Vim Visual Cheat Sheet Serge Y. Stroobandt Copyright 2016, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA This document is still under construction. Introduction Vim (and vi for that matter) is renowned for its notoriously steep learning curve. Figure 1: Comparison of editor learning curves Source: This should not scare you off. If you have not done so yet, first read “Why I Use Vim” If you cannot bother reading it, here is my personal break down. No, this is not an extreme case of fanboyhood. Vim is a way of life, or rather, a means towards extreme levels of productivity with the Vim–Markdown–Pan- doc–make input combo with any of the LaTeX/ConTeXt/XHTML/Prince/DZS- lides back‑ends. 1 Among other things, Vim will teach you to use a keyboard professionally; keeping your index fingers stuck to the home row.Vim allows you to edit texts lightning fast without resorting to any computer mouse or other pointing de- vice. Imagine the space you will gain on the folding table on your next transat- lantic business flight!ou Y will no longer have to use the Home , End or arrow keys, if you chose so. Vim’s predecessor vi has been around since 1976 and has been continuously improved ever since. If com- puter application has been around for such an ex- tended period in time, for sure, there must be a good reason to it! Are you not curious towards experienc- ing for yourself why? vi gang sign My interest in Vim grew out of my annoyance with other text editors not recognising words, parenthesis, brackets, etc. I got fed up with manually tapping the cursor to the desired edit- ing position. Vim is one of the few text editors which is a word processor in the true sense of the word. It is a word processor which effectively recognises word, bracket and parenthesis boundaries, counts words, etc. Vim continuously records a small macro of your last command combination, which is easily accessible through the dot . key. Don’t be deceived; this func- tionality is far more powerful than the usual repeat function! 2 Visual Cheat Sheet For English keyboards Figure 2: Vim visual cheat sheet for English keyboards 3 For German keyboards Figure 3: Vim visual cheat sheet for German keyboards Tutorial vi/vim graphical cheat sheet tutorial 4 version 1.1 April 1st, 06 Esc vi / vim graphical cheat sheet normal mode toggle external play prev eol goto "soft" repeat next begin end "soft" bol next ~ case ! filter @·macro # ident $ %match ^ bol & :s * ident (sentence )sentence _ down + line goto 2 "hard" prev auto3 `· mark 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 bol - line =format ex next end replace back yank undo insert open paste begin end Q mode WWORD E WORD R mode T· 'till Y line U line I at bol O above P before { parag. } parag. next end 1,3 insert open paste1 record replace 'till undo misc misc q·macro w word e word r· char t· y yank u i mode o below p after [· ]· 1 append subst delete "back" eof/ screen join help screen ex cmd reg. bol/ A at eol S line D to eol F·find ch Ggoto ln H top J lines K L bottom : line "· spec | goto col subst 1,3 6 delete find extra repeat goto not aappend s char d f· char g· cmds h j k l ; t/T/f/F '·mk. bol \· used! 4 back- change visual prev prev un- 3 3 find quit screen indent Z· X space C to eol V lines B WORD N(find) Mmid'l < indent > ?· (rev.) 5 delete 1,3 visual prev next set extra change reverse repeat find z·cmds x char c v mode b word n (find) m·mark , t/T/f/F . cmd /· moves the cursor, or defines Main command line commands ('ex'): Notes: motion the range for an operator :w (save), :q (quit), :q! (quit w/o saving) (1) use "x before a yank/paste/del command :e f (open file f), to use that register ('clipboard') (x=a..z,*) command direct action command, if red, it enters insert mode :%s/x/y/g (replace 'x' by 'y' filewide), (e.g.: "ay$ to copy rest of line to reg 'a') :h (help in vim), :new (new file in vim), requires a motion afterwards, (2) type in a number before any action operator operates between cursor & Other important commands: to repeat it that number of times destination CTRL-R: redo (vim), (e.g.: 2p, d2w, 5i, d4j) special functions, CTRL-F/-B: page up/down, extra (3) duplicate operator to act on current line requires extra input CTRL-E/-Y: scroll line up/down, (dd = delete line, >> = indent line) CTRL-V: block-visual mode (vim only) commands with a dot need (4) ZZ to save & quit, ZQ to quit w/o saving q· a char argument afterwards Visual mode: bol = beginning of line, eol = end of line, Move around and type operator to act (5) zt: scroll cursor to top, mk = mark, yank = copy on selected region (vim only) zb: bottom, zz: center words: quux(foo, bar, baz); (6) gg: top of file (vim only), gf: open file under cursor (vim only) WORDs: quux(foo, bar, baz); For a graphical vi/vim tutorial & more tips, go to www.viemu.com - home of ViEmu, vi/vim emulation for Microsoft Visual Studio Figure 4: Vi/vim graphical cheat sheet tutorial Vim game VIM Adventures From here on By now, you might have Vim is actually a word processor which you can easily modify and/or extend yourself. In other applications This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Other licensing available on request. Unattended CSS typesetting with . This work is published at https://hamwaves.com/vim.tutorial/en/. Last update: Monday, March 1, 2021. 5.