My favorite VIM tricks

Abstract

This document collects some of my favorite tricks with the VIM text editor. If you are an advanced VIM user, you are most likely to know most or all of them already.

I am using VIM as a console application without mouse features enabled. Some of the tricks are thus for interfacing with the GUI world. I know there is mouse support in VIM and I also know there is gvim, but I still think I am faster with my approach because having VIM integrate natively into whatever Terminal window I am currently in is an important feature I use a lot.

Top Tricks

Input	Mode	Effect
`o`	Normal	Open a new line after the current one and switch to insert mode.
`0`	Normal	Move to begin of line. Easier to type than `^`
`xp`	Normal	Exchange character with the one behind it. Fix fat-fingered typos.
`G`	Normal	Move to end of file
`gg`	Normal	Move to begin of file
`mx`	Normal	Mark the current cursor position with `x`
`'x`	Normal	Jump back to mark `x`
`''`	Normal	Jump back to previous jump position
`ci{`	Normal	Remove text inside the current curly braces and enter insert mode.
CTRL-R 0	Ex/Insert	Recall register value. You can use this in `/` searches, too!
`:!cmd`	Ex/Visual	Invoke command. In visual mode: Filter selection through command.
		Very nice for `:!sort` on a selection or interacting with external
		clipboard programs the Q&D way
`:set nonumber`	Ex	Temporarily disable line numbers for Q&D copy+paste via terminal
`*`	Normal	Search forward for word under cursor.
`#`	Normal	Search backward for word under cursor.
`J`	Normal	Merge two subsequent lines.
`n`	Normal	Move to next search result
`N`	Normal	Move to preceding search result
CTRL-V	Normal	Enter block visual mode. Beware that a `y` and `p` will block-paste!
`ZZ`	Normal	Save and Exit. Easier to type than `:wq`
`ZQ`	Normal	Discard and Exit. Easier to type than `:q!`
`:tabe .`	Ex	Open directory browser in new tab and VIM’s PWD
`:tabe %:h`	Ex	Open directory browser in new tab and current file’s directory
`:e %:h/file`	Ex	Replace currently shown file by another one from same directory
`/regex`	Normal	Search
`:%s/se/re/g`	Ex	Replace all occurrences of `se` with `re` in current file
`:!mousepad %`	Ex	Open current file in mousepad (think GUI copy&paste operations)
`:syntax off`	Ex	Temporarily disable syntax highlighting
`:e`	Ex	Reload file
`:next`, `:prev`	Ex	Navigate buffers (for minimalist `vi` w/o tabbing/windowing).

A nice trick for the BASH-shell is set -o vi which enables a sort of normal mode for command line prompts reachable with [ESC]. You can then navigate the history with J/K and search it with / and ?. If you press v for visual mode, it will open the currently typed in command line in VIM and execute it as soon as you save&exit VIM.

Useful Plugins

I use few plugins because VIM is already very powerful by itself and some problems solved by plugins are better solved by learning the respective native VIM functionality.

I’ve found the following plugins to be useful for certain special purposes:

DrawIt! ASCII Drawing Plugin

https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40

The nice thing about this plugin is that it can newly do UTF-8 lines, too. It follows a multi-cursor input paradigm where you can use the arrow keys to draw lines and H/J/K/L keys to move around (all in normal mode).

vim-niji: Yet another rainbow parentheses plugin

https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4580

This plugin does syntax highlighting for the myriads of nested parentheses one may face when doing anything Lisp/Scheme related.

Tricks to be mastered

I think these are useful tricks to, but I use them far too rarely :)

The power of .
Jump Cursor to bottom, middle, top
Scroll current line to bottom, middle, top: zb, zz, zt
Scroll pages
Wider movements than W and B

VIM is not only a text editor. There is also an ecosystem of applications adhering to the H/J/K/L movement keys which go well with VIM. Here are some of my favorite VIM-like programs:

vifm(1) – File manager
sc-im – Spreadsheet calculator
zathura(1) – PDF viewer
ncdu(1) – TUI du alternative
i3(1) – Tiling Window Manager. It is not very VIM-ish, but it does support modes and can be configured to use H/J/K/L making it blend in seamlessly.