vim Cheatsheet

Basic Tips and Tricks⚑

Navigation⚑

• i - insert mode. Next keys typed are inserted into the file.
• <Esc> - Escape from insert mode so you can navigate and use edit commands
• 1G - Go to line 1
• gg - Go to top of file
• G - Got to bottom of file (Shift + g)
• S - Places you at insert mode at the right indentation (Shift + s)
• % - Jump to the matching bracket/brace (Shift + 5)

Working with files⚑

• :w - Save file
• :wq! - Save and write file
• :q - Quit file with no changes
• :q! - Quit without saving

Editing text⚑

• =G - Fix indentation in the whole file (Equal, Shift + G)
• x - Delete char at current position
• a - Append after current position
• A - Append after end of line
• o - Insert new line below
• O - Insert new line above
• dw - Delete word (and copy it to clipboard)¹
• dd - Delete current line (and copy it to clipboard)¹
• yy - Yank current line (aka copy to clipboard)¹
• p - Paste clipboard
• guu - Lowercase line¹
• gUU - Uppercase line¹
• ~ - Invert case (upper->lower; lower->upper) of current character
• ga - Display hex, ascii value of character under cursor
• g8 - Display hex value of utf-8 character under cursor

Search⚑

• set hlsearch highlight all matching patterns
• :noh (short for :nohlsearch) will clear the current highlighted patterns
• /foo - Search for the next occurance of "foo"

• ?foo - Search for the previous occurance of "foo"

• :%s/foo/bar/g - Search file for all occurances of foo and replace with bar globally

• :%s/^M//g = Remove CRLF ^M line chars (Ctrl+V to get the ^ and then Ctrl+M to insert the M)

Deleting empty lines⚑

• Delete all empty lines:

  :g/^$/d
  :v/./d
  

• Delete all lines that are empty or that contain only whitespace characters (spaces, tabs):

  :g/^\s*$/d
  :v/\S/d
  

  Explanation: v operates on lines that do not match, \S matches anything that is not a whitespace, and d deletes the flagged lines (all lines that have no characters, or that have only whitespace characters).

• Condense multiple blank lines into a single blank line.

  :%s/\s\+$//e
  :%s/\n\{3,}/\r\r/e
  

  Explanation: Delete all trailing whitespace from each line, then replace three or more consecutive line endings with two line endings. e flag means that no error is displayed if the pattern is not found. In the second command, \n in the search pattern finds newline, while \r in the replacement inserts a newline.

Shell escapes⚑

(More of a security tip, but seems fitting here)

:set shell=/bin/sh
:shell

Or alternatively:

:!/bin/sh

.vimrc⚑

$ cat ~/.vimrc 
set autoindent
set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set ignorecase
set visualbell
set mouse=a
set hlsearch
set number
syntax on