Vi
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Related Pages
This page is about the editor vim itself. The other related pages are
- Vimrc, which is dedicated to vim configuration settings and to the file ~/.vimrc.
External Links
General
- My links on vim on del.icio.us.
- Official vim homepage.
- Vim Tips Wiki
- Vim documentation: help
- Vim documentation: map
Other General
- Vi Lovers home page
- Good post explaining why vi is superior and defeating common misconception (with examples).
- Vi would not be vi without a bit of fun...
Cheat sheets
- Very good graphical keyboard cheatsheet
- Another compact & complete cheatsheet (as folded reference card).
- Real Short Vim Normal-Mode List of Commands (from Dr Chip's)
Guides & Cheat sheets
- Avoiding the ESC key
- Vim map tutorial
- Dr Chip's Vim Page — A tremendous amount of Vim treasures from an expert user
- Efficient editing with vim
- C editing with VIM HOWTO
- Using vim as an IDE all in one
- Browsing programs with tags
- Using Bash completion with ctags and Vim
- Alternative tab navigation
Plugins (installed)
- snipMate : TextMate-style snippets for Vim
- a.vim : Alternate Files quickly (.c --> .h etc)
- trinity.vim : Build the trinity of srcexpl, taglist, NERD_tree to be a good IDE
- AutoTag : Updates entries in a tags file automatically when saving
Plugins (not yet installed)
- OmniCppComplete : C/C++ omni-completion with ctags database
- c.vim : C/C++ IDE -- Write and run programs. Insert statements, idioms, comments etc.
- CScope with the tutorial here
- winmanager : A windows style IDE for Vim 6.0 (Referenced in TagList plugin help)
- bufexplorer.zip : Buffer Explorer / Browser
- neocomplcache : Ultimate auto completion system for Vim
- surround.vim : Delete/change/add parentheses/quotes/XML-tags/much more with ease
- tComment : An extensible & universal comment plugin that also handles embedded filetypes
- mru.vim : Plugin to manage Most Recently Used (MRU) files
- FuzzyFinder : buffer/file/command/tag/etc explorer with fuzzy matching
- matchit.zip : extended % matching for HTML, LaTeX, and many other languages
- LustyExplorer : Dynamic filesystem and buffer explore
Some videos that illustrates those plugins:
- Top Vim Plugins (YouTube), showing Surround, SnipMate, TComment, MRU, FuzzyFinder, NerdTree, MatchIt
Plugins (uninstalled)
- easytags.vim : Automated tag file generation and syntax highlighting of tags in Vim
- Replaced by AutoTag — syntax highlighting of tags is limited to c files; moreover AutoTag has a clever way to look for the tags file in project hierarchy.
- minibufexpl.vim : Elegant buffer explorer - takes very little screen space
- No real tab support. Seems to interfere with trinity plugin. Interesting key bindings inside though. To reassess...
Invocation
vi -p file1.txt file2.txt # Open each file in a different tab
vi -t tagname # Open file and move cursor at specified tag (requires ctags)
view file.txt # View file in vim, with syntax highlighting... (read-only)
vimdiff file1.txt file2.txt # View differences in vim
Keyboard Shortcuts
Help
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
C-] MouseL |
Jump to a subject. On azerty keyboard, do Ctrl-AltGr-] (but doesn't work with Synergy). The mouse shortcut requires :set mouse=a
|
|
C-O C-T gMouseR C-MouseR |
Back. |
Splitting windows
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
:{height}split [filename] | Split the screen into two windows, optionally opening another file (with the optional specified height) | |
:new | Open a new window on a new empty file | |
:close | Close the current windows | |
:only | Close all other windows | |
Ctrl-W w | Switch between windows | |
Ctrl-W + Ctrl-W - |
Increase / decrease window height | |
{height}Ctrl-W _ | Set window height, or maximize it if no height specified | |
:qa[ll] :wa[ll] |
Quit all windows / Write change for all windows |
Tabs
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
:tab {command} | Execute the command in a new tab | |
:tabonly | Close all tabs but the current one | |
:tabn[ext] C-PageDown gt |
Go to the next tab page | |
:tabp[ext] C-PageUp gT |
Go to the previous tab page |
Miscellaneous
! If keys HJKLM have been remapped to MHJKL, shortcut below must be changed accordingly !
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
C-[ | Same effect as Esc, but a bit faster/easier to type. Works on AZERTY keyboard in Windows, but not on Linux. | |
C-C | Same effect as Esc, but a bit faster/easier to type. Also works on AZERTY keyboard | |
C-Space | Same effect as Esc, but a bit faster/easier to type (see [1]). | Yes |
C-N | Omni and keyword completion. | Yes |
* | Search next occurence of word under cursor (Here more like this...) | |
# | Search previous occurence of word under cursor | |
gd | Search first occurence of current search | |
^dBS | Concatenate current line at the end of previous lines (assuming <BS> does wrap-around. See option whichwrap) | |
J | Concatenate current line with next line | |
/Up | Recall previous search string | |
:Up | Recall previous command | |
. | Redo last command | |
C-O | Switch to normal mode for one command. Use | to execute more commands (see [2]) | |
:C-U | Remove the range that Vi may insert when entering normal mode (handy for defining maps - see :help omap-info
|
Block Indenting
(ref: [3])
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
>> | Indent current line | |
5>> | Indent 5 lines | |
Vjjjj>> | Indent 5 lines - same as above but using visual mode | |
>% | (while cursor is on a curly brace) Indent a curly-braces block | |
]p | paste & indent block based on surrounding text | |
={ | (C-indenting) Auto-indent the current block (:help = for more info) | |
== | (C-indenting) Auto-indent the current line | |
gg=G | Intends everything! |
Operator & motion
List of available operators:
c change d delete y yank into register (does not change the text) ~ swap case (only if 'tildeop' is set) g~ swap case gu make lowercase gU make uppercase ! filter through an external program = filter through 'equalprg' or C-indenting if empty gq text formatting g? ROT13 encoding > shift right < shift left zf define a fold g@ call function set with the 'operatorfunc' option
List of frequently used operator motion (see :help operator). They are used like diB (delete inner {} block)
iw | inner word | aw | a word | i[ | inner [] block | a[ | a [] block | i" | inner "" string | a" | a "" string |
iW | inner WORD | aW | a WORD | ib i( | inner () block | ab a( | a () block | i' | inner '' string | a' | a '' string |
is | inner sentence | as | a sentence | i< | inner <> block | a< | a <> block | i` | inner `` string | a` | a `` string |
ip | inner paragraph | ap | a paragraph | it | inner tag block | at | a tag block | ||||
iB i{ | inner {} block | aB a{ | a {} block |
Commands
Shortcut | Description | Custom |
---|---|---|
:s/search/replace/ | Search & replace - current line | |
:%s/search/replace/ | Search & replace - global scope |
Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks
- Inserting only a single character (http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Insert_a_single_character).
- Macro
- qq to start recording a macro q. End macro with q again.
- @q to replay macro, followed by . to replay it again.
- Visual Block
- Ctrl-v to start VISUAL BLOCK mode.
- Shift-I to insert some text at the start of each line of selected block.
- wrap-around
- Set option whichwrap or ww that allows specified keys that move the cursor left/right to move to the previous/next line when the cursor is on the first/last character in the line.
- In Vim, <space> and <backspace> are set to wrap-around by default.
- Read-only viewer (with syntax highlighting):
$ vi -R sensitive_file
$ view sensitive_file
- Retab
- To convert tabs in current file to current tab settings, use command
:retab
[4]. For instance to convert tabs into space
:set expandtab :retab
- View differences in vim
vimdiff file1.txt file2.txt
- Interaction with X Clipboard
- vim can use the X clipboard if it has been compiled with the clipboard feature (run
vim --version
and see if you have +clipboard in the output). In that case, yanking to the+
register, or simply selecting with the mouse, will actually copy in the X clipboard, hence allowing other applications, or even other instances of vim to exchange text snippets. Also, it will ease the copy-paste of indented text, since in that case, vim will first disable autoindentation before pasting the text (see optionpaste
). - On system like Ubuntu, you need to install an instance of gvim (like package vim-gnome or vim-gtk) to have feature
+clipboard
turned on (i.e. installing package vim is not enough). - When
set mouse=a
, use shift-mouse to still use the xterm copy/paste (see mouse-using).
set incsearch
, moves cursor as search pattern is typed. Ctrl-L to type letter under cursor, Ctrl-R Ctrl-W to type current word.- References:
- type
:help ctrl<C-D>
, to get a list of all ctrl sequence. Type <C-D> in command line for auto-completion. - Support 256 colors in gnome-terminal: add
set t_Co=256
in ~/.vimrc ([5])
To Do
- Done Find a way to prevent vim to mess up with my register when deleting text.
- Auto-complete, use cursor keys instead of up/down to search in the drop down list.
- Look at Virtual-edit (see http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Add_trailing_blanks_to_lines_for_easy_visual_blocks)
- Other links: