Vim

From s5h.net

One of the most important tools of a unix administrator is ability to use a text editor. Perhaps the most popular text editor available on unix systems is the vi improved editor, or simply vim.

Here is my cheat sheet. When I find useful commands that reduce the time that I spend editing files (which can be a day long process) I put things here so that I can remember them later. The functions here are what I find highly useful for good editing. Having the ability to reduce the work involved in making many changes at once is advantageous, so here is my over view of the things which I think benefit the most when using vim.

^c indicates a control character for letter c.

commands

The commands that I think are perhaps the most important of are the following

command	action/purpose
{,}	moves to the beginning or end of paragraph at cursor
(,)	moves to the beginning or end of sentence
m	sets a bookmark in a-z and A-Z slots (help m)
‘,'	jumps to bookmark in slot a-z and A-Z (help m). ` retains column position of mark
gg	jumps to start of document
G or :$	jumps to end of document
:n	jumps to line n
z=	suggest spelling alternatives
*,#	go to matching word under cursor. this is useful for jumping to a function that you’re calling (* = forward, # = reverse )
gg=G	apply tabulation rules to the current file
ga	shows the hex, decimal and ordinal values of the character under cursor
ctrl-a/ctrl-x	adds/subtracts to/from decimal under cursor
J	joins this line in the next (keeps inserts a space character between join
^f, ^b	go forward or backwards by a page
1,$!grep something	run the grep command on the full buffer (1,$)
:earlier/:later n	go earlier or later in the edit time line by n minutes/seconds. This is highly useful if you get lost in undo/redo. Define n as Nx, where N is the number of time units defined where x is either s for seconds, or m for minutes.

visual mode

This is the mode that you enter when you select areas.

command	action/purpose
ab/aB	select () or {}
:	perform operation on block
:’<,’>s/foo/bar/g	perform regular expression substitution on block
gu / gU	switches the case of the visual block depending on the case of u
g?	rot 13 the block
^v	visual block selection, rather than selecting by line this will select by rectangle config

my own vim

The environment for vim that I find the most convenient can simply be stored in a text file in your home directory named ~/.vimrc.

command	action/purpose
set spell	enables spell checker, right click, or z= to suggest alternatives
set number	show line numbers
set autoindent	automatically tab on code blocks
set smartindent	sets better indentation based on code
set ts=8	sets the tab stops to 8 character spaces
set sw=8	sets the autowrap to 8 characters
syntax enable	automatically highlight code keywords
set linebreak	automatically wrap whole words. this can be used rather than set line width
set fileformat=dos/unix/mac	sets the line breaks when saving
set modeline	this allows vim to process the vim:...: commands stored in files that you edit
set nolist	shows non-printable characters

Recently I've been using autocmds for various file types like this

autocmd FileType perl colors torte

Which sets the color configuration for files that are perl sources. I have a couple of settings for text also

autocmd FileType mail,human set formatoptions+=t textwidth=72 nonumber

for code

command	action/purpose
]p	paste, but indent at the same time
%	go to matching (, {, [ etc
gd	go to definition or declaration
K	go to man page for the word under cursor
:mksession, vim -S Session.vim	save session and open the saved session

abbreviations

Often its handy to change a sequence as you're typing a word, for example the sequence <a might be handy to turn into <a href=""></a>, which should save some keyboard gymnastics.

abbreviate #i #include
abbreviate #d #define

abbreviate <a <a href=""></a><left><left><left><left><left><left>
abbreviate <i <img src="" /><left><left><left>
abbreviate l" “”<left><left><left><left><left><left>
abbreviate r" ”
abbreviate l' ‘
abbreviate r' ’
abbreviate "" ""<left><left><left><left><left>
abbreviate <c <code></code><left><left><left><left><left><left><left>
abbreviate <p <pre>

abbreviate <? <?php?><left><left> </pre>

Be careful with the "" abbreviation since it can be annoying in other code, such as when writing $a = "". It might he helpful for yourself if this is changed to work only within html files by making use of the autocmd function.

autocmd

Following on from the above suggestion, this is perhaps the only way to implement the "" abbreviation in a useful way for anyone who has to work with strings in a programming/script language.

autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.htm,*.html abbreviate "" ""<left><left><left><left><left>

video links

These pages contain links to various external sites that have vim videos. These videos are for educational purposes and might be live demonstrations or talks describing how vim works.

address	description of content
http://danielwebb.us/software/vim_demo/	screen captures of performing regular vim work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScUUhCEPzs&NR=1	you tube video showing vi tp be suitable for editing python code (but it’s code agnostic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMC9PtXwCtI	another example of vim in use
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA	Bram Moolenaar talks about using vim effectively for text editing, or even how to use vim more effectively by people who use it extensively already
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30P8DSNOZuU	demo of using vim and rails.vim to get writing pages quicky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSXoap2h3Mw	vim editor tutorial (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsKGMxoydCc	vim editor tutorial (2)