Vim tricks

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/intermediate-vim/

by fanf2 • 7 years ago

269 61 7 years ago

periya• 7 years ago

I’ve discovered q: when trying to quit vim in a hurry. You always keep finding new quirky things to do in vim but I guess the same hold true for other text editors like Emacs

godelski5• 7 years ago

That's how I found `K`. I was surprised the first time I got a man page open. Now I find it pretty useful and wish it extended to more than man pages.

ronmrdechai• 7 years ago

Take a look at `:help 'keywordprg'`.

dredmorbius3• 7 years ago

I remap that to query dict in prose contexts. Mostly for mutt:

    au FileType mail set keywordprg=~/bin/dictless

CalChris• 7 years ago

":, @: ": is the register storing the last executed command. You can write ":p to print it to the buffer. @: reruns the last command.

That seems like a mouthful. I use :<up arrow> to run the last command and <up arrow> some more to run the ones before that.

frutiger• 7 years ago

You can also use `:^F` to navigate your history in a horizontal split using regular motion/search keys.

tartrate• 7 years ago

And if you wanted to repeat that 10 times you would...?

mises• 7 years ago

Press up ten times. That's still what a lot of us do in terminal (particularly when we're on a machine without fancy shell history fuzzy-searching etc.).

I guess I might press and hold at ten.

jonahx• 7 years ago

Use vim-repeat:

https://github.com/tpope/vim-repeat

lithiumfrost• 7 years ago

Personally, I would do 9@@ after the first @:

dredmorbius3• 7 years ago

Clickbait title conceals a decent article.

dang• 7 years ago

Changed now.

michaericalribo3• 7 years ago

U is the same as u except it does the undo as a new change, which is functionally useless.

Unless I’m mistaken, this is the default undo behavior for emacs...What horror to only have vim’s forward and backward undo history! Said the emacser on the vimmer’s post.

mden• 7 years ago

Maybe misunderstood what you meant, but vim's undo is not linear but rather tree-like. You can undo, make a change, and still get back to the initial state. https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Using_undo_branches

Edit: this also seems to be in the original post

michaericalribo3• 7 years ago

You are definitely right, and I still find the emacs undo confusing...but I did think it was funny that one dev’s trash is another’s treasure—now that I know what to expect, I even kind of like the emacs way, but when I first switched I hated it.

fwip• 7 years ago

vim also has "undo tree" functionality built in, the interface is just different than emacs's.

:help undo-branches http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-branche...

roelschroeven• 7 years ago

U is not the same as u, though: u undoes the last change, U undoes all latest changes on one line.

godelski5• 7 years ago

There's a few commands I LOVE but find frequently unmentioned.

In insert mode, <C-x> is a contextual completion. So like the normal <C-n> or <C-p> you just do <C-x><C-n> and you can keep hammering the <C-n> to fill in multiple "words". You can also complete lines, file paths, dictionary words, thesaurus words, tags, spelling, etc. See `help ins-completion`. Seriously, I can't do without this command. <C-x> needs to be in everyone's daily use.

Also in insert mode: <C-w> deletes a word back. You'll commonly find this is a lot of editors and stuff where it doesn't close a window. Similar to <C-backspace>, though I many times accidentally hit <C-w> in my browser instead of <C-backspace> because I use this so much (bad speller).

<C-[> much easier than pressing Esc

0 much easier than pressing ^ (honestly I have anything that is $,%,^,&. They aren't easy to reach)

Honestly, vim has some of the best written documentation I've read. If you really want to master vim, just read the docs on commands you already use. I guarantee you'll find something you didn't know.

Exuma6• 7 years ago

can you give more examples of <C-x><C-n> in code editing? I have tested that out in vim and its cool but i cant think of times I want to repeat a series in another part of the document, perhaps I'm just very uncreative right now

Thanks

godelski5• 7 years ago

Totally. But I will tell you, <C-x> is a habit built around the other options too. So I just use <C-x> on any completion (which I frequently use <C-x><C-f>).

Here's a dumb example (dumb because there's other ways to do it that are better)

Let's say I'm overloading a function.

void foo(int a, int b) {}

I could do v<C-x><C-p> until I fill in the b, then type ", int c)". Now it'd be totally easier to do "v<C-x><C-l> backspace , int c)", but that's a different point.

Maybe this one is a little more useful

"def _<C-x><C-p><C-x><C-p>" may expand to "def __init__(self" Note that here I'm holding down ctrl and just hitting "xpxp"

Honestly I end up finding a lot of patterns in my code just because I started thinking about it this way. It is more one of those things where once you start thinking about it with it in mind you will find patterns.

It is also an easy habit to develop, if you already use <C-n>, because when you press ctrl you just also hit x and keep your pinky down on ctrl. I feel like there is just no downside to using <C-x> because in reality it is just one more keystroke, which is done with the other hand (so even less increase in work).

m0zg3• 7 years ago

The problem is, how do you remember all of this stuff? Tabdo/bufdo is as advanced as it ever gets for me.

Exuma6• 7 years ago

You have to make a deliberate attempt to learn it. What i would do is when coding I would focus on a single command and do it 5 or 6 times until it was engrained, then I would go to the next one. I spent about 15 days straight fairly intensively learning vim .. taht was 8 years ago. Best decision I have ever made in my entire programmign career. Now I pick up new vim commands like I am multilingual in 20 languages. All the commands I can usually remember without even typing them, they just stick. It definitely has the rolling snowball momentum effect

m0zg3• 7 years ago

At my billing rate "15 days straight" is approximately equal to a low end BMW. So I think tabdo/bufdo will have to do for now. At least until I get a salaried job and can learn the rest at my employer's expense.

I do think there's Pareto principle at play with all this obscure stuff. Knowing 20% gets you 80% of the benefit, every additional percent gets you exponentially smaller fraction of the remaining 20%. That's how I play it anyway. I don't feel like I'm any less productive with my 20%.

dredmorbius3• 7 years ago

Vim is an editing language of actions, contexts, and count, with registers, trees, and buffers. The basic elements are pretty simple but in combination give tremendous power:

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0

Unfortunately, this aspect is poorly documented. Thoughtbot's video is among the best I've found. And that's with 30 years' experience.

mkl• 7 years ago

Anki. It doesn't take long.

binaryapparatus4• 7 years ago

"Exobrains, on the other hand, stuff Vim full of plugins, functions, and homebrew mappings in a vain attempt to pretend they’re using Emacs."

This is disturbingly accurate from my point of view. I keep wondering if I should finally jump ship and stop tweaking vim with questionable results. Spacemacs? Pure emacs + evil? Suggestions welcome.

chestervonwinch2• 7 years ago

I write primarily Python. Pycharm+vim bindings has been quite a pleasure in my experience. I still primarily use straight up vim with little to no mods for editing one-offs and isolated scripts.

binaryapparatus4• 7 years ago

Interesting, I don't often use Python but recent project had few 3000+ lines .py files, which make Vim _very_ unresponsive when editing. Other languages weren't so problematic but Python code is what made me look at Emacs direction at the first place.

michaericalribo3• 7 years ago

Evil makes the transition from vim manageable, but once I was sufficiently far down the rabbit hole, I found I was consistently having to tweak and hack to keep evil working...eventually I bit the bullet and gave vanilla emacs bindings a shot, and haven’t looked back. YMMV, of course, and spacemacs comes highly rated.

But at the very least, they’re both good gateway drugs to get your first hit of the hard stuff

pmoriarty• 7 years ago

A different data point:

After using vim for about 20 years, I switched to emacs+evil about 10 to 15 years ago.. and spent a lot of time in the first 5 years or so tweaking stuff. Things have mostly stabilized in the last 5 years, and I still use evil.

One thing that helped me a ton was using hydra. Whenever I install a new mode or package, I bind all of its useful functions to hydras. Hydra and evil allow me to keep all virtually all my bindings vim-like.

m45t3r2• 7 years ago

I particularly prefer doom-emacs [1]. I migrated from Vim to Spacemacs, however doom-emacs is leaner, faster and has better evil integration. For example, Spacemacs has no mapping for evil-numbers, however doom-emacs maps it to Ctrl+A (increase number) and Ctrl+Shift+A (decrease number) [2].

However, you will probably need to do some customizations in doom-emacs. Spacemacs works mostly only using its internal layers, however when you try to do something that isn't included already... Well, it is less than optimal. doom-emacs assumes that you will want to customize things.

[1] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/

[2]: And as for why it isn't Ctrl+X to decrease number like in Vim, it is because Ctrl+X is probably the most important keymapping in Emacs itself. However I find Ctrl+Shift+A quite good because it follows the Vim convention of the reverse of some operation is on Shift.

theCodeStig• 7 years ago

I recently moved from Spacemacs to Doom. I second, that it’s so much better, in that it’s faster, leaner, and easier to comprehend. Some of the keybindings could be more thorough. I find myself M-x’ing a lot. I take this as an acceptable trade off, as keybindings are easy to set on one’s own.

binaryapparatus4• 7 years ago

Great tip, thanks, trying it now. Seems nicer and easier to tweak than spacemacs, from my perspective.

jrumbut• 7 years ago

I've made this request before but I would pretty interested in learning emacs the emacs way (rather than trying to emulate vim in emacs). Maybe leveraging my experience with vim in the sense that I don't need to learn what an editor is or shall basics.

Something that starts from bare(ish) emacs, includes emacs lisp, and gradually adds in plugins sort of like how this post does it but maybe more comprehensive and less individual tricks oriented.

aasasd• 7 years ago

Frankly, personally I don't see a particular reason to use Emacs bindings. Afaict it's mostly just “study this flight manual and then do what it says,” simply more hotkeys in the same old editing paradigm.

Meanwhile, there's every reason to use Vim's bindings, as they specifically sidestep the ‘move cursor and then type’ approach. Besides, with Evil you'll still have plenty of Emacs chords to do for stuff that's not in Vim.

smitty1e• 7 years ago

Spacemacs is peanut butter meets chocolate. Apps like Magit and org-mode with vi's modal editing are truly superior.

MobileVet• 7 years ago

Even when I am using Xcode or some ide that requires I use it, I still pop open Magit in Spacemacs. Love it.

The discover ability of Spacemacs is really second to none and makes it much faster to learn and keep learning.

Spacemacs is Nutella to keep the analogy going...

dvcrn• 7 years ago

I tried the switch a couple times. A few times with spacemacs, a few times with trying to write my own config from scratch with evil. Not sure what it is, maybe the way emacs configs are setup but I found vim just so much easier for me to manage with less magic and more predictability.

chestervonwinch2• 7 years ago

One I learned recently transferring some LaTeX over to rST is visual highlight => "gq". This breaks up long lines to multiple lines based on your stored text width. It can also be coupled with motions, e.g., "gq}".

xelxebar• 7 years ago

Yeah. That's a really nice one. I use 'gqip' a lot when writing prose in latex, md, etc. One really cool thing is that it respects comments, so it will split long comment lines into multiline comments as necessary.

pugworthy• 7 years ago

Is it bad that I've used Vi/m since the early 80's, and I still don't know (or really feel like I need to know) a lot of tricks?

Sometimes efficiency is not about "tricks"

tasty_freeze• 7 years ago

I use gf (mnemonic: go file) all the time -- it will grab the string under the cursor (the cursor doesn't need to be at the start of it), then attempt to open a file with that name. You can look up the details but it uses a path type mechanism so if the name of the file isn't absolute, it will check the path.

Shoop• 7 years ago

gf is awesome. Great for navigating scripts that run other scripts and also useful for creating links within a personal wiki of markdown files without a plugin like vim-wiki. While I do use a lot of plugins, I find it's a lot better to select plugins that add to vim's editing language (vim-eunuch, vim-surround, vim-vinegar, vim-exchange, vim-angry, vim-sexp-mappings-for-regular-people, vim-commentary) rather than plugins which agglomerate IDE features onto vim (vim-wiki, nerdtree, etc).

While I do have a few of these IDE-like plugins (undotree, for example), I think it's better to try plugins which embrace the "vim way" first before investing in a full IDE-like plugin. I don't mean to gatekeep by criticizing IDE-like plugins, but just to say that spending the time to learn normal mode as a true language (verbs, nouns, and all) and using plugins that follow this idea is a worthy investment. Then, add IDE-like plugins to work around the frustrating rough edges of vim once you've milked all that you can out of it.

AlkurahCepheus• 7 years ago

Don't forget about its twin gx. For example on MacOS gx uses the open command to open a file in the default application. Really helpful when you want to open up a website quickly in your browser or you have the url to an image in a markdown file and want to see it. Helpful trick for relativ paths: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/7xs8x3/opening_local_r...

srik• 7 years ago

Text objects are crucial to composing vim commands. Vim offers quite a few but honestly, there’s plenty more. I’d recommend using the vim-textobj-user as base to add appealing text objects. Personally, I can’t live without the “entire” text object which allows one to act upon the entire file. Like “indent entire file” etc.

https://github.com/kana/vim-textobj-user

https://github.com/kana/vim-textobj-entire

sullyj3• 7 years ago

If you’re constantly tweaking your vimrc, do yourself a favor and add a command for that:
command! Vimrc :vs $MYVIMRC

I just use marks for this. Capital letter marks work across files, I use 'I (for init.vim, I use neovim).

Vim tricks

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