Editors (Vim)

Philosophy#

• Vim interface itself is a programming language
• Vim avoids the use of the mouse

Modal Editing#

Different Modes of Vim#

Keystrokes have different meanings in different modes

• Normal: Moving around a file and making edits <ESC>
• Insert: For inserting text i
• Replace: for replacing text R
• Visual: for selecting blocks of text <Ctrl-v>
• Command-line: for running a command :

Basics#

Buffers, tabs, windows#

• Buffers: a set of open files
• Tabs: a vim session has a number of tabs
• Windows: Each tab has a number of windows, each window shows a single buffer. Windows are merely views. :sp

Command-line#

• :qa Close all of the open windows

• :e {name of open file} Open file for editing

• :ls Show open buffers

• :help {topic} open help instructions

• :s/old/new substitute "old" by "new" in this line :#,#s/old/new/g #,# are the line numbers

  %s/old/new/g substitute in the whole file %s/old/new/gc with a prompt about whether to substitute

• :r FILE insert the content of FILE in the current line :r !ls insert the output of ls

Vim's interface is a programming language#

Movements (Nouns)#

• Basic movements: hjkl (left, down, up, right)
• Words: w (next word) b (beginning of word) e (end of word)
• Lines: 0 (beginning of the file) ^ (first non-blank character) $ (end of line)
• Screen: H (top of the screen) M (middle of the screen) L (bottom of the screen)
• Scroll: Ctrl+u (up) Ctrl+d (down)
• File: gg (beginning of file) G (end of file) {line number}G go to a specific line
• Line numbers: :{number}
• Find: f(char) t(char) F(char) T(char) to find a character on the current line. , or ; to navigating matches back and forth
• Search: /{regex}, n or N to navigate matches back and forth
• %: swtich between '[' and ']' or '(' and ')' back and forth.
• /str find str in the file, n can move to the next match

Selection#

• Visual :v
• Visual line: V
• Visual Block: Ctrl-v

Edits (Verbs)#

• o / O: insert line below / above
• d(movement): dw (delete the word) d0 (delete to the beginning of the line) dgg (delete to the beginning of the file)
• c(movement): change, delete and enter the insert mode cw (change a word)
• dd delete the line cc delete the line and insert something
• x delete a character r(char) delete the character and replace with (char) s delete and enter the insert mode
• In visual mode, select something and d will delete it, c will change it
• u undo Ctrl-r redo
• y(movement) copy something specified by (movement) y copies the line y1w copies one word
• p to paste
• ~ flip the case of a character
• . repeat the previous edit operation

Counts: Combine nouns and verbs with counts#

• 3w move 3 words forward
• 5j moves 5 lines down
• 7dw delete 7 words

Modifiers#

i means "inside", a means "around"

• ci( change the contents inside the current pair of parentheses
• da' delete a single-quoted string, including the single quotes