[HN Gopher] A Vim Guide for Advanced Users
___________________________________________________________________
A Vim Guide for Advanced Users
Author : asicsp
Score : 448 points
Date : 2021-02-27 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thevaluable.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (thevaluable.dev)
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| What an amazing guide, as well as the others. I think these are
| the best Vim guides I've ever read. Vim user for years.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The article mentions gI but that's 3 keystrokes (g, shift, i)
| when you can do 0i, and you probably want to know about 0 and i
| regardless, making the extra learning of gI unnecessary.
|
| Unfortunately this doesn't help anyone because it's not as if by
| deleting gI from your memory you can more easily learn something
| else, but perhaps it's helpful for a future guide writer or
| perhaps someone knows why gI is useful.
|
| Edit: The section "The Insane Expression Register" also doesn't
| make much sense to me. Why would I do this 'system("ls")' thing
| when there is '!ls'? Using vimscript instead of bash probably has
| advantages in, y'know, vim, but most people know their shell and
| probably very few people know vimscript (certainly not me) so I'm
| not quite clear on the advantages here.
| ravoori wrote:
| As far as I am concerned, this constitutes a good read for the
| VIM pro. It's a shame that critical comments tend to bubble up to
| the top on HN
| OskarS wrote:
| The article mentions "gn" in passing, but it doesn't give it
| enough credit: this is an enormously useful motion, almost more
| useful on its own than the rest of the article.
|
| The thing that makes it golden is that it is a motion, and thus
| combined with a command, it is repeatable! So, like:
|
| 1. Search for something (either using / or *).
|
| 2. Type "cgn" in Normal mode (i.e. change next search match) and
| replace what you searched for with whatever
|
| 3. Hammer on "." (i.e. repeat last command) to replace other
| matches.
|
| This replaces, like, 97% of uses of :s and is a much more
| convenient way to do search/replace, especially if you use * to
| search for the word under the cursor. It's the bee's knees!
| erostrate wrote:
| Thank you so much! I've been using Vim for 5 years and I always
| thought :s was one of the major pain points.
| thanato0s wrote:
| Yeah I know the trick and I explain it a bit more in another
| article on my blog.
|
| Most of the time it's more keystrokes than using :s though, so
| I'm not a big fan of it. But I see the appeal :)
| typon wrote:
| I'm paranoid and I like seeing exactly what I'm replacing. In
| that case I still use :s but I always end it with
| :s/foo/bar/gc. Although I do see the appeal of cgn for simple
| replacements.
| thanato0s wrote:
| If you use Neovim, you can set the option inccommand:
|
| set inccommand=nosplit
|
| It will display the substitute directly in the buffer.
| petepete wrote:
| So I've been using vim for nearly twenty years and didn't know
| this. I also never touch visual mode make any advanced use of
| buffers or marks. I feel like some kind of caveman now.
| simias wrote:
| Oh man, I knew there had to be a way to do that but I couldn't
| find it, so I always resorted to counting the number of
| characters in the match and then use cl<num> to replace it if
| there was no convenient motion like some kind of barbarian.
| bobbyi_settv wrote:
| The non-barbarian way to avoid counting characters when
| there's no convenient motion is visual mode. Hit v, then hit
| l until you've highlighted the part you want to change, then
| hit c to start changing it.
| simias wrote:
| Oh I never thought about that either. Thank you.
| bobbyi_settv wrote:
| I rarely actually do it because f and t motions, possibly
| with a number, can usually handle these cases. For
| example, c3tA to change up to but not including the third
| capital A after the current position
| tasuki wrote:
| If it's more than one 'A' I'd use visual mode. I'm always
| impressed people can accurately count up to like three ;)
| hpfr wrote:
| The author does mention this in an in-depth article on search:
| https://thevaluable.dev/vim-search-find-replace/
|
| It's pretty comprehensive. Personally I'd just install Doom
| Emacs though :)
| aaimtts wrote:
| This is very useful, thank you! How would you go about pasting
| the "replace" part though?
|
| I could only think of this rather awkward sequence:
|
| 1. Yank to named register
|
| 2. Search
|
| 3. "cgn"
|
| 4. Ctrl-R to paste from named register
|
| 5. Repeat
|
| This is actually the biggest gripe I have with vim, even after
| almost 10 years of constant use. Vim always seems to overwrite
| the default register when I don't want it to. This makes
| replacing multiple bits of text with one pasted value awkward.
| I feel like I'm missing some essential shortcut or
| configuration that everybody else knows. It can't just be named
| registers, right?
| tvrg wrote:
| You can slightly simplify your workflow using the yank
| register 0.
|
| 1. Yank using y without specifying a register
|
| ...
|
| 4. CTRL-R 0
|
| Deletes and changes don't touch the 0-register. It always
| contains your last (unnamed) yank.
| throwoutttt wrote:
| As someone who uses this regularly, it's still not as
| convenient as multi cursors that most modern ides give you.
|
| There's a vim extension for multiple cursors but it's a little
| buggy.
| OskarS wrote:
| I dunno, I've also used both, and I keep coming back to the
| Vim/gn way of doing it, I just like it more. I see how people
| can feel otherwise, though.
| boogies wrote:
| Yeah, not everyone is the same, but there are definitely
| people interested in multi-cursor modal editors, enough to
| build their own, eg. vis0 -- a light, fast, and simple text
| editor with a pretty standard vim normal mode but sam's
| structural regex command language1 for creating and
| procedurally editing selections in command mode2, and
| kakoune3 -- known for switching vi's word order from verb
| noun to noun verb, so typical normal mode commands work by
| first creating one or more selections with motions (no need
| to press v), and only then operating on them. And of course
| Emacs has multi-selection modes and AFAIK they're
| compatible with evil.
|
| 0https://sr.ht/~martanne/vis/
| 1http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/structural_regexps/
| 2http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/
| 3http://kakoune.org/
| lucb1e wrote:
| As someone who never used a multi-cursor IDE (I've seen other
| use it but not in a convincing way): what's something that
| you use this for that you don't think vim can do?
|
| The main purpose I've seen is basically block mode (like
| ctrl+v) or (iirc) repeating things on multiple hits (like n.
| or indeed cgn).
| usmannk wrote:
| Why is this preferable to :%s?
| kadonoishi wrote:
| It allows you to use a full Turing machine rather than
| restricting yourself to a Finite State Machine.
| simias wrote:
| It composes better if you were searching for something and
| then want to replace it IMO. You basically just have to
| remember the search syntax and then you can reuse it for
| replacing.
|
| It's also better if you don't actually want to replace in the
| whole file and there's no convenient shorthand for the range.
|
| I very rarely use :s myself, I'm always too worry that I'm
| going to clobber something I didn't mean to, I prefer to
| search and manually repeat a substitution. s can do it with
| with the "c" modifier but I find that using normal edit
| commands is both more flexible and easier to remember.
| RMPR wrote:
| I find it more intuitive, and for a small number of
| iterations it's definitely faster.
| asicsp wrote:
| Ooh, sounds interesting. I'll have to look up the details. I
| currently do this after a search with / and regex (if it is a
| bit complicated) :%s//replace/gc
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is what I do, I use regex's so often it's easier for me
| to read this even if it's a little bit more typing
| RMPR wrote:
| Awesome, that's definitely something I'll add to my bag of
| tricks. But
|
| > This replaces, like, 97% of uses of :s and is a much more
| convenient way to do search/replace, especially if you use * to
| search for the word under the cursor. It's the bee's knees!
|
| I'm not really sure about that. I can definitely see it
| replacing :s for a small number of repetitions, but for a large
| number. I think using :s with a range is quicker.
|
| Edit: typos, punctuation
| thesteamboat wrote:
| I too wish to add this to my repertoire. I don't think it
| will replace :s, but occasionally I find myself copying a
| line to use as a template. When I go to change each line I'm
| changing a particular part to different things. Assuming I
| remember, this trick seems like a good approach.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I used to do n.n.n.n. to do the same (i.e. /search something,
| then do the replacing with something like cw or 3s or ct' or
| whatever you want, and then hit n for next result and . to
| repeat the change). Using cgn is less flexible and you need to
| learn another thing (you know about n and . already by the time
| you get to cgn), and maybe it's just me but hitting n.
| repeatedly is practically equally fast as just hitting the dot.
|
| It also has the downside that it doesn't match what is being
| shown: when I hit * on "overview" it highlights both "overview"
| and "Overview" (I have highlight search enabled), but cgn
| replaces only one of them. When the cursor is on Overview and I
| run "*cgnexample<esc>..." it will skip all the "Overview"s and
| only replace "overview".
|
| But perhaps it's a bug in Vim since it works when I run * on
| the lowercase variant.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| This might be the right audience for this little vimrc
| tidbit: "Press space to highlight current
| word nnoremap <silent><space> \ :let
| @/='\<<C-R>=expand("<cword>")<CR>\>'<CR>:set hls<CR>
|
| This works just like *, except that it leaves your cursor
| where it is. You can then use n/p/whatever as normal.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > like * but leaves your cursor where it is
|
| Ooooh that is great! I use *# every time and am then
| annoyed when the n key goes backwards instead of forwards
| and then I try to remember to do #* instead and pff... ^^
| This will solve those issues!
| revscat wrote:
| This is useful enough that I wonder why you chose not to
| just map it to *. Is there a reason you did not?
| sanderjd wrote:
| That does sound useful, but I do this with `:s/foo/bar/gc`,
| then I press `y` each time, which is pretty similar to pressing
| `.` each time in your example. I do like that the `cgn`
| approach works better for something you searched for without
| knowing a priori that you were going to do a replacement on it.
| trigoman wrote:
| I was looking on how do this exact thing! Thank you! In
| IntelliJ I press Alt+j to add to selection then I can edit all
| matches. You just described how to do the same effect in Vim
| [deleted]
| mushishi wrote:
| Just tried this. Note for others: between 2. and 3. you need to
| get back to normal mode (which is kinda obvious but...)
|
| Thank you for the tip.
| johncoltrane wrote:
| Maybe you will like these little gems I came up with back when
| the gn patch was merged:
|
| nnoremap <key> *``cgn
|
| nnoremap <key> #``cgN
|
| Hit <key> to change the current word and ... to repeat on the
| next occurrences.
| nightcracker wrote:
| This has one huge shortcoming: when the next match is off-
| screen, pressing . jumps immediately to the next match and
| replaces it, before you had the opportunity to review whether
| you want that.
|
| To solve this I wrote a little plugin (that I finished as a
| plugin yesterday and uploaded just now):
| https://github.com/orlp/vim-quick-replace
|
| It requires vim-repeat (and a patched one because the current
| one has an issue): https://github.com/orlp/vim-repeat
|
| The nice thing is that it always jumps to the next match
| _before_ replacing, and if you choose to replace the current
| match it _immediately_ jumps to the next one, so that you can
| evaluate whether you want to replace it.
|
| You can start in two quick ways: using the current word under
| the cursor or the current visual selection, so it's very
| flexible. For me replacing a variable name is often just
| putting my cursor on it, pressing space + r, typing the
| replacement name and then a couple .'s, n's and if I mess up
| some u's.
|
| To see it in action: https://i.imgur.com/wEX6O1w.mp4
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what your plugin does, but are you aware
| of the "c" flag to substitute, eg
|
| :%s/debug/dbg/c
|
| vim will show the text which is about to be modified, and you
| have a prompt to confirm, skip, or quit (and some others).
| nightcracker wrote:
| Yes, I am aware, but it's not nearly as flexible and quick.
| It doesn't allow me to in the meantime move my cursor
| around, switch buffers, undo, open/close a fold, etc. It
| takes complete control of your workflow to temporarily put
| you in some special 'search/replace mode' in a very non-
| Vimlike manner. My plugin has a simple operation (if cursor
| is on a match, replace, regardless jump to next match) that
| gets repeated with ., combined with nN and u and you have
| complete control while also rapidly doing search/replace.
|
| And you would still need some nice mappings to substitute
| the word/selection underneath the cursor with :%s///gc.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| If using the [c] flag and you want to interrupt it, a
| convenient way of continuing where you left off (and
| _not_ touching previous lines, which may have new
| matches, depending on the nature of the replacement) may
| be :.,$ &&<Enter>, which means "operating on the range
| current line (.) to end of file ($), execute the last
| substitution (&) with the same flags as last time (&)".
|
| (This is very unlikely to interest _you_ , but I mention
| it for the sake of others. I've commonly seen people not
| really know about ranges especially, never stopping and
| thinking about what the % means (see `:help :%` if you
| don't know), beyond _possibly_ having encountered '<,'>
| by accident when pressing : in Visual mode (for
| explanation of these, see the help for :', '< and '>).)
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| But if you're not sure you wanted it, you can just press u to
| undo and n to skip.
|
| Since Vim keeps an undo tree, you are guaranteed not to lose
| anything anyway.
| coliveira wrote:
| You can just type n, followed by ., to view the next match
| before changing it.
| nightcracker wrote:
| I used to do that but my brain messes up "n." for replace,
| "n" for skip, whereas "." for replace, "n" for skip is
| really easy.
| bxparks wrote:
| That's a good point about previewing. So instead of "cgn", it
| looks like you can do "gns", which highlights the match, then
| enters into substitution mode, and you type the replacement,
| then hit <ESC>. Then you can hit "n." "n." "n." repeatedly,
| where the "n" goes to the next match so that you can preview,
| and the "." applies the replacement. Not quite as efficient
| as a single ".", but the "n." sequence is a familiar one.
| tvrg wrote:
| Is this much different from searching with * or :s for a
| match and use something like "ciwReplacement<Esc>", then "n."
| or just "n" if I don't want to change the match? I can
| imagine that the plugin works in more complicated cases, but
| most of the time I probably just want to replace a word with
| ciw or ciW.
| nightcracker wrote:
| Well, assuming you already have a plugin or mapping that
| makes * search your visual selection, it's similar.
|
| You'd have to do *, then N to back to where you just were,
| then cgn, type your replacement, and then n., n., n., n
| (skip), n., etc.
|
| With my plugin that just becomes one mapping, type your
| replacement, ., ., n (skip), ., etc.
|
| It's just very smooth, which I like because I use this
| operation literally all the time. Hell, I'll even use it
| when changing a single variable, just to make sure there
| isn't another sneaky one in the file somewhere.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| IMO the "correct" way to handle this is with vanilla vim's
| built-in macros. Find the next match, record a macro making
| the edit you want, then find the next match and finish
| recording the macro. The macro _starts_ with the cursor over
| the match you want, the edit can be more complex than a
| simple replacement, and skipping is simply a matter of
| pressing `n` instead of `@@`.
|
| Vim can also take a command that yields a list of filenames
| as a launch parameter via something like `vim $(ag -l
| target_string)`, letting you go through each file with a
| `:n`, letting you complete large refactors surprisingly
| quickly.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Thank you! Two things I really got from this:
|
| Capital marks. I use ma or ms and `a `s a lot, but did not know
| you could do global marks with mA and `A. Very useful!
|
| I've been using `` for a long time to mean "go back to the last
| place I was editing" but sometimes it gets overridden when
| navigating (I'm not super familiar with the jumplist, so maybe I
| need to get a better understanding) but `[ and `] are exactly
| what I've been looking for all these years.
| danidiaz wrote:
| > did not know you could do global marks with mA and `A.
|
| Incidentally, the "Vimium" browser extension also supports
| those marks with the same syntax; they're an interesting
| alternative to conventional bookmarks for frequently accessed
| pages. https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/README.md
| thanato0s wrote:
| You should try g; and g,
|
| You'll go through the change list. I think it's what you want.
|
| I explain it in the article vim-intermediate on the same blog
| :)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Yes, thank you, I just read that article as well and that is
| what I was looking for =]
| ryannevius wrote:
| I use global marks for things like my .vimrc (`V), .zshrc (`Z),
| and other config files that I edit semi-regularly. Definitely a
| useful tool for the box.
| Agentlien wrote:
| This was a really nice refresher and I learned a few new cool
| tricks (like gx).
|
| I'm a bit surprised that the 'u' flag for sort wasn't mentioned.
| That's the most useful one in my mind and I use it almost every
| time.
| residualmind wrote:
| My thoughts exactly about ':sort u'
| lucb1e wrote:
| The u option making it keep only unique lines, for anyone
| else left wondering.
|
| Personally, instead of re-learning how to do stuff with vim-
| sepecific commands, I just use the existing command line
| tool, especially since I don't do this on a daily/weekly
| basis (but I use sort in command line pipes at least weekly).
| The command is literally "sort" and for unique you just pass
| the -u flag, e.g. select something in Vim and type :!sort -u
| ravoori wrote:
| Vim's sort is handy on Windows where the option to shell
| out usually doesn't exist. Additionally you have the full
| power of Vim regex to sort on subsets of lines.
| dllthomas wrote:
| The section on the quickfix list should include cbuffer, which
| puts the contents of the current buffer in the quickfix list.
| cma wrote:
| Is there a good way by default to wrap a visual selection in
| braces/parens/brackets?
| ludsan wrote:
| I use vim-surround. https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround
| SpaceNugget wrote:
| A fairly easy way to do it is either
|
| c()^[P or c(^r")
|
| The first leaves you in normal mode the second in insert mode.
| I recommend vim-surround by tpope though.
| rualca wrote:
| Superb submission! I've been using vim for over a decade and I
| never knew about gx or gf. Thanks!
| tjoff wrote:
| Related, gF will also scroll down to the line number if
| specified as: File.txt:45
|
| Very handy when using a terminal from within vim and looking at
| compiler errors/warnings or log files etc.
| thanato0s wrote:
| Nice one. Didn't know that. I'll add it to the article :)
| thanato0s wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy it helps.
| RMPR wrote:
| I was meant to write a blog post like this since forever.
| Anyway, if you want really advanced stuff this[0] is definitely
| a way to go. As for ```gx``` since I'm using aerc as my email
| client, a trick I found very useful to open links using only
| the keyboard is to open an email then rq (reply with quote)
| search for the link and gx.
|
| 0: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-
| stuff/vi/009-in...
|
| Edit: add the bit about aerc
| issamehh wrote:
| Do you have any more aerc tricks? I use it and do like it but
| there's a whole lot of basic things even that I don't know
| how to do. And some things like saving file attachments that
| I'm not even sure if it supports or if I'm just clueless
| RMPR wrote:
| You can browse the different parts of your email using
| Ctrl+J/K when you reach the attachment you can save it with
| :save
| thanato0s wrote:
| Wow this looks super interesting. Thanks for sharing :)
| RMPR wrote:
| No problem, I also wrote a blog post about Vim sessions[0].
| I think it definitely counts as intermediate/advanced vim
| material. Great work with your article.
|
| 0: https://rmpr.xyz/Vim-Session/
| jzer0cool wrote:
| One of my goals is to become a really good vim power user. I am
| not able to pick up all of these but one here and there.
|
| In the first command gf, once new file opened and then closed
| (wq), is there a a way to close such that the previous file that
| was originally opened to return? At moment returning back to
| shell prompt.
|
| Also curious if there is a way to open the file as a new split
| screen rather than replacing the entire window?
| [deleted]
| lucb1e wrote:
| > is there a a way to close such that the previous file that
| was originally opened to return?
|
| If I understand the question correctly then the answer is ":bd"
| after ":w"riting the file. If you just want to switch between
| buffers (switch between the two files) then use ":b#". You can
| also list open buffers with ":ls"
|
| Someone recently told me of :tabedit, though, and that is
| lookin' way nicer to me. But I haven't gotten used to it yet or
| know how to make it work with gf or other handy things.
|
| As for split screen, those are hotkeys I have yet to learn. If
| someone has an answer to that question, please reply here so
| the parent commenter and I both see it :)
| Smaug123 wrote:
| "Split screen" as in make a new window? Sure - `:vs`
| ("vertical split"), or `:vs filename.txt`. Or there's the
| "Windows" section on https://thevaluable.dev/vim-
| intermediate/ .
| jzer0cool wrote:
| great got both answered perfectly!
| alex_smart wrote:
| wq writes the current file _and_ closes the current window
| (which quits vim if you happen to be on the last window). The
| command to close the current buffer is :bd(elete).
|
| If you want to return to the previous file without closing the
| new file, you can just use :bp(rev) so that the new file also
| stays in memory.
|
| Relevant man page is available at :help buffers.
|
| >Also curious if there is a way to open the file as a new split
| screen rather than replacing the entire window?
|
| CTRL-W f
|
| Another remark: vim's shortcuts are organized in a way that you
| are often able to guess what the correct shortcut should be.
| CTRL-W is the common prefix for commands regarding split
| windows CTRL-W v/s for splits, CTRL-W CTRL-W cycle through
| windows. So naturally you can guess that CTRL-W f should be
| open file in split and CTRL-W ] should be jump to definition in
| split.
| happy-go-lucky wrote:
| One of my favorites is the Vim's ability to split both
| horizontally ( <Ctrl>+<w>, then <v> ) and vertically (
| <Ctrl>+<w>, then <s> ).
| [deleted]
| yewenjie wrote:
| Nice. I would love to see more advanced guides for vim.
| thanato0s wrote:
| Oh I don't want to stop there, especially when I see the crazy
| positive returns I get ;)
|
| So it will come.
| javitury wrote:
| Those commands may look useless at first sight, but combined can
| create powerful routines. As an example, my routine to refactor
| non-typesafe codebases.
|
| - Find the pattern that you want to replace (the last dot is for
| current dir)
|
| :grep -r 'pattern' .
|
| - Open the quickfix window and check if matches are correct
|
| :copen
|
| - Find and replace the entries of the quickfix list
|
| :cdo s/pattern/replacement/ | update
| nafizh wrote:
| Practical vim by Drew Neil is hands down the best vim learning
| resource out there. Nothing even comes close.
| thanato0s wrote:
| Totally agree with that. That's my favorite book about Vim for
| sure.
| teeray wrote:
| Anyone looking to pick this up: I found the best way to consume
| it is to grab a couple tips at a time (it's structured as a
| "recipe book") and incorporate them into your workflow. For
| example, try Netrw for a week, then another week try out folds.
| You don't have to read it cover to cover to get the full
| benefit of it.
| dllthomas wrote:
| What are the high points? Would you expect it has much to add
| for someone who's been using vim for closer to 3 decades than
| 2?
| dm319 wrote:
| In some ways it's quite conceptual about the best way to use
| vim. Inside the cover there's a quote "I thought I knew vim,
| but practical vim has massively improved my code-wrangling
| productivity".
| maxioatic wrote:
| This book is so good I actually bought it twice. The second
| time was the ebook edition just so I can pull it up next to
| Vim. Highly recommend it.
| mesaframe wrote:
| I thought it will be a 100 page book but hot damn. 487 Pages
| for what?
| JNRowe wrote:
| Drew Neil's Modern Vim is also wonderful. While it introduces a
| lot of plugins in an attempt to modernize the experience, it
| also includes some excellent notes on standard
| features(qf/sessions/etc).
|
| I'll also note it covers both vim and neovim, with nice little
| asides explaining the differences where they matter.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Everyone who uses Vim is an advanced user. The rest of us have to
| be content learning how to get back out of it without closing the
| terminal.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The number increment example doesn't seem to work for me. It says
| to start with this: 1. a 1. b
| 1. c
|
| The post says to "select in VISUAL mode the last two lines and
| hit `g CTRL+a`". So I guess with shift+v select the bottom two
| lines, and then I hit g, space, and Ctrl+a. I get:
| 1. a 2. b 2. c
|
| The post says that the last line should now start with 3 instead
| of 1, or in my case 2. The behavior is the same as when omitting
| g+space for me. Am I doing it wrong?
| tux1968 wrote:
| Don't press space. "g" and then "ctrl-a"
| lucb1e wrote:
| Thank you!
| mklein994 wrote:
| The docs for this is in `:help v_CTRL-A`.
|
| It should actually say VISUAL BLOCK mode. This is where you use
| `CTRL-v` to select a block of text. You can read more in `:help
| blockwise-visual`.
|
| Also see the 'nrformats' option: `:help 'nrformats'`. You can
| include alphabetic characters to do the same thing with A-Z,
| for example.
|
| https://vimhelp.org/change.txt.html#v_CTRL-A
| lucb1e wrote:
| It seems to work in both visual block mode and visual line
| mode for me, for what it's worth. (When not pressing space as
| mentioned in another reply.)
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Did you try not pressing space?
| lucb1e wrote:
| evidently not :)
| craigary wrote:
| Nice, but still wondering if I should know vim since nano is
| enough for me :)
| scottlamb wrote:
| I recommend learning the basics. It's great being able to
| navigate around a file with the keyboard in ways other than
| arrow keys to move a line at a time. Stuff like hitting "%" to
| move between matching parenthesis, { and } to move between
| paragraphs, etc. And if you do any kind of development, the
| automatic indentation (and < and > to indent and outdent
| ranges) are hugely useful. All of these are also things you can
| use in IDEs like VS Code with their vim modes.
|
| The stuff in this article is pretty neat but (even after using
| vim for about 20 years) most of it doesn't click for me as
| easily. Eg I don't use marks; I wouldn't think ahead to leave a
| mark or remember afterward which letter I used for it. Kudos to
| people who can gain productivity by using this stuff, but I'd
| need something other than an explanation of what the commands
| do to be effective with it. I do at least try to use the
| quickfix stuff; that's a pretty big productivity boost over
| manually going to the right file and line to fix an error
| spotted by my compiler.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > I do at least try to use the quickfix stuff; that's a
| pretty big productivity boost over manually going to the
| right file and line to fix an error spotted by my compiler.
|
| I've mapped cnext and cprev to tab and shift-tab, to make it
| easy to bounce through things.
|
| Also, in my shell I have defined alias
| cbuf='vim - -c cbuffer!'
|
| which lets me do things like "make | cbuf" or "git grep -n
| foo | cbuf", which is great.
|
| Tangentially, all of this plays well with some things I've
| built out for dealing with diffs
| (https://github.com/dlthomas/diff-kit) - dklocs will turn a
| unified diff into location-prefixed changed lines, dkcov will
| find the intersection of a diff and a coverage report (very
| useful for answering the question "how did I break _that_
| test? "), either of which can be piped right into cbuf.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| They aren't comparable.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I know the basics because vi ships with practically ever *nix
| (unlike Emacs), so it's there for when I need to edit config
| files, but I do 97% of my real work in something more like
| IntelliJ, so there just aren't big returns for getting better
| at vim.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| The Vi bindings in IntelliJ-based IDEs are pretty damn good
| in my experience. Certainly I feel a lot happier { and }'ing
| my way around, and having my `ce` and `gg` and `C`, in Rider.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Even as a daily emacs user I got value out of learning vi a
| while ago. It's better for some kinds of editing and generally
| works better than the emacs bindings for job interview browser
| apps.
| thanato0s wrote:
| You should just try seriously. First because many CLI have vim-
| like keystrokes, second because when you're lost on a remote
| server or on a docker container without nano you can use vi
| (close enough), and third because it might change your life :D
| lucb1e wrote:
| Can you tell me how to exit nano without writing changes? Every
| time some silly default server kicks me into nano I'm
| absolutely lost and ctrl+c doesn't give you help text like in
| vim iirc. (Not kidding)
| calmoo wrote:
| It's CTRL+X and then N to not save changes
| lucb1e wrote:
| Thanks! Gonna try to remember that combo.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| It appears in the table of commands at the bottom of the
| screen by default, doesn't it?
| mkl wrote:
| You don't even need to remember it. At the bottom it
| lists keyboard shortcuts, and on the left is "^X Exit".
| When you press it with a modified file, it gives you:
| Save modified buffer?
| Y Yes N No ^C Cancel
| benatkin wrote:
| Vim is getting more popular. Not just within vim, but outside
| vim! Practically every full-featured editor has a vi or vim mode,
| and when they say vi, usually they also mean vim.
|
| Things that have nothing to do with vim but are inspired by vim
| are even sprouting up! And apparently it's OK to name something
| based on vim:
| https://groups.google.com/g/vim_use/c/EnSMrx_rGg4/m/d_nVlmLQ...
|
| Edit: In Bram's reply he mentioned the household cleaner.
| Apparently it's similar to Ajax. That's so awesome.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(cleaning_product)
| CoffeePython wrote:
| I definitely agree that it's getting more popular.
|
| I use vim inside VS code as my main editor and love the
| experience. It was also an easy way to step into learning vim.
|
| I also have a vim product with vim in the name (it's
| practically the whole name) and haven't had any sort of
| trademark issues.
| benatkin wrote:
| Yeah, the current situation, with no registered trademark for
| vim the editor, seems to be great for everyone! Vim is
| popular enough that it's unlikely to be taken. However,
| someone is currently trying to claim Screen for a screen
| sharing product despite a screen sharing tool called
| screen(1) having been around for decades, so nothing is
| impossible.
| teeray wrote:
| I used to work near a gym called "Vim Fitness"[0] in Cambridge,
| MA and there were endless jokes about trainers calling out: "H!
| J! K! L!"
|
| [0] https://vimfitness.com/
| chestervonwinch wrote:
| I bet it's constantly crowded since no one can figure out how
| to exit.
| lucb1e wrote:
| One thing I've never been able to figure out in Vim: why does O
| (insert new line above the current line and enter insert mode)
| often wait and hang? And when you start typing, it'll sometimes
| do random stuff? Is there a way to just make it behave like a
| true counterpart of o (insert new line below and enter insert
| mode)?
| leadingthenet wrote:
| I think I remember having this issue in vim too. Don't remember
| it ever crossing my mind since I've started using neovim,
| though, so maybe give it a try?
| drewfish wrote:
| Took some effort to refine a websearch:
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2158516/delay-before-o-o...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Thanks! I never use arrows in insert mode so that's an easy
| choice for me, but removing 'nocompatible' from my vimrc does
| nothing and setting 'compatible' instead has side effects
| like not showing what mode I'm in. Not sure I need it, but
| I'm also wondering what other side effects I'll run into. The
| help file mentions a ton of things that I frankly don't care
| enough to comb through. The only thing I randomly spotted
| (and knew what it meant without digging deeper) is that this
| also breaks backspace in insert mode. Overall it makes vim
| feel quite a lot like vi.
|
| Instead, setting nocompatible and timeoutlen=1 (1ms I guess?
| Help file doesn't say) works fine in my terminal, I guess
| because it's not over any sort of network connection. I'll
| give this a go and see if I run into any issues when using
| these escape-based features (afaik I use those only rarely)
| over the network.
| [deleted]
| rcgs wrote:
| gf is a game changer! Great article - hard to soak up so much
| knowledge at once. Bookmarked.
| khnov wrote:
| Use nano
| JohnCurran wrote:
| How does gI differ from I?
| asicsp wrote:
| `gI` will always go to column 1 whereas `I` will go first non-
| blank character
| graywh wrote:
| in other words, I = ^i and gI = 0i
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The same way that 0 differs from ^.
| kludgeon wrote:
| the article has a tricky typo here. it says "The keystroke `I`
| insert text after the first non-blank characters of the line."
|
| but it should say _before_ the first non-blank, which is
| equivalent to _after_ the last leading blank.
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(page generated 2021-02-27 23:00 UTC)