Prerequisites
Basic Understanding of the Command Line (Terminal)
Understanding of Vim Modes
Vim Installation
Introduction
Vim is a powerful text editor favored by many developers for its speed and efficiency, but it can be intimidating for beginners. Whether you’re new to Vim or looking to enhance your skills, mastering the right commands can dramatically boost your productivity. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the top Vim commands that will help streamline your workflow, allowing you to navigate, edit, and manage text faster and more efficiently. With these essential commands at your fingertips, you’ll be able to maximize your Vim experience and take your text editing to the next level.
Vim Installation
Vim software needs to be installed on your system. Depending on your operating system:
- Linux: Vim is often pre-installed. If not, you can install it via package managers like apt, yum, or dnf.
- macOS: You can install Vim using Homebrew (brew install vim), or it's often pre-installed.
- Windows: You can download and install Vim from its official site or use tools like Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Check Vim version
Run the following command to check if Vim is installed:
vim --version
The following is a simple program that assigns a greeting message to the variable as a string and outputs a greeting message in PHP. This program was used to introduce basic Vim commands in the screencast.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> <?php $welcomeText = "Hello world!"; echo $welcomeText; echo "<br>How's it going?"; ?> </body> </html>
Create/Edit a File
To create or edit a file:
vim <filename>
If the file doesn’t exist, Vim will create it. If it already exists, Vim will open it for editing.
For example,
vim hello.php
This will open hello.php in Vim. If it already exists, Vim will open it for editing.
Saves the file you're working on but don't exit
:w
Vim Modes
- Normal mode (Command Mode)
- This is the default mode in Vim.
- In this mode, you can navigate, delete text, copy/paste, and execute other commands.
- Press Esc at any time to ensure you are in normal mode.
- Insert mode
- In Insert Mode, you can type text into the document.
- To enter insert mode from normal mode, press i.
- To return to normal mode from insert mode, press Esc.
- Visual mode
- This mode is used for selecting text.
- To enter visual mode, press v in normal mode.
- You can then move the cursor to select the text, and apply commands like copy, cut, etc.
- Command-line mode
- In this mode, you can execute commands to save, quit, search, and more.
- To enter this mode, press : in normal mode.
- Example commands include :w to save, :q to quit, and :wq to save and quit.
Macros
To record a Macro in Vim press q in command mode and then the letter to which you want to save it. So if you press qa and start recording, your macro would be saved to a. You stop recording by pressing q again in command mode. Vim macros (also known as vim recordings) are an efficient way to carry out repetitive edits on a text file and are one of the most powerful features of Vim. To execute the macro type @ followed by the register letter where the macro is stored.
Suppose you want to clear a macro. You simply clear a register by assigning it an empty string:
:let @a = ""
This assigns an empty string to the register a, effectively deleting the macro stored there.
Search and Replace
Type / then search term and press enter. Once you've performed a search, you can navigate through the search results by pressing n for next instance and N for previous instance.
Search backward
If you want to search in reverse (upwards in the file), use ? instead of /
Press ?
Type the word or pattern you want to search for
Press Enter
For example,
?hello
To replace the first match in the current line, use the following:
:s/old/new/
If you want to be prompted to confirm each replacement, use the c flag. This will allow you to confirm or skip each match individually
Replace and confirm each occurrence in the current line
:s/old/new/c
Replace and confirm each occurrence in the entire file
:%s/old/new/c
Replace and confirm each occurrence between lines 1 and 12
:1,12s/old/new/c
If you want to search and replace the pattern in the entire file, use the percentage character. To replace all occurrences of the search pattern, use the g flag.
:%s/foo/bar/g
If the string part is omitted, it is considered as an empty string, and the matched pattern is deleted.
:%s/foo//g
Will return the number of matches and the number of lines those matches occur on, without doing any substitution
:%s/some_pattern//n
In Vim, when searching for text that includes special characters like ".", "*", "?", "$", "&", "!", "^", "/", "\", "[", "]", "|", "{", "}", "(", or ")", you need to "escape" them by placing a backslash ( \ ) before them.
For example, to search for the string "anything?"
/anything\? and press Return
For more information on searching and replacing with Vim
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/806-7612/editorvi-62/index.html
Exit Commands
To save and quit
:wq
To quit
:q
To save forcefully and throw away any unsaved changes
:q!
Cursor Movement
Scroll up half a page
ctrl + u
Scroll down half a page
ctrl + d
Move to the top of the screen
H
Move to the middle of the screen
M
Move to the bottom of the screen
L
Jump to the end of the line
$
Jump to the start of the line
0
Go to the first line of the document
gg
Go to the last line of the document
G
Move one word to the right
w
Move ahead three words
3w
Move one word to the left
b
Move back three words
3b
Text Deletion Commands
To delete a range of lines the syntax is as follows:
:[start],[end]d
Example: :3,5d In this command the editor will delete the lines from 3 to 5
Delete all lines at or below the current one
dG
Delete from the cursor to the end of the line
d$
Delete from the cursor to the end of the word
dw
Delete to start of line
d0
Cut, Copy & Paste
Cut the current line
dd
Yank
Duplicate the current line
yyp
Copy the current line
yy
Copy from the cursor to the end of the line
y$
Copy from the cursor to the end of the word
yw
Paste
Paste above cursor
P
Paste below cursor
p
Window Spliting
Split the window vertically and open filename
:vsp filename
Split the window horizontally and open filename
:sp filename
Switch between windows
ctrl + w, then (separately) followed by left/down/up/right arrow to move to the left/bottom/top/right window accordingly
To close the split like you would close vim
:q
Other Useful Commands
Will show line numbers
:set nu
Hide line numbers
:set nonu
Go to a specific line number
:<line number> and press the enter button
To enable syntax highlighting type the below command and press Enter
:syntax on
To turn off syntax highlighting type the below command and press Enter
:syntax off
To undo a change
u
To redo a change
ctrl + r
Final Thoughts
Mastering Vim can significantly enhance your productivity, especially for those who spend a lot of time in the terminal. By learning these top Vim commands, you'll be able to navigate, edit, and manage text more efficiently, unlocking the full potential of this powerful text editor. While Vim’s learning curve can be steep, the investment in time will pay off in speed and flexibility once you’ve gotten comfortable with its features.
To continue your Vim journey, check out the official Vim website for more resources, tutorials, and documentation:
Official Vim Website
Happy editing, and remember that practice is key to truly mastering Vim!