Random vim notes

30 Apr 2020

This is just a dump of vim tricks that I have found useful. They are taken from multiple sources.

• Move the screen
  1. Ctrl+e - Move the screen up. Cursor doesn’t move
  2. Ctrl+y - Move the screen down. Cursor doesn’t move
  3. Ctrl+u - Move cursor and screen up 1/2 page
  4. Ctrl+d - Move cursor and screen down 1/2 page
  5. zt - Move the current line to the top of the screen
  6. zb - Move the current line to the bottom of the screen
• Open recent files
  1. Hit Ctrl-o-o. Keep hitting it until you get the file you want
  2. :browse oldfiles Esc File number Enter
  3. :browse oldfiles gives a list of last 100 files you have opened in vim
• Code Indentation
  1. V}> - V} selects a block (paragraph) and > applies indentation
• Reformat text
  1. Select the text
  2. Press gq
• Disable search highlighting temporarily
  1. :nohlsearch or simply :noh
  2. Press n/N to continue previous search
• Comment out multiple lines
  1. For entire file: :%s/^/#/g
  2. For a particular range, say from line 10 to 20: :10,20s/^/#
  3. To uncomment: :%s/^#//g
• Deleting lines
  1. S - Delete the entire line and switch to insert mode
  2. C - Delete the rest of the line and switch to insert mode
  3. dd - Delete the entire line, and stay in normal mode
• Deleting words
  1. dw - Delete rest of the word including the space after that. Stay in normal mode after the operation
  2. cw - Delete rest of the word excluding the space after that. Switch to normal mode after the operation
• Switch case
  1. ~ - Change the case of current character
  2. gUw - Change the rest of the word to uppercase
  3. guw - Change the rest of the word to lowercase
  4. gUU - Change the current line to uppercase
  5. guu - Change the current line to lowercase
• Redo
  1. Ctrl R to redo the last action
  2. 4 Ctrl R to redo the last 4 actions (I haven’t tried this)