A Great Vim Cheat Sheet

 

Cursor movement (Inside command/normal mode)

• w - jump by start of words (punctuation considered words)
• W - jump by words (spaces separate words)
• e - jump to end of words (punctuation considered words)
• E - jump to end of words (no punctuation)
• b - jump backward by words (punctuation considered words)
• B - jump backward by words (no punctuation)
• 0 - (zero) start of line
• ^ - first non-blank character of line (same as 0w)
• $ - end of line
• Advanced (in order of what I find most useful)
  • Ctrl+d - move down half a page
  • Ctrl+u - move up half a page
  • } - go forward by paragraph (the next blank line)
  • { - go backward by paragraph (the next blank line)
  • gg - go to the top of the page
  • G - go the bottom of the page
  • : [num] [enter] - Go to that line in the document
  • Searching
    • f [char] - Move to the next char on the current line after the cursor
    • F [char] - Move to the next char on the current line before the cursor
    • t [char] - Move to before the next char on the current line after the cursor
    • T [char] - Move to before the next char on the current line before the cursor
    • All these commands can be followed by ; (semicolon) to go to the next searched item, and , (comma) to go the previous searched item

Insert/Appending/Editing Text

• Results in Insert mode
  • i - start insert mode at cursor
  • I - insert at the beginning of the line
  • a - append after the cursor
  • A - append at the end of the line
  • o - open (append) blank line below current line (no need to press return)
  • O - open blank line above current line
  • cc - change (replace) an entire line
  • c [movement command] - change (replace) from the cursor to the move-to point.
  • ex. ce changes from the cursor to the end of the cursor word
• Esc or Ctrl+[ - exit insert mode
• r [char] - replace a single character with the specified char (does not use Insert mode)
• d - delete
  • d - [movement command] deletes from the cursor to the move-to point.
  • ex. de deletes from the cursor to the end of the current word
• dd - delete the current line
• Advanced
  • J - join line below to the current one

Marking text (visual mode)

• v - starts visual mode
  • From here you can move around as in normal mode (h, j, k, l etc.) and can then do a command (such as y, d, or c)
• V - starts linewise visual mode
• Ctrl+v - start visual block mode
• Esc or Ctrl+[ - exit visual mode
• Advanced
  • O - move to other corner of block
  • o - move to other end of marked area

Visual commands

Type any of these while some text is selected to apply the action

• y - yank (copy) marked text
• d - delete marked text
• c - delete the marked text and go into insert mode (like c does above)

Cut and Paste

• yy - yank (copy) a line
• p - put (paste) the clipboard after cursor
• P - put (paste) before cursor
• dd - delete (cut) a line
• x - delete (cut) current character
• X - delete previous character (like backspace)

Exiting

• :w - write (save) the file, but don’t exit
• :wq - write (save) and quit
• :q - quit (fails if anything has changed)
• :q! - quit and throw away changes

Search/Replace

• /pattern - search for pattern
• ?pattern - search backward for pattern
• n - repeat search in same direction
• N - repeat search in opposite direction
• :%s/old/new/g - replace all old with new throughout file (gn is better though)
• :%s/old/new/gc - replace all old with new throughout file with confirmations

Working with multiple files

• :e filename - Edit a file
• :tabe - Make a new tab
• gt - Go to the next tab
• gT - Go to the previous tab
• Advanced
  • :vsp - vertically split windows
  • ctrl+ws - Split windows horizontally
  • ctrl+wv - Split windows vertically
  • ctrl+ww - switch between windows
  • ctrl+wq - Quit a window

Marks

Marks allow you to jump to designated points in your code.

• m{a-z} - Set mark {a-z} at cursor position
• A capital mark {A-Z} sets a global mark and will work between files
• ‘{a-z} - move the cursor to the start of the line where the mark was set
• ‘’ - go back to the previous jump location

General

• u - undo
• Ctrl+r - redo
• . - repeat last command

Making Vim actually useful

Vim is quite unpleasant out of the box. For example, typing :w for every file save is awkward and copying and pasting to the system clipboard does not work. However, a few changes will get you much closer to the editor of your dreams.

.vimrc

• My .vimrc file has some pretty great ideas I haven’t seen elsewhere.
• This is a minimal vimrc that focuses on three priorities:
  • adding options that are strictly better (like more information showing in autocomplete)
  • more convenient keystrokes (like [space]w for write, instead of :w [enter])
  • a similar workflow to normal text editors (like enabling the mouse)

Installation

• Copy this to your home directory and restart Vim. Read through it to see what you can now do (like [space]w to save a file)
  • Mac users - making a hidden normal file is suprisingly tricky. Here’s one way:
    • in the command line, go to the home directory
    • type nano .vimrc
    • paste in the contents of the .vimrc file
    • ctrl+x, y, [enter] to save
• You should now be able to press [space]w in normal mode to save a file.
• [space]p should paste from the system clipboard (outside of Vim).
  • If you can’t paste, it’s probably because Vim was not built with the system clipboard option. To check, run vim --version and see if +clipboard exists. If it says -clipboard, you will not be able to copy from outside of Vim.
  • For Mac users, homebrew install Vim with the clipboard option. Install homebrew and then run brew install vim.
    • then move the old Vim binary: $ mv /usr/bin/vim /usr/bin/vimold
    • restart your terminal and you should see vim --version now with +clipboard

Plugins

• The easiest way to make Vim more powerful is to use Vintageous in Sublime Text (version 3). This gives you Vim mode inside Sublime. I suggest this (or a similar setup with the Atom editor) if you aren’t a Vim master. Check out Advanced Vim if you are.
• Vintageous is great, but I suggest you change a few settings to make it better.
  • Clone this repository to ~/.config/sublime-text-3/Packages/Vintageous, or similar. Then check out the “custom” branch.
    • Alternatively, you can get a more updated Vintageous version by cloning the official repository and then copying over this patch.
  • Change the user settings (User/Preferences.sublime-settings) to include:
    • "caret_style": "solid"
    • This will make the cursor not blink, like in Vim.
    • Sublime Text might freeze when you do this. It’s a bug; just restart Sublime Text after changing the file.
  • ctrl+r in Vim means “redo”. But there is a handy Ctrl + R shortcut in Sublime Text that gives an “outline” of a file. I remapped it to alt+r by putting this in the User keymap
    • { "keys": ["alt+r"], "command": "show_overlay", "args": {"overlay": "goto", "text": "@"} },
  • Add the ability to toggle Vintageous on and off
  • Mac users: you will not have the ability to hold down a navigation key (like holding j to go down). To fix this, run the commands specified here: https://gist.github.com/kconragan/2510186
• Now you should be able to restart sublime and have a great Vim environment! Sweet Dude.

Switch Caps Lock and Escape

• I highly recommend you switch the mapping of your caps lock and escape keys. You’ll love it, promise! Switching the two keys is platform dependent; Google should get you the answer.

Other

I don’t personally use these yet, but I’ve heard other people do!

• :wqa - Write and quit all open tabs (thanks Brian Zick)

ADVANCED 

General

• Text Objects
  • Say you have def (arg1, arg2, arg3), where your cursor is somewhere in the middle of the parenthesis.
  • di( deletes everything between the parenthesis. That says “change everything inside the nearest parenthesis”. Without text objects, you would need to do T(dt).
  • Learn more here
• automatic marks
  • http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_marks under “special marks”
• % - jumps between matching () or {}
• jump list
  • ctrl+o - go backwards in the jump list
  • ctrl+i - go forwards in the jump list
• change list
  • g; - go backwards in the change list
  • g, - go forwards in the change list
• Ctrl+r + 0 in insert mode inserts the last yanked text (or in command mode)
• gv - reselect (select last selected block of text, from visual mode)
• ctrl+e / ctrl+y - Scroll down/up one line

Plugins

The most helpful part of plugins is that they make vim a better fully featured IDE. Concepts like global search and finding a file to open are solved with plugins. They also can bring out some missing features of vim, like automatic commenting.

Essential Plugins

• vim-pathogen: Either this or Vundle are good ways to manage your plugins.
• vim-sensible: tiny set of reasonable defaults that every vim user should have. This allows you to keep your .vimrc a bit smaller.
• ag.vim: Fantastically fast global searches.
• ctrlp.vim: Open up any file or buffer.
• nerdcommenter: Allows you to comment some block of code

Awesome Plugins

• indentLine: Shows you visibly your tabs or spaces, like sublime
• neocomplete.vim (or you complete me): Autocomplete
• nerdtree: File browser
• vim-surround: Quicker way to add or delete some characters around something
• tagbar: Similar to the “outline” feature of many IDE’s

Regex and Searching

• Searching in vim is very unintuitive. There are 4 modes of searching, ranging from “very magic” to “very no magic”. They determine what needs to be escaped with a \ in your search term. If you just want “regex on” or “regex off” then always search in Very Magic or Very No Magic mode.
• Check out the details by running :h \\v.

Perl style regexes (Very Magic Mode)

Start a search with \v. Everything else can act like a normal regex search, except you have to escape / and \. If you are searching backwards, you’ll also have to escape ?.

• E.g. search for a url starting with www and ending with .com: \vwww\..*\.com

Differences from Perl Regex

The < and > characters are special for start and end of word. Escape them to search for them literally.

Literal Search (Very No Magic Mode)

Start a search with \V. Now you only have to escape / and \. It would be nice if you didn’t have to escape anything, but alas vim is not like this.

Advanced: Match a subsection of your search

Let’s say you have this file

www.yahoo.com
blah some other stuff
www.google.com
www.ebay.org

And you want to change it to

www.chase.com
blah some other stuff
www.chase.com
www.chase.org

What you’re doing is saying find all domain names and change the inner part to chase. You can do this by specifying the part of the search to match. Put \zs before where you want to match and \ze after where you want to match.

So in this case: \v www\. \zs .* \ze \.com

• An extension to this is looking for the start of a word without matching it. For example looking for the variable i. We could then use this search: \v\W\zsi\ze\W. Note: Use \W matches everything except [a-zA-Z0-9_]
  • There’s a shortcut called word boundaries, with < and >:
    • \v<i> (More info)
    • You can get this same behavior by pressing * in normal mode, while having your cursor over the word you want to search.

Faster Search and Replace

• Vim 7.4 has an amazing “gn” command that allows you to search and replace faster. gn means “select the next search term”.