Mastering Vim Quickly

Don't wish Vim was easier, wish you were better!

• Skills take time and effort to master.
• May things aren't fun until you're good at them.
• What's important is that you need to understand a few critically important concepts that provide most of the value.

"Learning to drive a car takes effort. Is that a reason to keep driving your bicycle? No, you realize you need to invest time to learn a skill. Text editing isn't different. You need to learn new commands and turn them into a habit."

The Art of Learning

• Pareto principle
  • around 80% of what you've doe today, has been pretty much worthless to your bottom line.
• Mini habits
  • The biggest barrier to forming ne habits is usually the fact that it takes discipline to keep doing something you don't really feel like doing.
• 1% improvement per day

Opening files

Method 1 - Open file from terminal

$ vim /etc/passwd

Method 2 - Open file from Vim

$ vim

:e /etc/passwd

Jumping around the file

Command	Description
gg	Go to the top of the file
G	Go to the bottom of the file
{	Go to the beginning of current paragraph
}	Go to end of current paragraph
%	Go to the matching pair of (), [], {}
50%	Go to line at the 50% of the file
:NUM	Go to line NUM. :28 jumps to line 28

Navigating Inside the window

Key	Description
H	Move Cursor to first (highest) line in current window.
L	Move Curson to the lowest line of current window.
M	Move cursor to the middle of the current window.

Tip:

While in Insert Mode, you can press Ctrl-o to get back to Normal mode and execute one command, after which you'll be automatically returned to Insert mode.

For example: You could press Ctrl-o F m to move to previous m character and get to Insert mode.

Searching for the current word

Key	Description
*	search forwards for the next occurrence of that word.
#	search backwards for the under your cursor.

Search History

Key	Description
/pattern	Search a word forward.
?pattern	Search a word backword.
5/pattern	Search a word and jumps to the fifth occurence.

• press / and hit Enter - an empty pattern will repeat last search

Key	Description
Ctrl-o	Jump back to previous position
Ctrl-i	Jump forward to previous position

File Manager in Vim

Command	Description
:Ex	open current directory.
:Ex <dir>	open specified directory <dir>.
:Sex	open current directory in horizontal split window.
:Vex	open current directory in vertical split window.
:Tex	open current directory in a new tab.
:Lex	open current directory in vertical split window on the left.

Good Way to Split Window

:40vs +Ex

Opens current directory with width of 40 columns.

Changing View types in Explorer

Hit i to cycle through the view type. There are four of them: thin, long, wide and tree.

Changing how files are opened

$ vim /home/jole

key	Description
<Enter>	Opens the file under the cursor, or enters the directory
D	deletes the file under the cursor
R	renames the file under the cursor
X	executes the file under the cursor
%	Creates a new file in the directory

Undo and Redo

Command	Description
:earlier 2d	Undo the changes in last two days
:ea 3h	Undo changes in last three hours
:ea 1m	Undo changes in last one minute
:later 5m	Redo all the changes in last 5 minutes
:lat 15s	Redo all the changes in last 15 seconds
earlier 3f	Undo last three file states (last three buffer writes)

Do you speak Vim?

Vim Language Elements

• Verbs
• Modifiers
• Nouns

Powerless Verbs

• They can only apply to a single character

Key	Description
x	delete character under the cursor to the right
X	delete character under the cursor to the left
r	replace character under the cursor with another character
s	delete character under the cursor and enter the Insert mode

Powerful Verbs

Note: These commands are usually known as operator commands or operators

Key	Description
y	yank (copy)
c	change
d	delete
v	visually select (not really a verb, but used with verbs)

Modifiers

• Modifiers are used right before nouns

Key	Description
i	inner (inside)
a	around
NUM	number (e.g.: 1, 2, 10)
t	searches for something and stops before it (search until)
/	find a string (literal or regular expression)

Nouns

• In English, nouns can be objects you do something to. It's th same in Vim. Here are the most important ones:

key	Description
w, W	start of next word or Word
b, B	start of previous word or WORD (start of word before)
e, E	end of word or WORD
s	sentence
p	paragraph
t	tag (in context of HTML/XML)
b	block (in context of programming)
$	end of line
^, 0	start of line

• These can be expanded and give you more power:

key	Description
aw	a (complete) word
as	a (complete) sentence
ap	a (complete) paragraph
iw	inner word
is	inner sentence
ip	inner paragraph

The "Dot" Command

• Hitting . in Normal mode will repeat the last native Vim command you've executed
• execute 4. instead of pressing ....

Substitution

Ranges

Example	Description
:s/bad/good/g	changes all words bad to good in the current line
:6,11s/bad/good/g	makes the same change, but in lines 6 to 11, including 6 and 11
:%s/bad/good/g	makes the same change in entire file

Search and replace

:[range]/[old value]/[new value]/[flag]

flags	Description
c	to confirm each substitution
g	to replace all occurences in the line
i	ingnore case for the pattern
I	don't ignore case for the pattern

:CtrlP plugin

Official Guide

Key	Description
:CtrlP	invoke find file mode