vim_tutorial

Vim Tutorial

(Need a .vimrc to get you started on your way to customization glory? Use mine!)

Important Things: Starting, Quitting, Modes

  • Start Vim by typing vim, not vi.
    • Some installations have separate binaries for each (eg., OpenBSD).
    • vi is the legacy, POSIX-standard program, vim is the new, not always compatible program
  • Quit Vim in Normal mode by typing <Esc>:q!<CR>
    • Vim uses lots of mnemonics for its commands: :q is short for :quit.

  • Access Vim’s built-in help system by typing <Esc>:help<CR>

  • So what’s Normal mode? What are modes?
    • Vim is a modal editor, meaning it does different things based on which mode you have it in.
    • There are many modes:
      • Normal mode: used for navigation and text manipulation. The default mode. Hit to get back to it.
      • Insert mode: used for inserting new text into a buffer. Enter this mode by typing <i> in Normal mode (or <I>, or <o>, or <O>, or…).
      • Visual mode: used for manipulating text selections.
      • Select mode: same as visual, but more GUI-oriented.
      • Command mode: used for entering editor commands, like :q to quit.
      • ex mode: line-oriented mode. Run screaming.

Writing Our First Document

  • Three steps:
    • Start Vim
    • Hit <i> to enter Insert mode
    • Start typing

  • When done typing, hit <Esc> to go back to Normal mode, then :saveas doc.txt to save the file. (Shortcut: :sav <filename>)

  • Hit <i> to add more text, then hit <Esc>:w to write the current file to disk.

  • Congratulations, you’ve used Vim to write a document!

Moving Around

  • Sure, you can use arrow keys, PageUp, PageDown, etc. with Vim.

  • What if those don’t work?
    • Mac’s Terminal.app remaps PageUp/PageDown to scroll through the windows’s scrollback buffer instead of passing it through.
    • If you find yourself with a real vi (like OpenBSD’s nvi), it may not understand arrow keys
  • Solution: use hjkl instead!
    • In Normal/Command mode
    • <h> moves the cursor one character left (think: h is the left-most character)
    • <l> moves the cursor one character right (think: l is the right-most character)
    • <j> moves the cursor one character down (think: j hangs below the line)
    • <k> moves the cursor one character up (think: k ascends above the line)
  • What about paging up/down?
    • Use <C-d>/<C-u> to page down/up
  • Why use hjkl and <C-d>/<C-u> instead of arrow and page keys if they work?
    • Your fingers never leave home row
  • Do I have to use these weird keys?
    • No! Do what works for you, not for anyone else.

Advanced Movement

  • <w> moves one word forwards
  • <b> moves one word backwards
  • <^> moves to the first non-whitespace character at the beginning of a line
  • <0> moves to the beginning of a line, too (think: column zero)
  • <$> moves to the end of a line (think: regular expressions)
  • <G> moves to the last line of a document (think: Goto. No, it doesn’t make sense in this context. More later.)
  • <gg> moves to the first line of a document
    • Note: this is a Vim command, and will not work in vi. Use :0 instead.
  • :[line]<CR> moves the cursor to the line number specified. For instance, :16<CR> would move the cursor to line 16 of the current buffer.

More Advanced Movement

  • <e> moves one word forwards, and places the cursor at the end of the word
  • Most movement commands can take a count prefix. Examples:
    • <2w> moves two words forwards
    • <4j> moves four lines down
    • <12G> goto the twelfth line from the top of the document (I told you to wait for it.)
    • <3h> moves three characters backwards
  • The z command can be useful to move the viewport around (in Normal mode)
    • <z<CR>> moves the current line to the top of the screen
    • <z.> moves the current line to the middle of the screen
    • <z-> moves the current line to the bottom of the screen

Text Manipulation

  • Let’s talk about adding things.
    • As seen before, <i> enters Insert mode and lets you start typing exactly where the cursor is located
    • <I> will place the cursor at the first non-space character on a line, then put you in Insert mode.
    • <a> will let you append text. It places the cursor one character to the right, then places you in Insert mode.
    • <A> appends text to the end of a line.
    • <o> opens a new text line below the current line.
    • <O> opens a new text line above the current line.
  • Let’s talk about deleting things.
    • Type the sentence, “The quick brown brown fox jumped over the lazy ddog.”
    • See how you misspelled “dog”?
      • In Normal mode, use <h> to move backwards until your cursor is resting on the extra “d”
      • Hit <x> to delete the character under the cursor
    • Oops, you wrote “brown” twice!
      • Method 1: still in Insert mode, arrow-key your way back to the second “brown” and hit <BS> (Backspace) to delete it
      • Method 2:
        • Hit <Esc> to go back to Normal mode
        • Use <b> to moves backwards by words until your cursor is at the beginning of the second “brown”
        • Type <dw> to delete the word at the cursor.
    • Most movement commands also accept a modifier (the d in the previous example). Other modifiers include:
      • <c> changes the following [character/word/etc.] by deleting it, then putting Vim into Insert mode so you can start typing
    • You know what, that sentence is terrible. Just delete the entire line.
      • Use <dd> to delete a line.

Searching

  • To find the next occurrence of a text pattern, in Normal mode type /pattern<CR>
    • Example: To find the next occurrence of the word “Normal” in this document, I’d type <Esc>/Normal<CR>
      • Note that pattern can be a regular expression!

  • The above is an example of a forwards search. To perform a backwards search, use ?pattern<CR> instead.

  • To find the next occurrence of the same pattern, use n.
    • Note that using n when doing a backwards search will find the next occurrence earlier in the document.

  • To find the previous occurrence of the same pattern, use N.

  • To find the next occurrence of the word underneath the cursor, in Normal mode hit <*>

  • Similarly, to find the previous occurrence of the word underneath the cursor, use <#>

Replacing

  • There are many ways to replace text using Vim. The following are only a couple of the most useful methods. You should be in Normal mode (hit <Esc> to get there from Insert mode) for all of these.
    • To replace all occurrences of the word “cat” with “dog” in a document, type :%s/cat/dog/g
    • To replace all occurrences of the word “cat with ”dog" on the current line, type :s/cat/dog/g. (Note the absence of the percentage sign!)
    • To replace the next occurrence of the word “cat” with “dog” in the document, type :s/cat/dog/. (Note the absence of the g at the end!)
      • You can use <n> to search for the next occurrence of cat, and then use <&> to replace it with dog.

Selecting, Copying & Pasting

  • Vim calls “copying” text “yanking”.
  • To yank text, first you have to highlight it.
    • Navigate to the start of your selection, then press <v> (this enters Visual mode)
    • Using the movement keys, navigate to the end of the selection
    • Hit <y> to yank the text into Vim’s clipboard.
  • To paste text, place your cursor where you’d like the yanked text to appear and hit <p> to paste it. Note: the yanked text will be placed after the cursor. Use <P> to paste yanked text before the cursor.
  • If you want to select entire lines, use <V> instead of <v>.
  • BIG NOTE: the <y> and <Y> commands do not work in regular vi!

Miscellaneous

  • Show line numbers by typing :set number in Normal mode. Turn them off again by typing :set nonumber.
  • To get help on any Vim command, type :help command. For example:
    • :help number
    • :help w (to get help on the movement command)
    • :help :w (to get help on the :write command)
    • :help vimtutor (a very useful built-in tutorial!)
  • Fun tutorials:
    • OpenVim - an interactive Vim tutorial (http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html)
    • Vim Adventures - “Learning Vim while playing a game” (http://vim-adventures.com)

What Else Can Vim Do?

  • A lot!
    • Custom keybindings
    • Syntax highlighting
    • Auto-indenting
    • Keyword completion
    • Custom color schemes
    • “Vimscript”
    • Plugins
    • Spell-checking
    • Built-in make support
    • Built-in ctags support
    • It’s not emacs!

  • See my .vimrc for a fully-annotated example of a .vimrc configuration file that includes many of the above features. Clone the repo to $HOME/.vim and run make (OSX/Linux only) for added fun.