12 KiB

Raw Blame History

title	date	techne	episteme
vim	2010-11-17	:done	:deprecated

#!sh
alias evil="for s in {1..3}; do 
  echo -n 'VI! '; 
  sleep .666; 
  done; echo; vi"

A GNU Dawn

Below is a little write-up of the vim features I used often enough to value them, but still rarely enough to constantly forget them. However, during the fall of 2010, I eventually overcame my hatred of Lisp and converted to emacs. Maybe I'll write a similar list for it one day. Or I'll just wait until emacs ships with "M-x write-article-based-on-todo-list".

Enjoy the (untouched) article nonetheless.

Ye Olde Vim confige

Hello, my name is muflax, and I am a vim addict. My ~/.vim directory is about 6MB large and contains 20,000 lines of code¹. I use so many features, that I often forget about some of them. Heck, I implemented tab completion for code 3 times because I forgot that I already did it each time and only noticed it months later during a cleanup!

It couldn't go on like this. My memory couldn't keep up with this. I probably only knew half the hotkeys I have mapped myself. I dream of vim; have terrible nightmares because I can't remember how to automatically create a list of ascending numbers. I have spent more time this year implementing or tweaking something in vim than programming in general. (Ok, this is slightly exaggerated. But only slightly.)

Now, if I were sane, I would cut down my config a lot, or switch to a GUI editor (TextMate is very nice) that remembers my features for me, or just switch to emacs² already, because I'm at least halfway there anyway.

Luckily, I am not sane. So instead, I just made another SRS deck, and put in all those features, using a card each, and then just learned them like everything else. Hey, I have fully outsourced my long-term memory, I might as well use it for stuff that matters!

And to cultivate this deck, I needed a complete list of all vim features I currently (should) know. All of them! So here it is, in no particular order, including all relevant plugins. You can just google them or check my [Config][] on github.

I'm gonna leave out all the very elementary features everyone knows, like / or dd, and some of the hotkeys are mine, obviously, not standard. I'll also skip over config-only features because you don't need to remember those. See the awesome help for what they do.

The List

ci( aka change inside, deletes everything the current set of () and puts you into insert mode. Works the same way for all closures, like ci" or ci{, or use cib for the current block. Apart from c for change, this also works with d and y. d% deletes everything until it hits a (matched) parenthesis.
yankring plugin, implements a yankring like the killring in emacs. Automagically manages your buffers when copying or deleting something, allowing you to cycle through it when yanking it back into the text. Very useful when cut-and-pasting multiple parts. Use just like normal yanking, C-p to cycle, :YRShow for a list. Also shares yank buffer among all instances (omg its heavan).
C-x and C-a, in CM, de/increments the currently selected value. See my config for an enhancement to make it work with boolean values, too (using gy).
gq, re-formats the selection, breaking lines and so on.
>, < and =, on a selection, indent right/left/automagically. Great for pasting or reworking loops.
Some ctags features. [i shows the first line contain the word under the cursor (good to look up a declaration), C-w i opens it in a new window, C-] (and for me, C-Space) jumps to the definition of the current keyword, :tag [keyword] dito.
folding, to show/hide code levels. I put fold in and out both on Space and fold according to syntax. Useful for complex source code.
:bprev and :bnext to switch buffers (I put them on F1 and F2), also :tabprev and :tabnext (gT and gt), like in vimperator, for tabs.
NERDtree plugin, :NERDtree, as a nice integrated file manager. Occasionally useful.
:jesus, because Jesus saves. Your file. (Uses cmdalias plugin, dito the next one.)
:pd or :perldo, for a more powerful regex engine.
WW, to just save a file. Faster than :w<CR>.
pastetoggle, on F3, to toggle paste mode, i.e. yanking text with or without formating it.
F11 and F12 to automagically underline the current line, used in my notes for headers. See my config.
Align and AutoAlign plugin, to align multiple lines in intelligent ways. I mostly use it to align multiple variable declarations around the = sign, which Align even does automagically for some languages. Use on a selection with :Align= or any other sign.
BufExplorer, to get a nice list of open buffers, use with \be. Builtin, of course, is :ls, which is also nice.
a.vim, alternate between source/header files via :A. Also, \ih and \is jumps to header/source file under the cursor.
matchit plugin, extends the % command, which jumps (in order) to the innermost parentheses on the left, then its match on the right. matchit enables it for tags and so on, too.
taglist plugin, a nice sidebar for method names and shit, like in IDEs. Use with :Tlist. Occasionally useful.
template plugin, uses file templates instead of blank files for certain file types.
"*y and all related yank operations. Yank into the X11 clipboard, so that you can share among vim instances. yankring already covers this, but still useful sometimes for other apps. Requires vim to be compiled with X11 bindings.
* in CM, searches for the word under the cursor.
gU + motion, gUU for whole line, turns it uppercase. gu for lowercase, g~ to toggle it.
J and gJ, to join lines, removing (or not) spaces as necessary.
R to enter replace mode, nice for changing constants. I can't believe how late I learned that one.
!cmd, filter text through cmd. Very useful with selecting some text in visual mode and then doing a !sort on them.
:& repeats a search, allowing you to change its flags (add a /g, for example). Also, :%s/// for the whole file, btw.
:sm/foo/bar/ or :s/\vfoo/bar/, to activate regex magic, like () and so on. Far nicer than vim's standard, but :pd is even nicer.
:retab, replace tabs with proper whitespace.
vimdiff $file1 $file2, use vim as a diff tool. Hopefully you know this one already, use do and dp to move chunk here/away (obtain / push).
:vimgrep, grep inside vim. D'uh.
C-v enters visual block mode. I always forget this one when I need it.
**{**and } move backwards/forwards through paragraphs, dito ( and ) for sentences. (I really use the cursor too much instead of vim's better syntactic movements.)
Speaking of movement, b and w move to the next word on the left/right, e moves to the end of the word. Use those, like, a lot.
daw deletes the current word (from anywhere in it), das the current sentence.
g; and g, cycle backwards/forwards through your changelist, putting your cursor there. So you can go somewhere else, look something up, then jump right back to where you where. Dito C-o, C-i and :jumps for jumps instead of changes. Awesomesauce.
m[register] saves the current location in a register, `[register] jumps back to it, `` jumps to the last location.
u and C-r are undo/redo, U undoes all changes on the current line. So far, so good. But vim also has a powerful undo tree. :undol shows the undo list, and g- and g+ move you along it. You can also use :earlier and :later, in combination with either a count or [n]s, [n]m or [n]h for a time. No if only vim could merge branches like Photoshop can...
f[char] and t[char] move you on/before the next occurrence of [char] on the right, Fand T on the left. ; and , repeats this movement in the same/opposite direction. Of course, can be combined with deletion and so on.
:make executes make and jumps to the first compile error, if any. (But I normally prefer to have a second terminal open for that.)
surround plugin, mostly provides keys to change or remove surroundings (blocks, quotes or tags). Use like ds" to remove " quotes, dst to remove text block, cs"( to replace "" with () and ys[motion]{ to wrap something in {}. Works in visual mode, too, of course.****(Also install the repeat plugin, to be able to repeat the surround commands. Works like normal repeating.)
FuzzyFinder plugin, plus the FuzzyFinderTextMate plugin, to have far nice fuzzy matching of buffers, files and so on. I have \b, \f and \o mapped to buffers, files and everything (as in TextMate). Incredibly useful. (See [here][fuzzyfinder] for installation instructions.)
NERDcommenter plugin for more intelligent commenting. Most importantly, \cSpace to toggle commenting, \cc to comment out, \cu to remove comments.
window movement, most importantly:C-W w (and**\_**) to jump to the next window, C-W s to split horizontally, C-W v to split vertically, C-W < / > / = to increase / decrease /equalize window sizes.
:set spell for spell checking, ]s and [sto move to the next/last misspelled word, zg to add to the dictionary, zug to undo it, z= for suggestions.
SuperTab plugin, to tab-complete everything. Yes, everything. It's pretty smart and works well with omnicomplete. Using my options, it works just like them cool IDEs.
UltiSnips plugin, steals the snippet function from TextMate and greatly enhances it, so you can tab-complete code fragments into common structures. Great speedup! Use tab to expand snippets and Shift-Left / Shift-Right to jump to the next part of the snippet. (I also tried XPtemplate, which is too ugly and hard to use, and snipMate, which I used previously, but doesn't have recursive snippets.)

To be fair, I store every plugin there and never install anything system-wide so that my setup is mostly independent from the current machine. ↩︎
But why not emacs? To be honest, emacs is great. It is easily the second-best editor and some parts of it outshine vim easily, like process integration or the higher level of semantic awareness. I only have two problems with it.

The first is I-know-what's-best-for-you syndrome, i.e. emacs often enforces a specific behaviour that it thinks is right. Well, most of the time, emacs is right, but occasionally it just stands in my way. The most annoying thing was the lack of a permanent visual mode as in vim aka the ability to move my cursor freely to any position on the screen.

The second problem is LISP. I hate LISP. I refuse to learn it. I refuse to deal with people that like it. (But afaik there may be some ports to a sane language, so maybe this point is moot nowadays.) ↩︎

12 KiB Raw Blame History

A GNU Dawn

Ye Olde Vim confige

The List

12 KiB

Raw Blame History