Vim Tutorial

This tutorial includes some basic vim commands and I hope that it will be helpful.

Moving the cursor

• h : left
• j : down
• k : up
• l : right

It takes time to get used to it.

Navigation

• w: move the cursor one word forward (to the first letter)
• b : one word backward (also to the first letter)
• e : one word forward (to the last letter)
• fx : forward to the letter x
• ( : to the start of the sentence
• ) : start of the sentence
• 0 : start of line
• $ : end of line
• { : start of paragraph
• } : end of paragraph
• G : end of file
  • ctrl+G : to see the cursor location and file status
• gg : start of file
• xG : to the number x line of file
  • typing a number before a motion repeats it that many times!

Delete

• x: delete the character at the cursor
• dw: delete all the characters between the cursor and the first letter of the next word
  • e.g. Please delete the word. (Assume the cursor is at l)
  • After you press dw, the sentence becomes Please dethe word delete
• de: delete all the characters between the cursor and the next space
  • e.g. Please delete the word. (Assume the cursor is at l)
  • After you press de, the sentence becomes Please de the word delete
• d$ : delete to end of line
• dd : delete whole line
• p : After you delete something, press p to paste things you delete wherever you like.

Insert

• a : insert after the cursor
• A : insert after the end of line
• i : insert before the cursor
• I : insert before the start of line
• o : insert in the next line
• O : insert in the previous line

Search

• /yourSearchString + <Enter> : search for yourSearchString
  • n : to search for the same string again (press <Enter> to exit)
  • N : to search for the same string again, but in opposite direction
  • ctrl+o : to go back to where you came from
  • ctrl+i : to go forward
  • set option
    • :set ic : ignore case
    • :set noic : disable ignore case
    • :set hls : highlight the matches
    • :set nohls : disable highlight matches
    • :set is : increase search
    • :set nois: disable increase search
• % : move the cursor to the other matching parenthesis

Replace

• rx : replace the character at cursor with x
• ce : almost the same as de, but this time will place you in Insert Mode
• s/old/new : replace the first occurrence of ‘old’ with ‘new’
• s/old/new/g : replace all occurrence of ‘old’ with ‘new’ in one line
• #,#/old/new/g : #,# are the line numbers of the range of lines where the replace should be done
• %s/old/new/g : replace all occurrence of ‘old’ with ‘new’ in the whole file
• %s/old/new/g : replace all occurrence of ‘old’ with ‘new’ in the whole file, with a prompt whether to replace or not

Undo & Redo

• u : undo the last command
• U : undo the command excuting on the while line
• ctrl+R : redo the command

Copy & Paste

• y : to copy
• p : to paste
  • e.g. Start Visual Mode with v and move the cursor to chose whatever you want, type y to copy the highlighted text and type p to paste the text.

Others

• . : repeat the last command
• <start position><command><end position> : many commands follow this pattern
  • e.g. 0y$ means copy the whole line
    • 0 move the cursor to the start of line
    • y copy
    • $ move the cursor to the end of line
• ctrl+n : auto complete