You still can’t remember all of those weird Vim commands.
How to move around
| Command |
Move to … |
b |
previous word |
w |
next word |
^ |
beginning of text in line |
$ |
end of line |
| ⌃ ctrlB |
page up |
| ⌃ ctrlF |
page down |
1G |
beginning of file |
G |
end of file |
n G |
line number n |
How to delete stuff
| Command |
Delete … |
dd |
whole line |
n dd |
n lines |
d$ |
from cursor until end of line |
How to copy/cut/paste
| Command |
Action |
v |
start selecting characters, or |
V |
start selecting lines, |
| |
… move around as needed, then … |
y |
copy, or |
d |
cut, |
| |
… move around as needed, and finally … |
P |
paste before the cursor |
How to search/replace
| Command |
Action |
/ regex ⏎ return |
search regex |
/ ⏎ return |
search again |
:%s/ regex / str /gc ⏎ return |
replace all regex with str (asks to confirm) |
:%s/\s\+//g ⏎ return |
kill all trailing spaces |
: ↑/↓ |
browse recent commands |
And, of course, vim also made up its own regex syntax.
| Regex command |
Matches … |
. |
any character |
a \? |
0 or 1 times a |
a * |
0 or more times a |
a \+ |
1 or more times a |
a \{-} |
0 or more times a non-greedily |
a \{-1,} |
1 or more times a non-greedily |
\( regex \) |
regex and stores it in a group |
\n |
new line character |
In the replacement text
| Escape sequence |
Expands to … |
\0 |
text matched |
\1, \2, etc. |
first, second, etc. group matched |
\r |
new line character (why not \n? don’t ask) |
How to do other useful stuff
| Command |
Action |
u |
undo |
| ⌃ ctrlR |
redo |
>> |
indent line |
num >> |
indent num lines |
<< |
unindent line |
num << |
unindent num lines |
Useful config settings
You usually put these in your ~/.vimrc file.
syntax on " enable syntax highlighting
set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab " indent with two spaces (no tabs)
set colorcolumn=80 " highlight column at the 80 characters mark
