This article needs polish, do not truely trust it!

Vim is so-called the god of editors, but not so friendly to new users. Today we will cover some techniques and trick of vim, for further reference.

General Pattern

A vim operation consists of three parts, namely

[OPERATOR][NUMBER][MOTION]

where

  • OPERATOR - what you want to do? This mainly covers copy, cut, paste, etc.
  • NUMBER - how many times do you want? It’s nothing but repeating the operation NUMBER times, and it’s optional.
  • MOTION - where do you want to go? This point out the scope where the OPERATOR applies.

Note: order does not matter sometimes.

Operators

Copy, Cut, Paste

  • v - visual mode, now you can select what you want
  • V - visual in line, this is extremely useful when you want to copy a line, just V+y!
  • y - yank, like Ctrl+C, copy the selected text to clipboard (")
    • yy: copy current line
    • 5yy: copy 5 lines below
    • y+MOTION: copy the motion scope
      • y0: copy from here to BOL (beginning of line)
      • y$: copy from here to EOL
      • y4G: copy from here to line 4
      • y?bar: copy from here to previous occurrence of bar
  • d - delete & yank, not only delete, but also yank
  • p - paste after the cursor
  • P - paste before the cursor

Edit

  • i - insert
  • a - insert after the cursor
  • o - insert a line below and insert
  • O - insert a line above and insert
  • r - replace, replace the character inplace
  • x - delete current character
  • s - delete the character and insert
  • u - recall the last command
  • ^r - recall the last recall, namely redo
  • . - repeat the last command

Note: all deleted things were automatically yanked in buffers, i.e., register "

Motions

Basic

  • h - move left
  • l - move right
  • j - move down
  • k - move up

    Note: view (h, l) and (j, k) as pairs

  • G - jump to EOF (end of file)
  • gg - jump to BOF
  • x + (gg | G) - jump to line x (must be a valid line number)

Some additional movements:

  • w - next word, points to the first letter
  • b - back, previous word, points to the first letter
  • e - end, jump to the end of the word
  • % - find the bracket matches (( ),{ }, [ ]…)
  • ^e - scroll down
  • ^y - scroll up
  • ^d - half-screen down
  • ^u - half-screen up
  • * - jump to next occurrence of current word
  • # - jump to previous occurrence of current word

Note: view (w, b) as a pair

Inline movement

  • ^: jump to the first character which is not a blank (space, tab, \n, \r)
  • g_: jump to the last character which isn’t a blank
  • 0: jump to the beginning
  • $: jump to the end
  • fx: find next x in current line

    Note: you can use ;(alongside) and ,(reverse side) to repeat this in two directions

  • Fx: find previous x in current line

    Note: same rules can be applied

  • tx: find next x and move 1 backward
  • Tx: find previous x and move 1 backward

Image adapted from REF3

Commands

Search & Replace

  • /keyword - search keyword after the cursor
  • ?keyword - search keyword before the cursor

    Note: use n(search next) or N(search previous) for quick search

  • :{search_scope}s/{target}/{replace}/{replace_flag} - replace {target} to {replace}
    • s stands for substitute.
    • :%s/a/b/g: global (%) search a, replace it to b at every (g) occurrence
    • :%s/a/b/gc: interact with every replace

More detail

It has a general pattern:

:[range]s/from/to/[flags]

The default range is current line. See some examples:

  • :1,10s/from/to - search and replace between line 1 and 10 (included)
  • :10s/from/to/ - search and replace only in line 10
  • :%s/from/to/ - in global scope

flags can be

  • g: replace all matches in whole line w/o confirmation
  • c: confirm before replace
  • i: ignore lower/upper case
  • e: ignore error

Note that flags can be combined together, e.g., :%s/from/to/gc means search and replace in global and ask for confirmation before each replacement.

Use regular expression

Meta characterExplanation
.Matches any character
[abc]Matches any char from the list
[^abc]Matches any char except from the list
\dMatches numers == [0-9]
\DOpposite to above == [^0-9]
\xMatches hex numbers == [0-9A-Fa-f]
\XOpposite to above == [^0-9A-Fa-f]
\lMatches lower case letters == [a-z]
\Lopposite to above == [^a-z]
\uMatches upper case letters == [A-Z]
\UOpposite to above == [^A-Z]
\wMatches alphanumeric chars == [0-9A-Za-z_]
\WOpposite to above == [^0-9A-Za-z_]
\tMatches <TAB>
\sMatches space == [\t]
\SOpposite to above

Special characters need to be escaped. Some of them are .[]\*/, if you want to match some of them, put the backslash “" ahead. For example: * -> \*.

There are also some special form to express how much do you expect to match the specific pattern.

Meta charExplanation
*match >= 0 times
\+match >= 1 times
\?match 0 or 1 time
\{n,m}match n<=x<=m times
\{n}match n times
\{n,}match >= n times
\{,m}match <= m times

Also, some postional characters.

Meta charExplanation
$end of line
^beginning of line
\<beginning of word
\>end of word

Some examples:

  • remove the spaces of eol: %s/\s+$//g
  • remove spaces of bol: %s/^\s*// or %s/^ *//
  • delete empty line: %s/^$// or g/^$/d
  • delete lines with <space> or <tab> as beginning: %s/^[ |\t]*$// or g/^[ |\t]*$/d

Note that pattern in regex scoped by \(<pattern>\) can be refered as \1, \2, etc. in the latter statement. For example, I want to replace every “abc…xyz” to “xyz…abc”, just write like this

%s/\(abc\)\(.*\)\(xyz\)/\3\2\1/g

Advanced Tricks

Auto Complete

In insert mode, press ^p, vim will give you a list of all words you have typed, kind of auto complete.

Image adapted from REF3

Markers

  • :marks - list of marks
  • mk - mark current position (can use a-z)

    also known as :mark k

  • 'k - move to mark k
  • d'k - delete from current position to mark k
  • 'a-z - same file
  • 'A-Z - between files

A straight tick ' refers to the line, use a backtick ` to also include the column, see [here][foo].

It seems that the marker . will mark the last edit position, so if you open your last edited file again, `. will take you to that position!

Block Editing

One of the magic of vim is block editing. Just press ^V to enter block mode. Then select some block you are interested, then make some modifications. Finally press Esc, then those modifications you have just made will be applied onto every line of the block.

See this magic:

  1. ^ jump to BOL
  2. ^V enter block mode
  3. 4j move 4 lines down
  4. I enter insert mode and add something
  5. Esc to see the effect

Image adapted from REF3

Additionally, you can

  1. ^v/v/V enter visual mode
  2. J joint them into one line
  3. < or > modify indents
  4. = auto indent (extremely powerful?)

Image adapted from REF3

or

  1. ^v enter block mode
  2. select some line
  3. $ jump to EOL
  4. A append something
  5. Esc see the effect

Image adapted from REF3

Macro Recording

Press qx, where x is the macro name, will enter macro recording mode, all actions will be recorded, just like a tape recorder. If you don’t want to record anymore, press q to stop recording.

To replay the record, press @x. Moreover, @@ will replay the last recorded macro.

Summarization:

qa - record macro a q - stop recording macro @a - run macro a @@ - rerun last run macro

Clipboard

Vim provides 12 clipboards (registers): 0, 1, 2 .. 9, a, ". If your vim support system clipboard, there will be two additional register: + and *. Use :reg to see what are in your registers.

For X11 systems, things selected or highlighted will be saved in register *, while things yanked or cutted will be saved in register +.

To see whether your vim support system clipboard, type $ vim --version

In general, all your copy and paste operations are performed at register " by default. To use other register, add a prefix "6 to your yank or paste commands. For example:

1
2
3

"6p		" put the buffer in register 6 to file
"8yy		" yank current line to register 8
:put {reg}	" put things in {reg} to file, <=> "{reg}p

Multi-file

  • :e <file> - edit <file> in new buffer
  • bnext - go to the next buffer
  • bprev - go previous
  • bd - delete a buffer (close a file)
  • ls - list all open buffers

Multi-window

  • :sp <file> - split horizontally and open <file>
  • :vsp - split vertically and open filename optionally, same file by default
  • ^w + h/j/k/l - focus left/down/up/right window
  • :close - close current window (buffer & file)

Multi-tab

  • tabnew <file> - open <file> in new tab, empty file by default
  • gt or :tabnext - move to the next tab
  • gT or :tabprev - move to previous
  • <num>gt - move to tab number <num>
  • :tabclose - close the current tab (windows & files)
  • :tabonly - close all tabs except for the current one
  • :tabdo <cmd> - apply the <cmd> to all tabs

    tabdo q will close all tabs

Spell Check

  • :set spell - toggle on spell checker
  • :set nospell - toggle off spell checker
  • ]s - move to next mistake
  • [s - move tp previous mistake
  • z= - choose an alternative
  • zg - add to userdict
  • zw - remove from userdict

Reference

  1. Vim 操作
  2. 在 Vim 中优雅地查找和替换
  3. 简明 Vim 练级攻略
  4. Vim Cheat Sheet
  5. Vim cheatsheet
  6. Vim 查找替换及正则表达式的使用