Vim tutor is a great guide to get you started with vim.
To start with Vim Tutor, simply type vimtutor
in your terminal.
The tutorial says it should take about 25 to 30 minutes, but because I was also messing around with writing up this post and including their lesson summaries, all trying to use vim, I spend a bit longer with it.
If you’re running low on time, I’d say do each lesson in a 5 to 10 minute window span each day. You’re allowed to take it slow.
I learned it’s about the journey, not about the speed in which it takes for you to pick it up. It’s there where you can start nitpicking on how to do “x” or “y”.
The next following sections are summaries of what vim tutor teaches you. I modified some of the summaries to best fit markdown format.
h
(left)j
(down)k
(up)l
(right)To start Vim from the shell prompt type: vim FILENAME <ENTER>
To exit Vim type: <ESC>
:q!
<ENTER>
to trash all changes.
OR type: <ESC>
:wq
<ENTER>
to save the changes.
To delete the character at the cursor type: x
To insert or append text type:
i
type inserted text <ESC>
insert before the cursor
A
type appended text <ESC>
append after the line
NOTE: Pressing <ESC>
will place you in Normal mode or will cancel an unwanted and partially completed command.
To delete from the cursor up to the next word type: dw
To delete from the cursor to the end of a line type: d$
To delete a whole line type: dd
To repeat a motion prepend it with a number: 2w
The format for a change command is:
operator [number] motion
where:
- **operator** - is what to do, such as d for delete
- **[number]** - is an optional count to repeat the motion
- **motion** - moves over the text to operate on, such as w (word), (to the end of line), etc.
To move to the start of the line use a zero: 0
Undo & redo actions
u
(lowercase u)U
(capital U)CTRL-R
To put back text that has just been deleted, type p
. This puts the
deleted text AFTER the cursor (if a line was deleted it will go on the
line below the cursor).
To replace the character under the cursor, type r
and then the
character you want to have there.
The change operator allows you to change from the cursor to where the
motion takes you. eg. Type ce
to change from the cursor to the end of
the word, c$
to change to the end of a line.
The format for change is:
c [number] motion
CTRL-G
displays your location in the file and the file status.G
moves to the end of the file.[number] G
moves to that line number.gg
moves to the first line./
followed by a phrase searches FORWARD for the phrase.?
followed by a phrase searches BACKWARD for the phrase.N
to search in the opposite direction.CTRL-O
takes you back to older positions, CTRL-I to newer positions.Typing %
while the cursor is on a ( , ), [, ], {, or } goes to its match.
Substitute command
:s/old/new
:s/old/new/g
:#,#s/old/new/g
:%s/old/new/g
:%s/old/new/gc
:!command
executes an external command.Some useful examples are:
(MS-DOS) | (Unix) | description |
---|---|---|
:!dir |
:!ls |
shows a directory listing |
:!del FILENAME |
:!rm FILENAME |
removes file FILENAME |
:w FILENAME
writes the current Vim file to disk with name FILENAME.
v motion :w FILENAME
saves the Visually selected lines in file FILENAME.
:r FILENAME
retrieves disk file FILENAME and puts it below the cursor position.
:r !dir
reads the output of the dir command and puts it below the cursor position.
o
to open a line BELOW the cursor and start Insert mode.O
to open a line ABOVE the cursor.a
to insert text AFTER the cursor.A
to insert text after the end of the line.The e
command moves to the end of a word.
The y
operator yanks (copies) text, p
puts (pastes) it.
Typing a capital R
enters Replace mode until <ESC>
is pressed.
Typing :set xxx
sets the option xxx
. Some options are:
ic
ignorecase
ignore upper/lower case when searchingis
incsearch
show partial matches for a search phrasehls
hlsearch
highlight all matching phrasesYou can either use the long or the short option name.
no
to switch an option off: :set noic
Type :help
or press <F1>
or <Help>
to open a help window.
Type :help cmd
to find help on cmd.
Type CTRL-W CTRL-W
to jump to another window
Type :q
to close the help window
Create a vimrc startup script to keep your preferred settings.
When typing a :
command, press CTRL-D
to see possible completions. Press <TAB>
to use one completion.
The tutorial got me through the basics, and only scraps the surface of what you can do with vim. One of the things I found useful after going through this tutorial was saying out loud what the command I was using does.
For example, if I was using the w
command, I would say “word”. If I was going to the word, and I was using the diw
command, I would say “delete instance word”. Using words instead of letters helps with getting the commands down. It’s the same technique I used when learning the bash terminal, e.g. with pwd
, I would say in my head, “print working directory”.
I wrote up a much longer post about vim that I will publish soon.