yukihiro Ruby 1965 Japan
Ritchie Dennis C 1941 USA
Thompson Ken Unix 1943 USA
Actually, that's kind of untidy. Let's start by formatting it a bit, by running it through
Unix's column tool.
:%!column -t
Stallman Richard GNU 1953 USA
Wall Larry Perl 1954 USA
Moolenar Bram Vim 1961 Netherlands
Tridgell Andrew Samba 1967 Australia
Matsumoto Yukihiro Ruby 1965 Japan
Ritchie Dennis C 1941 USA
Thompson Ken Unix 1943 USA
May as well sort it by surname too:
:%!sort -k1
Matsumoto Yukihiro Ruby 1965 Japan
Moolenar Bram Vim 1961 Netherlands
Ritchie Dennis C 1941 USA
Stallman Richard GNU 1953 USA
Thompson Ken Unix 1943 USA
Tridgell Andrew Samba 1967 Australia
Wall Larry Perl 1954 USA
That's better.
Now, suppose we've got the task of replacing the fourth column of this table with the
approximate age of the person, which we can get naturally enough by sutracting their birth year
from the current year. This is a little awkward to do in pure ex, so we'll record a macro for
doing it on one line.
Experimenting a bit, we find that the following works well:
03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j
Broken down, this does the following:
0 -- Move to the start of the line
3w -- Skip three words, in this case to the fourth column
de -- Delete to the end of the word
i -- Enter insert mode
^R= -- Insert the contents of the special = register, which
accepts an expression to evaluate
2012-^R"^M -- Enter the expression 2012-(birth year) and press Enter
(literal ^M), which completes the operation, and inserts the result
^[ -- Leave insert mode
0 -- Return to the start of the line
j -- Move down a line
So we record it into a macro a (to stand for "age", no other reason) as we fix
up the first line:
qa03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0jq
Matsumoto Yukihiro Ruby 47 Japan
Moolenar Bram Vim 1961 Netherlands
Ritchie Dennis C 1941 USA
Stallman Richard GNU 1953 USA
Thompson Ken Unix 1943 USA
Tridgell Andrew Samba 1967 Australia
Wall Larry Perl 1954 USA
This now means that for each line, we can run the macro by just tapping @a a
few times:
Matsumoto Yukihiro Ruby 47 Japan
Moolenar Bram Vim 51 Netherlands
Ritchie Dennis C 71 USA
Stallman Richard GNU 59 USA
Thompson Ken Unix 69 USA
Tridgell Andrew Samba 45 Australia
Wall Larry Perl 58 USA
That's all pretty stock-standard macro stuff that you'll likely have learned in other
tutorials. The only thing that's slightly voodoo (and certainly not vi-compatible) is the
arithmetic done with the special = register. You can read about that in
:help @= , if you're curious.
Repeating Vim macros
As a first very simple hint, if you're running a macro several times, don't forget that you
can prepend a count to it; in our case, 6@a would have fixed up all the remaining
lines. To take advantage of this, it's good practice to compose your macros so that they make
sense when run multiple times; in the example above, note that the end of the macro is moving
down onto the next line, ready to run the macro again if appropriate.
Similarly, if you've already run a macro once, you can run the same one again by just
tapping the @ key twice, @@ . This repeats the last run macro. Again,
you can prepend a count to this, @a5@@ .
The true nature of Vim macros
The registers that hold macros are the same registers that you probably use more frequently
for operations like deleting, yanking, and pasting. Running a macro is simply instructing Vim
to take the contents of a register and execute them as keystrokes, as if you were actually
typing them. Thinking about macros this way has a couple of interesting consequences.
First of all, it means you needn't restrict yourself to the single-keystroke vi commands for
Vim when you compose macros. You can include ex commands as well, for example to run a
substitution during a macro:
qb:s/foo/bar/g^Mq
@b
Secondly, and more interestingly, all of the operations that you can apply to registers in
general work with what we normally call macros, with the old standards, delete, yank, and
paste. You can test this with the example macro demonstrated above, by typing "ap
, which will dump the raw text straight into the buffer. Also like other registers, it'll show
up in the output of the :registers command.
All this means is that like everything else in Vim, macros are just text , and all
of Vim's clever tools can be used to work with them.
Editing Vim macros in a buffer
If you've used macros even a little bit you'll be very familiar with how frustrating they
are to record. For some reason, as soon as you press qa to start recording a macro
into register a , your normal fluency with Vim commands goes out the window and
you keep making mistakes that will make the macro unsuitable to apply.
So, don't compose macros on the fly. Just stop doing it. I recommend that if a macro is more
than three keystrokes, you should compose it directly in a scratch Vim buffer so that you can
test it iteratively.
Here's an example using the macro above; suppose I realise partway through writing it that I
made a mistake in typing 2011 instead of 2012. I finish recording the rest of the macro anyway,
and dump the broken keystrokes into a new scratch buffer:
:enew
"ap
This gives me the contents of the macro in plain text in the buffer:
qa03wdei^R=2011-^R"^M^[0jq
So now all I have to do is change that bad year to 2012, and then yank the whole thing back
into register a :
^"ay$
Now I can test it directly with @a on the appropriate file, and if it's still
wrong, I just jump back to my scratch buffer and keep fixing it up until it works.
One potential snag here is that you have to enter keystrokes like Ctrl+R as literal
characters, but once you know you can enter any keystroke in Vim literally in insert or command
mode by prefixing it with Ctrl+V, that isn't really a problem. So to enter a literal Ctrl+R in
insert mode, you type Ctrl+V, then Ctrl+R.
Running a Vim macro on a set of lines
It's occasionally handy to be able to run a macro that you've got ready on a specific subset
of lines of the file, or perhaps just for every line. Fortunately, there's a way to do this,
too.
Using the :normal command, you're able to run macros from the ex command
line:
:normal @a
All it takes is prefixing this with any sort of range definition to allow you to run
a macro on any set of lines that you're able to define.
Run the macro on each line of the whole buffer:
:% normal @a
Between lines 10 and 20:
:10,20 normal @a
On the lines in the current visual selection:
:'<,'> normal @a
On the lines containing the pattern vim:
:g/vim/ normal @a
When you get confident using this, :norm is a nice abbreviation to
use.
Moving a Vim macro into a function
For really useful macros of your own devising, it's occasionally handy to put it into a
function for use in scripts or keystroke mappings. Here again the :normal command
comes in handy.
Suppose I wanted to keep the age calculation macro defined above for later use on
spreadsheets of this kind. I'd start by dumping it into a new buffer:
:enew
"ap
The macro appears as raw text:
03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j
I prefix it with a :normal call, and wrap a function definition around it:
function! CalculateAge()
normal 03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j
endfunction
Then all I need to do is include that in a file that gets loaded during Vim's startup,
possibly just .vimrc . I can call it directly from ex:
:call CalculateAge()
But given that I wanted it to be a quick-access macro, maybe it's better to bind it to
\a , or whatever your chosen <leader> character is:
nnoremap <leader>a :call CalculateAge()<CR>
Saving a Vim macro
If you want to have a macro always available to you, that is, always loaded into the
appropriate register at startup, that can be done in your .vimrc file with a call
to let to fill the register with the literal characters required:
let @a='03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j'
Appending extra keystrokes to a Vim macro
If you just want to tack extra keystrokes onto an existing macro and don't care to edit it
in a Vim buffer, you can do that by recording into it with its capital letter equivalent. So,
if you wanted to add more keystrokes into the register b , start recording with
qB , and finish with the usual q .
Recursive Vim macros
If you're crazy enough to need this, and I never have, there's an excellent Vim Tip for it. But
personally, I think if you need recursion in your text processing then it's time to bust out a
real programming language and not Vimscript
to solve your problem.
If the issue for which you think you need recursion is running a macro on every line of a
buffer with an arbitrary number of lines, then you don't need recursion; just record a one-line
version of the macro and call it with :% normal @a to run it on every
line.
Vim macro gotchas
Here are a few gotchas which will save you some frustration if you know about them ahead of
time:
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Don't try to solve
problems with macros when there are better solutions in the ex command set, or available in
external programs. See the Vim koans page for a couple of
examples.
You need to insert keystrokes like Enter as literal Ctrl+M, so that they look like
^M . The convenience abbreviations in mappings, like <CR> ,
simply don't work. You're likely to find yourself chording Ctrl+V a lot.
Macros tend to stop, sometimes for apparently no reason and with no warning messages, as
soon as they hit some sort of error. One particularly annoying instance of this is when
you're performing several substitutions in a macro, because if it doesn't find any instances
of a pattern it will throw an error and stop executing. You can prevent this by adding the
e flag to the substitution call:
:s/foo/bar/e
Thanks to user bairui for suggesting a safer alternative for yanking macro lines from
buffers, which I've changed. He's written a whole
blog post replying to this one. It's a good read if you're interested in going in to even
more depth about when to use macros in Vim. Posted in Vim Tagged advanced , copy , functions , keep , macros , normal , paste , preserve , registers , vimrc , yank
If you can, it's a good idea to set up your .vimrc file using
conditionals so that it's compatible on all of the systems with which you need to work.
Using one .vimrc file enables you to include it as part of a centralized set of
dotfiles that you can keep under version control
.
However, if on a particular machine there's a special case which means you need to load some
Vim directives for that machine, you can achieve this by way of a local Vim file kept in
.vimrc.local , only on one particular machine, and detecting its existence before
attempting to load it in your master .vimrc file with the following stanza:
if filereadable(glob("~/.vimrc.local"))
source ~/.vimrc.local
endif
As an example, on one of the nameservers that I manage, I wanted to make sure that the
correct filetype was loaded when editing zone files ending in .nz or
.au for New Zealand and Australian domains. The following line in
.vimrc.local did the trick:
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.au,*.nz set filetype=bindzone
If the .vimrc.local file doesn't exist on any particular machine, Vim will
simply not attempt to load it on startup.
Besides machine-specific code, this kind of setup may be advisable if you keep secret or
potentially sensitive information in your .vimrc file that you wouldn't want
published to a public version control tracker like GitHub, such as API keys, usernames, machine
hostnames, or network paths.
Using your .vimrc file on many machines with different versions and
feature sets for Vim is generally not too much of a problem if you apply a little care in
making a gracefully degrading
.vimrc . In most cases, using the output of vim --version and
checking the help files will tell you what features to check in order to determine which parts
of your .vimrc configuration to load, and which to ignore.
There's one particular feature that's less obvious, though, and that's eval .
Vim's help describes it like this in :help +eval :
N *+eval* expression evaluation |eval.txt|
The eval.txt document, in turn, describes the syntax for various features
fundamental to Vimscript, including variables, functions, lists, and dictionaries.
All this makes eval perhaps the most central feature of Vim. Without it, Vim
doesn't have much of its programmable nature, and remains not much more than classic
vi . If your particular build of Vim doesn't include it, then Vimscript
essentially does not work as a programming language, and elementary calls like
function and let will throw errors:
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: function
E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version: let
If you're getting this kind of error, you're probably using a very stripped-down version of
Vim that doesn't include eval . If you just want to prevent the error by ignoring
a block of code if the feature is unavailable, you can do this with has() :
if has("eval")
...
endif
Vim will still be perfectly functional as a vi -style editor without
+eval , but if you're going to need any Vimscript at all, you should recompile Vim
with a --with-features value for the ./configure line that does
include it, such as normal , big , or huge , or install
a more fully-featured packaged version. For example, on Debian-like systems, the
vim-tiny package that is included in the netinst system does not
include eval , but the vim and vim-runtime packages
do.
Inspecting Vim's source, in particular the ex_docmd.c file, gives some
indication of how fundamental this feature is, applying the C function ex_ni which
simply prints the "not available" error shown above to a large number of control structures and
statements if the FEAT_EVAL constant is not defined:
Vim isn't the best tool for
every task, and there's no reason you shouldn't stick to your GUI IDE if you know it like the
back of your hand and are highly productive in it. The very basic best practices for text
editing in general apply just as well to more familiar editing interfaces as they do to Vim, so
nobody should be telling you that Vim is right for everyone and everything and that you're
wrong not to use it.
However, because Vim and vi -like editors in general have a lot of trouble
shaking off the connotations of their serverside, terminal-only, mouseless past, there are a
few persistent objections to even trying Vim that seem to keep cropping up. If you're
someone curious about Vim but you heard it was useless for any of the following reasons, or if
you're an experienced user looking to convince a hesitant neophyte to try Vim, the following
list might clear a few things up.
Vim takes too long to learn
If you want analogues to all of the features in your IDE, that would likely take some time,
just as it would in any other new editor. However, if all you need to start is to be able to
enter text, move around, and load and save files, you just need to know:
i to enter insert mode, Esc to leave it
Arrow keys to move around in both modes
:e <filename> to load a document
:w <filename> to save a document
:q to quit, :q! to ignore unsaved changes
To do pretty much everything Windows Notepad would let you do, on top of that you'd only
need to learn:
dd to cut a line
yy to copy a line
p to paste a line
/<pattern> to search for text
n to go to the next result
:s/pattern/replacement to replace text
From that point, you only get faster as you learn how to do new things. So saying that Vim
takes weeks to learn is a bit disingenuous when the essentials can easily be mastered with a
few minutes' practice.
Granted, the arrow keys are a bit of an anti-pattern , but you can worry
about that later.
Vim has no GUI
Vim has a GUI
version called Gvim for both Windows and Unix. For Mac OS X, the MacVim port is preferred. For experienced users the
GUI's only real advantage over the terminal version is a wider color palette, but it has a
toolbar and other GUI elements which some new users may find useful.
Vim doesn't have
spell checking
Vim allows spell
checking with system dictionaries, using :set spell and :set
spelllang . Misspelt and unknown words are highlighted appropriately.
Vim doesn't
have syntax highlighting
Vim has support for syntax highlighting that can be turned
on with :syntax enable , for a very wide variety of programming languages, markup
languages, and configuration file syntaxes.
Vim only allows eight colours
This is a limitation of terminal emulators rather than of Vim itself, but most modern GUI
terminal emulators allow 256 colours anyway with a little
extra setup. The GUI version, Gvim, has full color support with the familiar
rrggbb color definitions.
Vim doesn't have class/function folding
Vim does in fact have support
for folding , based on both code structure and manually defined boundaries. See :help
folding for details.
Vim doesn't have autocompletion
Vim allows basic completion using words already in the current buffer, and also more
advanced omnicompletion
using language dictionaries for constants, variables, classes, and functions.
Vim doesn't
have a file browser
Vim has had the Netrw plugin bundled for some time,
which provides a pretty capable filesystem browser.
Vim can't do network editing
Again, the bundled Netrw plugin handles this. Editing files over FTP and SCP links is pretty
transparent. You can open a file on a remote server by entering the following, which will
prompt for your username and password:
:e ftp://ftp.example.com/index.html
When you're done editing, you just enter :w to save the file, and it's
automatically uploaded for you. You can record your FTP credentials in a .netrc
file to save having to type in usernames and passwords all the time. URIs with
scp:// work the same way; with a good public key infrastructure
set up, you can use Vim quite freely as a network-transparent editor.
Vim doesn't have
tabs or windows
The model Vim uses for tabs and windows is rather
different from most GUI editors, but both are supported and have been for some time.
Vim
has too many modes
It has three major modes: normal mode, insert mode, and command mode. There's a fourth
that's Vim-specific, called visual mode, for selecting text.
Most editors are modal in at least some respect; when you bring up a dialog box, or enter a
prefix key to another command, you're effectively changing modes. The only real difference is
that context shifts in Vim are at first less obvious; the screen doesn't look too different
between normal, insert, and command mode.
The showmode option helps to distinguish between insert and normal mode, a
common frustration for beginners. This gets easier when you get into the habit of staying out
of insert mode when not actually entering text.
Vim doesn't work with the mouse
Vim works fine with the mouse ,
in both Gvim and xterm -like terminal emulators, if you really want it. You can
change the position of the cursor, scroll through the document, and select text as normal.
Setting the below generally does the trick:
:set mouse=a
However, even a little experience in Vim may show you that you don't need the mouse as much
as you think. Careful use of the keyboard allows much more speed and precision, and it's quite
easy to run a complex editing session without even moving from the keyboard's "home row", let
alone all the way over to the mouse.
Vim doesn't do Unicode
Vim supports Unicode encodings with the encoding option. It's likely you'll
only need to put the below in your .vimrc file and then never really think about encoding in your editor
again:
:set encoding=utf-8
Vim isn't being developed or maintained
The original author of Vim, and its current maintainer and release manager, is Bram Moolenaar . At the time of
writing, he is working for Google, and is paid to spend some of his time developing Vim. The
development mailing list for Vim is very active, and patches are submitted and applied to the
publically accessible Mercurial repository on a regular basis. Vim is not a dead
project.
Vim is closed source
Vim isn't proprietary or closed source, and never has been. It uses its own GPL-compatible
license called the Vim license .
The original vi used to be proprietary because Bill Joy based the code on the
classic UNIX
text editor ed , but its source code has now been released under a BSD-style license.
Like any highly interactive application, Vim has a few annoyances even for
experienced users. Most of these consist of the editor doing something unexpected, particularly
with motions or the behavior of regular expressions and registers. This is often due to
vi and Vim being such venerable editors; their defaults sometimes make less sense
decades after their creation.
Fortunately, Vim being the configurable editor that it is, many of the more common
annoyances can be easily worked around. Bear in mind that not all of these are necessarily
problems; if you actually prefer the way something behaves, you should stick with
it.
Cursor jumps around while joining lines
If you want to keep the cursor in place when you join lines with J , you can do
this, dropping a mark before the operation to which you return afterwards:
nnoremap J mzJ`z
Jumping lands on top or bottom of screen
If you'd like to center the window automatically around the cursor after jumping to a
location with motions like n (next search pattern occurrence) or }
(end of next paragraph), you can arrange that by remapping to add a zz after the
motion:
nnoremap n nzz
nnoremap } }zz
If you don't need the jump to land you in the exact middle of the screen, but just don't
want it to land right at the edge, you could also use scrolloff :
set scrolloff=10
Note that this also starts scrolling the window with single-line movements like
j and k at this boundary, too, which you may not want.
Skipping
lines when wrap is set
By default, the j and k keys don't move by row ; they
move by line . This means that if you have the wrap option set, you might
skip across several rows to reach the same point in an adjacent line.
This can be frustrating if you prefer the more intuitive behavior of moving up to the
character immediately above the current one. If you don't like this behavior, you can fix it by
mapping j to gj , and k to gk , which moves
by rows rather than lines:
nnoremap j gj
nnoremap k gk
If you think you might need the default behavior at some point, you might want to include
reverse mappings so you can move linewise with gj and gk :
nnoremap gj j
nnoremap gk k
Wrapping breaks words
By default, setting wrap displays lines by breaking words if necessary. You can
force it to preserve words instead by only breaking at certain characters:
set linebreak
You can define the characters at which Vim should be allowed to break lines with the
breakat option. By default this includes spaces and tabs.
Backup files are a
nuisance
If you're developing with a version control system, you might find the in-place backups Vim
keeps for saved files with the ~ suffix more annoying than useful. You can turn
them off completely with nobackup :
set nobackup
Alternatively, you can set a single directory for them to keep them out of the way with
backupdir :
set backupdir=~/.vim/backup
Swap files are a nuisance
Swap files can be similarly annoying, and unnecessary on systems with a lot of memory. If
you don't need them, you can turn them off completely:
set noswapfile
If you do find the swap files useful but want to prevent them cluttering your current
directory, you can set a directory for them with directory :
set directory=~/.vim/swap
Accidentally hitting unwanted keys in normal mode
Some of the keys in normal mode bring up functions that aren't terribly useful to a lot of
people, and tend to accidentally get hit when Caps Lock is on, or when aiming for another key.
Common nuisance keys are:
F1 for help; :help is generally more useful for the experienced
user
Q to start ex mode; annoying when you intended to start
recording a macro with q
K to bring up a man page for the word under the cursor;
annoying when you're not writing in C or shell script, and there isn't a sensible choice of
keywordprg for your chosen language
The simplest way to deal with these is to remap them to <nop> so that
they don't do anything:
nnoremap <F1> <nop>
nnoremap Q <nop>
nnoremap K <nop>
Startup message is irritating
If you don't like the startup message that appears when you open Vim without a filename, you
can remove it by adding the I flag to shortmess :
set shortmess+=I
Can't backspace past start of operation
If you're in insert mode, by default you can't use backspace to delete text past the start
of the insert operation; that is, you can't backspace over where you first pressed insert. This
is old vi behavior, and if you don't like it, you can make backspace work
everywhere instead:
set backspace=indent,eol,start
Flashing screen is annoying
If you don't require the error feedback, you can turn off the flashing screen for the
"visual bell":
set visualbell t_vb=
Don't know what mode I'm in
If you lose track of the current mode, you can get a convenient --INSERT--
indicator at the bottom of the screen with:
set showmode
If you're having this problem a lot, however, you might want to take stock of how much time
you're spending in insert mode when you're not actively typing; it's good Vim practice to stay
out of it otherwise, even when you stop to think.
Keep making typos of common
commands
If you're fat-fingering :wq and similar commands a lot due to a sticky shift
key, take a look at the Vim command typos fix. Also, don't
forget about ZZ and ZQ as quicker alternatives to :wq
and :q! .
Don't want case sensitive patterns
If you don't care for case-sensitive searches and substitutions, you can turn it off
completely:
set ignorecase
You might find the slightly cleverer behavior of smartcase is better, though.
This option only applies case sensitivity if at least one of the letters in the pattern is
uppercase; otherwise, case is ignored.
set smartcase
Doesn't replace all occurrences
The default behavior for the substitute operation,
:s/pattern/replacement/ , is to replace only the first occurrence of the pattern.
To make it replace all occurrences on the appropriate lines, you add the
g suffix. If you find that you never need to substitute for only the first
occurrence of a pattern in a line, you can add that flag to the patterns by default:
set gdefault
If you do happen to need to replace only the first occurrence one day, you can get the
default behavior back by adding the g suffix to your pattern; its meaning
is reversed by this option.
Can't move into blank space in visual block mode
If you need to define a block in visual block mode with bounds outside the actual text (that
is, past the end of lines), you can allow this with:
set virtualedit=block
This will let you move around the screen freely while in visual block mode to define your
selections. As an example, this can make selecting the contents of the last column in a
formatted table much easier.
Filename completion on command line is confusing
If you're used to the behavior of shell autocomplete functions for completing filenames, you
can emulate it in Vim's command mode:
set wildmode=longest,list
With this set, the first Tab press (or whatever your wildchar is set to) will
expand a filename or command in command mode to the longest common string it can, and a second
press will display a list of all possible completions above the command line.
Yanking
lines is inconsistent
D deletes from the cursor to the end of the line; C changes from
the cursor to the end of the line. For some reason, however, Y yanks the entire
line, both before and after the cursor. If this inconsistency bothers you, you can fix it with
a remapping:
nnoremap Y y$
New splits appear in unintuitive places
If your language of choice is read from left to right, you may find it annoying that by
default Vim places new vertical splits to the left of the current pane, and horizontal
splits above the current pane. You can fix both:
set splitbelow
set splitright
Caps Lock sends Vim crazy
Caps Lock in normal mode makes Vim go haywire. This isn't really Vim's fault; Caps Lock is
generally a pretty useless key. It's often useful for Vim users to remap it , so that it sends the same signal as a
more useful key; Control and Escape are common choices. You might even find this reduces strain
on your hands.
Several of these fixes were inspired by Steve Losh's .vimrc file . Thanks also
to commenters Alpha Chen and Rob Hoelz for suggestions.
A good sign of a
philosophically sound interactive Unix tool is the facilities it offers for interacting with
the filesystem and the shell: specifically, how easily can you run file operations and/or shell
commands with reference to data within the tool? The more straightforward this is, the more
likely the tool will fit neatly into a terminal-driven Unix workflow.
If all else fails, you could always suspend the task with Ctrl+Z to drop to a shell, but
it's helpful if the tool shows more deference to the shell than that; it means you can use and
(even more importantly) write tools to manipulate the data in the program in whatever
languages you choose, rather than being forced to use any kind of heretical internal scripting
language, or worse, an over-engineered API.
vi is a good example of a tool that interacts openly and easily with the Unix
shell, allowing you to pass open buffers as streams of text transparently to classic filter and
text processing tools. In the case of Vim, it's particularly useful to get to know these,
because in many cases they allow you to avoid painful Vimscript, and to do things your way,
without having to learn an ad-hoc language or to rely on plugins. This was touched on briefly
in the "Editing" article of the
Unix as IDE
series.
Choosing your shell
By default, vi will use the value of your SHELL environment
variable as the shell in which your commands will be run. In most cases, this is probably what
you want, but it might pay to check before you start:
:set shell?
If you're using Bash, and this prints /bin/bash , you're good to go, and you'll
be able to use Bash-specific features or builtins such as [[ comfortably in your
command lines if you wish.
Running commands
You can run a shell command from vi with the !ex
command. This is inherited from the same behaviour in ed . A good example would be
to read a manual page in the same terminal window without exiting or suspending vi
:
:!man grep
Or to build your project:
:!make
You'll find that exclamation point prefix ! shows up in the context of running
external commands pretty consistently in vi .
You will probably need to press Enter afterwards to return to vi . This is to
allow you to read any output remaining on your screen.
Of course, that's not the only way to do it; you may prefer to drop to a forked shell with
:sh , or suspend vi with ^Z to get back to the original
shell, resuming it later with fg .
You can refer to the current buffer's filename in the command with % , but be
aware that this may cause escaping problems for files with special characters in their
names:
:!gcc % -o foo
If you want a literal % , you will need to escape it with a backslash:
:!grep \% .vimrc
The same applies for the # character, for the alternate buffer .
:!gcc # -o bar
:!grep \# .vimrc
And for the ! character, which expands to the previous command:
:!echo !
:!echo \!
You can try to work around special characters for these expansions by single-quoting
them:
:!gcc '%' -o foo
:!gcc '#' -o bar
But that's still imperfect for files with apostrophes in their names. In Vim (but not
vi ) you can do this:
Also inherited from ed is reading the output of commands into a buffer, which
is done by giving a command starting with ! as the argument to :r
:
:r !grep vim .vimrc
This will insert the output of the command after the current line position in the
buffer; it works in the same way as reading in a file directly.
You can add a line number prefix to :r to place the output after that line
number:
:5r !grep vim .vimrc
To put the output at the very start of the file, a line number of 0 works:
:0r !grep vim .vimrc
And for the very end of the file, you'd use $ :
:$r !grep vim .vimrc
Note that redirections work fine, too, if you want to prevent stderr from being
written to your buffer in the case of errors:
:$r !grep vim .vimrc 2>>vim_errorlog
Writing buffer text into a command
To run a command with standard input coming from text in your buffer, but without
deleting it or writing the output back into your buffer, you can provide a !
command as an argument to :w . Again, this behaviour is inherited from
ed .
By default, the whole buffer is written to the command; you might initially expect that only
the current line would be written, but this makes sense if you consider the usual behaviour of
w when writing directly to a file.
Given a file with a first column full of numbers:
304 Donald Trump
227 Hillary Clinton
3 Colin Powell
1 Spotted Eagle
1 Ron Paul
1 John Kasich
1 Bernie Sanders
We could calculate and view (but not save) the sum of the first column with
awk(1) , to see the expected value of 538 printed to the terminal:
:w !awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum}'
We could limit the operation to the faithless electoral votes by specifying a line
range:
:3,$w !awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum}'
You can also give a range of just . , if you only want to write out the current
line.
In Vim, if you're using visual mode, pressing : while you have some text
selected will automatically add the '<,'> range marks for you, and you can
write out the rest of the command:
:'<,'>w !grep Bernie
Note that this writes every line of your selection to the command, not merely the
characters you have selected. It's more intuitive to use visual line mode (Shift+V) if you take
this approach.
Filtering text
If you want to replace text in your buffer by filtering it through a command, you
can do this by providing a range to the ! command:
:1,2!tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
This example would capitalise the letters in the first two lines of the buffer, passing them
as input to the command and replacing them with the command's output.
304 DONALD TRUMP
227 HILLARY CLINTON
3 Colin Powell
1 Spotted Eagle
1 Ron Paul
1 John Kasich
1 Bernie Sanders
Note that the number of lines passed as input need not match the number of lines of output.
The length of the buffer can change. Note also that by default any stderr is
included; you may want to redirect that away.
You can specify the entire file for such a filter with % :
:%!tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
As before, the current line must be explicitly specified with . if you want to
use only that as input, otherwise you'll just be running the command with no buffer interaction
at all, per the first heading of this article:
:.!tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
You can also use ! as a motion rather than an ex command
on a range of lines, by pressing ! in normal mode and then a motion (
w , 3w , } , etc) to select all the lines you want to
pass through the filter. Doubling it ( !! ) filters the current line, in a similar
way to the yy and dd shortcuts, and you can provide a numeric prefix
(e.g. 3!! ) to specify a number of lines from the current line.
This is an example of a general approach that will work with any POSIX-compliant version of
vi . In Vim, you have the gU command available to coerce text to
uppercase, but this is not available in vanilla vi ; the best you have is the
tilde command ~ to toggle the case of the character under the cursor.
tr(1) , however, is specified by POSIX–including the locale-aware
transformation–so you are much more likely to find it works on any modern Unix
system.
If you end up needing such a command during editing a lot, you could make a generic command
for your private
bindir , say named upp for uppercase, that forces all of its standard input to
uppercase:
#!/bin/sh
tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
Once saved somewhere in $PATH and made executable, this would allow you simply
to write the following to apply the filter to the entire buffer:
:%!upp
The main takeaway from this is that the scripts you use with your editor don't have to be in
shell. You might prefer Awk :
Incidentally, this "filtering" feature is where vi 's heritage from
ed ends as far as external commands are concerned. In POSIX ed ,
there isn't a way to filter buffer text through a command in one hit. It's not too hard to
emulate it with a temporary file, though, using all the syntax learned above:
Being able to
search by regular expression is a pretty fundamental thing in a text editor. Vim takes it to
the next level by making entering a search into a motion all on its own, and even a
few weeks' Vim experience and you'll probably catch yourself using the search to navigate your
buffers.
One of the things I most commonly see recommended in threads and discussions about
useful
Vim features includes turning on two kinds of search highlighting: first, highlighting the
search result on which you'll land as you type it, and secondly, once you've pressed
Enter to run your search, highlighting all of the matches. You turn these
on like this:
:set incsearch
:set hlsearch
This ends up being great for editing code in particular, because if you search for variable
or function names, you can see at a glance where they're declared, defined, or used in your
code. Couple that with the quick forward and backward search that you can do with the
* and # keys, and you have a very convenient way to flick through
successive uses of an identifier.
The only snag, really, is that it doesn't turn itself off, and it gets visually distracting
when you've moved on from whatever task prompted the search, and because you might search to
move around, you don't always actually want the highlighting to stay there. Text editors
following a Windows model would probably clear away the highlighting as soon as you close the
search box, or insert some text. This isn't the case with Vim, which can be good or bad, but
most people I've spoken to about this feature seem to find it annoying.
Bram Moolenar, the author of Vim, addressed this very topic in a Google Tech Talk he gave
about effective text
editing . You can turn off the highlighting temporarily by typing:
:nohlsearch
This is different from :set nohlsearch in that it doesn't permanently
disable the highlighting. It'll turn it on next time you search. I find this is kind of a pain
to type, so I alias it to Ctrl+L in my .vimrc file, so that in addition to its
default behaviour of clearing the screen it clears the search highlighting as well:
nnoremap <C-l> :nohlsearch<CR><C-l>
Additionally, I like to set leader keys to quickly turn the highlighting option on and off
completely if for some particular project it's just thoroughly unhelpful. In this example,
typing \i and \h will toggle the incsearch and
hlsearch settings on and off, respectively. I'm assuming you're using the
backslash key as your <leader> here.
Finally, I find that while I'm in insert mode, I usually don't want to see the highlighting,
so I define events to turn the highlighting off temporarily in the current buffer while I'm
inserting text:
I find these shortcuts make the search highlighting behaviour much less annoying.
Interestingly, according to Vim's help, you can't simply add an event hook to run
:nohlsearch when you enter Insert mode (from :help nohlsearch ):
This command doesn't work in an autocommand, because the highlighting state is saved and
restored when executing autocommands. Same thing for when invoking a user function.
You can work around this by setting the search pattern to empty instead, as suggested by
this Stack Overflow answer ,
but I don't really like doing that because I often like to recurse through more search results
with n and N after leaving insert mode.
Posted on If you've moved to
Vim from an editor like Notepad++ or TextMate, you'll be used to working with the idea of tabs
in a text editor in a certain way. Specifically, a tab represents an open file; while the tab's
there, you've got an open file, as soon as you close it, it goes away. This one-to-one
correspondence is pretty straightforward and is analogous to using tabs in a web browser; while
the page is open, there's a tab there, and you have one page per tab, and one tab per page.
Vim has a system for tabs as well, but it works in a completely different way from how text
editors and browsers do. Beginners with Vim are often frustrated by this because the model for
tabs is used so consistently in pretty much every other program they're accustomed to, and they
might end up spending a lot of fruitless time trying to force Vim to follow the same model
through its configuration.
I think a good way to understand the differences in concept and usage between Vim's three
levels of view abstraction -- buffers windows , and tabs -- is to learn how to use each from
the ground up. So let's start with buffers.
Buffers
A buffer in Vim is probably best thought of for most users as an open instance of a
file , that may not necessarily be visible on the current screen. There's probably a more
accurate technical definition as a buffer need not actually correspond to a file on your disk,
but it'll work for our purposes.
When you open a single file in Vim, that file gets put into a buffer, and it's the only
buffer there on startup. If this buffer is unmodified (or if you're using hidden
), and you open another file with :edit , that buffer goes into the background and
you start working with the new file. The previous buffer only goes away when you explicitly
delete it with a call to :quit or :bdelete , and even then it's still
recoverable unless you do :bwipe .
By default, a buffer can only be in the background like this if it's unmodified. You can
remove this restriction if you like with the :set hidden option.
You can get a quick list of the buffers open in a Vim session with :ls . This
all means that when most people think of tabs in more familiar text editors, the idea of a
buffer in Vim is actually closest to what they're thinking.
Windows
A window in Vim is a viewport onto a single buffer . When you open a new window
with :split or :vsplit , you can include a filename in the call. This
opens the file in a new buffer, and then opens a new window as a view onto it. A buffer can be
viewed in multiple windows within a single Vim session; you could have a hundred windows
editing the same buffer if you wanted to.
Vim Session with multiple windows open, both horizontally and vertically. Tabs
Finally, a tab in Vim is a collection of one or more windows . The best way to
think of tabs, therefore, is as enabling you to group windows usefully. For example, if you
were working on code for both a client program and a server program, you could have the files
for the client program open in the first tab, perhaps in three or four windows, and the files
for the server program open in another, which could be, say, seven windows. You can then flick
back and forth between the tabs using :tabn and :tabp .
Two tabs open in Vim, each with multiple windows. Move between two tabs with :tabn and
:tabp.
This model of buffers, windows, and tabs is quite a bit more intricate than in other
editors, and the terms are sometimes confusing. However, if you know a bit about how they're
supposed to work, you get a great deal more control over the layout of your editing sessions as
a result. Personally, I find I rarely need tabs as with a monitor of sufficient size it
suffices to keep two or three windows open at a time when working on sets of files, but on the
odd occasion I do need tabs, I do find them tremendously useful.
Thanks to Hacker News users anonymous and m0shen for pointing out potential confusion
with the :set hidden option and the :bdelete command.
The command line in
Vim for ex commands can be edited with a few of the GNU Readline key combinations that may be
familiar to Bash or Emacs users, so it's reasonably easy to edit it, for example to type in
complex search patterns and replacements.
However, if you want the full facility of Vim editing for your commands, it can be helpful
to use Vim's command line window, which will allow you to enter commands and edit previous ones
with the usual normal and insert mode.
You can open the command line window from normal mode in one of four ways:
q: -- Open with a command history from normal mode
q/ -- Open with a search history from normal mode (to search forward)
q? -- Open with a search history from normal mode (to search backward)
Ctrl+F -- Open with a command history from command mode
Note that this doesn't work while you're recording macros, since pressing q stops the
recording.
The window is always immediately above the status bar, and its height can be set via the
cmdwinheight option.
Command line window
Once the command line window is opened with q: , you can browse through it and
press Enter on any line to issue the same command again. You can also edit it beforehand,
perhaps to fix a mistyped command. The window will close when this is done, but you can close
it with Ctrl+W, C the same as any other window if you change your
mind.
Vim command line window
Note that you can't move to another window while this one is open, nor can you load another
buffer into it.
Search window
Similar to the above, if you open the command window with q/ or q?
, it shows a history of your searches, and pressing enter on any line will issue the same
again, in the appropriate direction.
Vim search window
For more information on how the command window works, check out :help
command-line-window .
The benefits of
getting to grips with Vim are immense in terms of editing speed and maintaining your "flow"
when you're on a roll, whether writing code, poetry, or prose, but because the learning curve
is so steep for a text editor, it's very easy to retain habits from your time learning the
editor that stick with you well into mastery. Because Vim makes you so fast and fluent, it's
especially hard to root these out because you might not even notice them, but it's worth it.
Here I'll list some of the more common ones. Moving one line at a time
If you have to move more than a couple of lines, moving one line at a time by holding down
j or k is inefficient. There are many more ways to move vertically in
Vim. I find that the two most useful are moving by paragraph and by screenful, but this depends
on how far and how precisely you have to move.
{ -- Move to start of previous paragraph or code block.
} -- Move to end of next paragraph or code block.
Ctrl+F -- Move forward one screenful.
Ctrl+B -- Move backward one screenful.
If you happen to know precisely where you want to go, navigating by searching is the way to
go, searching forward with / and backward with ? .
It's always useful to jump back to where you were, as well, which is easily enough
done with two backticks, or gi to go to the last place you inserted text. If you
like, you can even go back and forth through your entire change list of positions with
g; and g, .
Moving one character at a time
Similarly, moving one character at a time with h and l is often a
waste when you have t and f :
t<char> -- Move forward until the next occurrence of the
character.
f<char> -- Move forward over the next occurrence of the
character.
T<char> -- Move backward until the previous occurrence of the
character.
F<char> -- Move backward over the previous occurrence of the
character.
Moving wordwise with w , W , b , B ,
e , and E is better, too. Again, searching to navigate is good here,
and don't forget you can yank , delete or change forward or backward
to a search result:
Don't bother typing it, or yanking/pasting it; just use * or # .
It's dizzying how much faster this feels when you use it enough for it to become
automatic.
Deleting, then inserting
Deleting text with intent to replace it by entering insert mode immediately afterward isn't
necessary:
d2wi
It's quicker and tidier to use c for change:
c2w
This has the added benefit of making the entire operation repeatable with the .
command.
Using the arrow keys
Vim lets you use the arrow keys to move around in both insert and normal mode, but once
you're used to using hjkl to navigate, moving to the arrow keys to move around in
text feels clumsy; you should be able to spend the vast majority of a Vim session with your
hands firmly centered around home row . Similarly, while the Home and End
keys work the same way they do in most editors, there's no particular reason to use them when
functional equivalents are closer to home in ^ and $ .
So wean yourself off the arrow keys, by the simple expedient of disabling them entirely, at
least temporarily:
The benefits of sticking to home row aren't simply in speed; it feels nicer to be
able to rest your wrists in front of the keyboard and not have to move them too far, and for
some people it has even helped prevent
repetitive strain injury .
Moving in insert mode
There's an additional benefit to the above in that it will ease you into thinking less about
insert mode as a mode in which you move around; that's what normal mode is for. You should, in
general, spend as little time in insert mode as possible. When you want to move, you'll get in
the habit of leaving insert mode, and moving around far more efficiently in normal mode
instead. This distinction also helps to keep your insert operations more atomic , and
hence more useful to repeat.
Moving to Escape
The Escape key on modern keyboards is a lot further from home row than it was on Bill Joy's
keyboard back when he designed vi. Hitting Escape is usually unnecessary; Ctrl+[ is a lot
closer, and more comfortable. It doesn't take long using this combination instead to make
reaching for Escape as you did when you were a newbie feel very awkward. You might also
consider mapping the otherwise pretty useless Caps Lock key to be another Escape key in your
operating system, or even mapping uncommon key combinations like jj to Escape. I
feel this is a bit drastic, but it works well for a lot of people:
inoremap jj <Esc>
Moving to the start or end of the line, then inserting
Just use I and A . Again, these make the action repeatable for
other lines which might need the same operation.
Entering insert mode, then opening a new
line
Just use o and O to open a new line below and above respectively,
and enter insert mode on it at the same time.
Entering insert mode to delete text
This is a pretty obvious contradiction. Instead, delete the text by moving to it and using
d with an appropriate motion or text object. Again, this is repeatable, and means
you're not holding down Backspace. In general, if you're holding down a key in Vim, there's
probably a faster way.
Repeating commands or searches
Just type @: for commands or n / N for searches; Vim
doesn't forget what your last search was as soon as you stop flicking through results. If it
wasn't your most recent command or search but it's definitely in your history, just type
q: or q/ , find it in the list , and hit
Enter.
Repeating substitutions
Just type & to repeat the last substitution on the current line. You can
repeat it on all lines by typing g& .
Repeating macro calls
Just type @@ .
These are really only just a few of the common traps to avoid to increase your speed and
general efficiency with the editor without requiring plugins or substantial remappings. Check
out the Vim Tips wiki for
some other really helpful examples.
While Vim's core is
very stable, problems can come about when extending the editor with plugins, particularly if
there are a high number of them or if they're buggy or not very well written. While Vim offers
a number of ways to keep scripts' behaviours isolated from one another, it may happen that you
find Vim behaving in an unexpected way that you can't quite pin down. There are a few very good
approaches to figuring this out. List your scripts
First of all, it helps to get a handle on what exactly you've got loaded during your Vim
sessions. You can do this with the :scriptnames command:
This list appears in the order in which the files were loaded, which might give you a
starting point for figuring out where the problem lies.
Update your plugins
Check the documentation, release logs, known problems, and in particular the website of your
chosen plugins to see if there are any recent updates to them. If they're hosted on GitHub,
pull down the most recent versions.
Start with no plugins
You can start Vim with no plugins, in a pristine state that doesn't source any
vimrc files from your system or home directories, to figure out if the behaviour
you're observing still occurs with no plugins at all installed. This is done by calling Vim
with the -u and -U options, which normally specify the path to a
custom location for vimrc and gvimrc files respectively, with the
special parameter of NONE :
$ vim -u NONE -U NONE
Vim will open and you'll see the usual blue tildes for opening a line and Vim's opening
splash screen, having completely ignored your laborious setup.
This done, you can source plugins individually until you notice the problem starts
happening, by a process of elimination:
If Vim was compiled with the +startuptime feature, you can also pass the
--startuptime flag to it with a filename argument, and it will save a verbose log
of its startup procedure to that file for you to inspect:
$ vim +q --startuptime startuptime.txt
$ vim startuptime.txt
There's way more information in here than you're ever likely to need, but in the case of a
buggy setup or unacceptably slow startup time, it's very useful for diagnosing the bottleneck
in your setup.
"... Brief: Looking for best programming editors in Linux? Here's a list of best code editors for Linux. The best part is that all of them are open source code editors. ..."
Brief: Looking for best programming editors in Linux? Here's a list of
best code editors for Linux. The best part is that all of them are open source code
editors.
If you ask the old school Linux users, their answer
would be Vi, Vim, Emacs, Nano etc. But I am not talking about them. I am going to
talk about new age, cutting edge, great looking, sleek and yet powerful, feature-rich
best open source code editors for Linux
that would enhance your
programming experience.
Best modern Open Source editors for Linux
I use Ubuntu as my main desktop and hence I have
provided installation instructions for Ubuntu based distributions. But this doesn't
make this list as
best code editors for Ubuntu
because the list is
apt for any Linux distribution. Just to add, the list is not in any particular
priority order.
1. Brackets
Brackets
is an open source code editor from
Adobe
. Brackets focuses exclusively on the needs of web designers with built-in
support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It is lightweight and yet powerful. It provides
you with inline editing and live preview. There are plenty of plugins available to
further enhance your experience with Brackets.
Some of the main features of Brackets code editor are:
Inline editing
Live preview
Preprocessor Support
Built-in extension manager
Cross-platform
You can get the source code as well as binaries for
Linux, OS X and Windows on its website.
Atom
is another modern and sleek looking open source editor for programmers. Atom
is developed by Github and promoted as a "hackable text editor for the 21st century".
The looks of Atom resembles a lot like Sublime Text editor, a hugely popular but
closed source text editors among programmers.
Some of the main features of Atom code editor are:
Easily extendible
Built-in package manager with a huge number of plugins available
Smart autocompletion
Split windows
Cross-platform
Embedded Git control
Command palette support
Looks customization
Atom has recently released .deb and .rpm packages so
that one can easily install Atom in Debian and Fedora based Linux distributions. Of
course, its source code is available as well.
Flaunted as "the next generation code editor",
Light Table
is another modern looking, underrated yet feature-rich open source
code editor which is more of an IDE than a mere text editor.
There are numerous extensions available to enhance its
capabilities. Inline evaluation is what you would love in it. You have to use it to
believe how useful Light Table actually is.
Some of the main features of Light Table are:
Built-in extension manager
Inline evaluation obviates the need for printing to screen as you can evaluate
the code in the editor live
'Watches' feature lets you see your code running live
Cross-platform
If you are using Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, then
installing Light Table is easier
for you. However, officially, Light Table
doesn't provide any packages. You have to build it yourself.
Visual Studio Code is a popular code editor from Microsoft. Now don't push the
panic button just yet. Visual Studio Code is completely open source.
In fact, Visual Studio Code was among the first few 'peace offering' from
Microsoft to Linux and Open Source world. Microsoft has open sourced a number of its
tools after that. Of course, that doesn't include Microsoft Office.
Visual Studio Code is an excellent code editor, especially for web development. It
is lightweight as well. Some of the other main features are:
Intellisense provides useful hints and auto-completion features
Built-in Git support
Built-in extension manager with plenty of extensions available to download
Integrated terminal
Custom snippet support
Debugging tools
Support for a huge number of programming languages
Cross-platform
You can download packages for Ubuntu and Fedora from its website:
No, we are not limited to just four code editors in
Linux. The list was about modern editors for programmers. Of course, you have plenty
of other options such as
Notepad++ alternative Notepadqq
or
SciTE
and many more. So, among these four, which one is your favorite code editor
for Linux?
47
comments
9:26 pm
March 20, 2017
Ced
I'm going to try the Lime Text
6:41 am
March 8, 2017
Casper
How to install Lime Text?
6:43 am
March 7, 2017
Himanshu Shekhar
Spacemacs
12:00 pm
July 17, 2016
Marco Czen
Do look at Visual Studio Code a well
11:08 pm
May 23, 2016
Jesse Boyd
How could you not mention Eclipse or Spring Tool Suite for code
editing? These are software developer industry standard and have
linux versions.
7:22 pm
May 10, 2017
Koszko
He didn't mention them because they're IDEs and this
article is about code editors only.
12:31 pm
October 6, 2017
Thor
That's a bit of a stretch. VS Code can initiate
compilation and solve references just as Atom can.
There's no differencw othwr than the language used
to write the applications. The only reason is these
are mosly scripted languages used to write the
editors/IDEs, while better IDEs are written in C++
or Java.
He still should have included both Eclipse anf
the community editions of the JetBrains tools.
9:52 am
February 24, 2016
Anonymous
Any article on modern open source editors for linux that doesn't
mention Kate is not worth reading.
3:05 am
April 4, 2016
Mauricio Martínez Garcia
emacs for ever
3:43 pm
February 17, 2016
saprative
vim
9:24 am
February 17, 2016
sanjay tharagesh
I am new to linux and using ubuntu right now. Its very annoying
to write a c++ program in an text editor and then run it on
terminal and also It is difficult to edit my program by this
way.In windows i used to do the program with turbo c++, its easy
to handle and to compile and run the program. Can you suggest me
a c++ editor for ubuntu, which will be easy to compile and run
the programs easily.I also tried komodo edit but i dont know how
to compile and run the program.
Note In the preceding example, you can also achieve the same result with :wa ( :h :wa ), which effectively allows you to write only the buffers that have been changed in some way.
Edit
Posted in Vim Tagged command line , option , splits , start , tabs
