Efficient Editing With vim

This article has been translated into French by Geoffrey Bachelet. You can read the French version here: L'édition efficace avec vim.

"To me, vi is Zen.
To use vi is to practice zen.
Every command is a koan.
Profound to the user,
unintelligible to the uninitiated.
You discover truth every time you use it."
--reddy@lion.austin.com

This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of vim -- insert mode, command mode, loading and saving files, etc. It is intended to help vi novices develop their skills so that they can use vi efficiently.

In this tutorial, <C-X> means Ctrl-X -- that is, hold down the Ctrl key and press X. You can get help on most of the commands used here by typing :help command in vim, where command is what you need help on.

Moving efficiently

Stay out of insert mode

In general, you want to spend as little of your time in vim's insert mode as possible, because in that mode it acts like a dumb editor. This is why most vim novices spend so much time in insert mode -- it makes vim easy to use. But vim's real power lies in command mode! You'll find that the better you know vim, the less time you will spend in insert mode.

Use h, j, k, and l

The first step to efficient editing in vim is to wean yourself from the arrow keys. One of the the advantages of vim's modal design is that you do not need to constantly move your hands back and forth between the arrow keys and the letter keys; when you are in command mode, the letters h, j, k and l correspond to the directions left, down, up, and right, respectively. It takes some practice to get used to, but you will notice the speed difference once you're used to it.

When you are editing e-mail or other paragraph-formatted text, you might notice that the direction keys skip more lines than you expect. This is because your paragraphs appear as one long line to vim. Type g before h, j, k or l to move by screen lines instead of virtual lines.

Use motions to move the cursor in the current line

Most editors have only simple commands for moving the cursor (left, up, right, down, to beginning/end of line, etc). vim has very advanced commands for moving the cursor; these commands are referred to as motions. When the cursor moves from one point in the text to another, the text between the points (and including the points themselves) is considered to be "moved over." (This will be important later.)

Here are a few of the more useful motions:

Move efficiently through the file

vim has many commands that can send you to where you want to go in your file -- there's rarely a need to scroll manually through it. The below keystrokes are not technically motions, since they move around in the file instead of in a particular line.

Typing efficiently

Use keyword completion

vim has a very nice keyword completion system. This means that you can type part of a long word, press a key, and have vim finish the word for you. For instance, if you have a variable called iAmALongAndAwkwardVarName somewhere in your code, you probably don't want to type the whole thing in every time you use it.

To use keyword completion, just type the first few letters of the string (e.g. iAmAL) and press <C-N> (that means hold down Ctrl and type N) or <C-P>. If vim doesn't give you the word you want at first, keep trying -- vim will cycle through all completions it can find.

Enter insert mode intelligently

Most users new to vim get into insert mode by typing i. This works, but it's often pretty inefficient, since vi has a host of commands that leave the editor in insert mode. Here are some of the more popular ones:

Moving blocks of text efficiently

Use visual selections and the appropriate selection mode

Unlike the original vi, vim allows you to highlight text and perform operations on it. There are three main visual selection modes (that is, text highlighting modes). These modes are as follows:

All the usual cusor movement keys apply -- so, for instance, vwww would go into visual selection mode and highlight the next three words. Vjj would go into linewise visual selection mode and highlight the current line and the two lines below it.

Cutting and copying from visual selections

Once you have a highlighted selection, you probably want to do something with it. Some of the more useful commands you can give when an area of text is highlighted:

Cutting and copying from non-visual selections

If you know exactly what you want to copy or cut, you can do it without entering visual mode. This saves time.

Pasting

Pasting is easy. Put the cursor where you want the pasted text and type p.

Using multiple clipboards

Most editors have a single clipboard. vim has many more; clipboards in vim are called registers. You can list all the currently defined registers and their contents by typing :reg. Typically, you'll be using the lowercase letter registers; the others are used for various internal vim purposes and are only occasionally helpful.

To use a specific register for a copy or paste operation, simply type "a before the command for the operation, where a is the register you want to use.

For example, to copy the current line into register k, you could type "kyy. (You could also type V"ky. Why would that work?). That line would stay in register k until you specifically copied something else into register k. You would then use "kp to paste the text from register k.

Avoiding repetition

The amazing . command

In vi, typing . (a period) will repeat the last command you gave. For instance, if your last command was dw (delete word), vi will delete another word.

Using counts

Counts are one of the most powerful and time-saving features of vim. Any command can be preceded by a number. The number will tell vim how many times to execute the command. Here are a few examples:

3j will move the cursor down three lines.

10dd will delete ten lines.

y3"e; will yank (copy) text from the cursor to the third quotation mark after the cursor on the current line. Counts are useful to extend the range of a motion in this manner.

Recording macros

Occasionally, you'll find yourself doing the same thing over and over to blocks of text in your document. vim will let you record an ad-hoc macro to perform the operation.

Keep in mind that macros just record your keystrokes and play them back; they are not magic. Recording macros is almost an art form because there are so many commands that accomplish a given task in vim, and you must carefully select the commands you use while your macro is recording so that they will work in all the places you plan to execute the macro.

Writing code in vim

vim is an excellent editor for source code because it has many features that are specifically designed to help programmers. Here are a few of the more handy ones: