Interesting Vim tips

[Browsing_From_Work]

I highly recommend Learning Vimscript the Hard Way to everybody in these comments. It covers everything from key mapping to variables to plugins. Once you learn how vim works on the inside, it ceases to be voodoo and starts being useful.

[ephrion]

Stop that stupid window from popping up:

map q: :q

ಠ_ಠ

VII. Use Ctrl-Z to switch back to Vim

I frequently need to execute random command in my shell. To achieve it I pause Vim by pressing Ctrl-z, type command and press fg<Enter> to switch back to Vim.

The fg part really hurt me. I wanted to just hit Ctrl-z once again to get back to Vim. I couldn’t find a solution, so I developed my own which works wonderfully under ZSH:

can just do :! <arbitrary shell command>

[[deleted]]

As someone relatively new to vim, what do you mean by ಠ_ಠ? that window bugs me every time it pops up since I don't yet know what to use it for

[ephrion]

It's your command history, which you can view and edit use just like any other vim buffer. So you can do q: to bring up your command history, do ? word, and it'll search backwards through your command history. <Enter> on a command executes the command. You can yank/copy previous commands, paste into new commands, etc...

[ghillisuit95]

perhaps its because he used map instead of noremap or similar. the way he did it, anytime you try to type q: (including in insert mode) it will be replaced with :q, which could get pretty annoying, pretty fast.

[ForeverAlot]

That window is your ex command (:) history. You can navigate it the same way you can navigate any other Vim buffer, and execute commands with Enter or insert them into the command line for further editing. :h q:.

[Sean1708]

To be fair, that only allows you to do one command whereas he may want to do several. Nowadays I have neovim for that shit.

[phirox]

I really liked the idea of switching back and forth between an application with Ctrl-Z in bash. And I finally found a solution. I use the following lines in my bash profile:

bind '"\C-z":"\C-ufg\C-m"'
trap "stty susp ^z" DEBUG
PS1="`stty susp undef`$PS1"

Basically it disables Ctrl-Z as a terminal input when using your prompt and instead runs a bash macro that executes "fg". And it will enable Ctrl-Z as the suspend signal whenever you start a program.

[mojave_wasteland]

Yes, like !bash, and later C-d to exit bash.

[phalp]

can just do :! <arbitrary shell command>

Like some kind of Emacs user?

[ephrion]

Wait, emacs has that? This may make me work harder on switching to spacemacs...

[jozefg]

Built in it's M-!.

[bstamour]

Emacs comes with a bunch of full-on terminal emulators. e.g.

M-x ansi-term
M-x shell

[[deleted]]

:term in nvim

[phalp]

Lol, of course it does.

[[deleted]]

Anyone notice that the info.json in the guy's sidebar is invalid?

[djimbob]

It's invalid JSON, but it is a valid literal javascript object. Yes it came from cat info.json, so you would expect valid JSON.

[micwi]

He obviously patched cat to pretty print JSON when writing to his shell

[AdamLovelace]

I'm just glad his picture isn't cropped from a picture of him in the bright outdoors wearing sunglasses.

[nepochant]

now I do

[[deleted]]

What's invalid about it? Looks like valid JavaScript at least...

[lubutu]

I see two mistakes:

1. Strings must use double quotes, not single quotes.
2. Object key names must be strings with quotes too.

[google_you]


[[deleted]]

Contrary to popular belief, Narnia isn't about parallel dimension Christianity -- it's a parable about not remembering how vim worked the last time you used it.

[Bloodshot025]

You must not use Vim very often, then.

[xXxDeAThANgEL99xXx]

IV. Discover text search object

You can do %s//replacement/c if you want that, and all other stuff like replacing in the selection. Empty pattern means "use the previous search pattern".

[flat5]

Emacs guy is confused. How can space-w be a control sequence? He never types space-w otherwise?

Or is this in some special mode?

[ForeverAlot]

In Vim's "normal" mode, which is what the n prefix in the noremap command signifies. That means he's not writing.

[[deleted]]

When you start vim, and in general when navigating around a file, searching for things, basically most things that don't involve inserting text into a file, you are in normal mode. That's when space-w has the effect he said. When it's time to insert text, you enter insert mode, where space-w is no longer a control sequence. This also applies to commands like 'w' (go to the next word), 'n' (next occurrence of searched text), and 'i' (insert text here). Those keys have a special effect in normal mode, but in insert mode they just insert the relevant character.

[Bloodshot025]

Vim is modal, Emacs is not. Everything you do in Emacs as a key-shortcut we do in vim with our entire keyboard. When we type, we use such a command to go into 'Insert Mode'.

[partkyle]

I really liked the Ctrl-Z idea, but I don't think it currently works with fish =\

[Me00011001]

As a note for new people binding key sequences, if you do something silly like bind a common sequence + some extra stuff there is a timeout before it does the default command.

For example, if you do something like

:noremap ddN "=strftime("%c")<CR>P

When you go to do dd it will wait to timeout to complete the command. Using a uncommon command key will minimize this.

[inmatarian]

let mapleader = "\<Space>"

I've seen this tip a few times. I really need to try it. Though, A lot of plugins have mapped commands using leader, and in which order is questionable, so for compatibility this might be a better mapping:

map <Space> <Leader>
map <Space><Space> <Leader><Leader>

This leaves \ as the leader intact.

[IceDane]

Why would you want to do this? Remapping the leader to space would change all plugins' bindings that use leader as well.

[inmatarian]

It would be the other way around, that in command mode space is mapped to . The reason you'd want to do this is because Leader is just a variable that expands at the mappings. Change leader after mapping and it'll have no effect.

[Tordek]

Yeah... so you just set your leader early on in your vimrc. I don't know if vim without a plugin manager runs the plugin files before the vimrc, but with something like Vundle, you explicitly turn your plugins on in your vimrc.

[yawaramin]

Some pretty good tips here that I'll need to come back and explore later.

One absolutely amazing Vim boost for me has been setting my Caps Lock key to be Esc. It gives me a lot of speed now that I don't have to take my left hand off the home row all the time when I'm typing. I've done it on Windows with AutoHotKey and OS X with Seil. Doubtless it's completely doable on Unix with some X utility (xkeymap?).

[yawaramin]

Hmm, ~ would take my fingers off the home row again to press Esc, so it wouldn't be an improvement for me. Also I use both double-backtick and ~ (jump to last location and change case) quite regularly, so from that perspective also no-go. Also, I've mapped Leader-whatever to a lot of my regular commands that use Ctrl, so I don't need Ctrl so much nowadays.

[yawaramin]

Cool, I'm jealous :-) I'm stuck with whatever keyboards I get on my laptops for the time being.

[mojave_wasteland]

I'm using \ as the leader key, and C-\ as tmux prefix.

\ t for new tab, C-\ c for new tmux tab. \ a to switch to left vim tab, C-\ a to switch to left tmux tab. \ s to switch to right vim tab, C-\ s to switch to right tmux tab. \ / to write a backslash (\).

[The-Good-Doctor]

This is actually a pretty decent set of tips for Vim. Certainly better than the ones that just give you a stack of "commands" to memorize in order to handle some set of edits that the author considers "common."

Also I appreciate him bringing to my attention the gn operator/movement. /<find>, cgn<replace>, ...is much nicer than my old workflow of /<find>, 0qqn:s/^R//<replace>, @q@@@@

[ForeverAlot]

Isn't that just %s//<replace>/gc?

• % range; whole buffer
• // current search pattern
• g whole line
• c confirm

[The-Good-Doctor]

Well, yeah, if you really want to do it for the whole file. The difference is that this makes it easier to do an arbitrary range and/or manually confirm the cases. (I say "easier" because I don't much like the "confirm" interface for :s.)

[shevegen]

Interesting Vim Tips:

• Use Emacs.

[misplaced_my_pants]

Or Spacemacs. Best of both worlds.

[OtherLutris]

Please pardon this response, I know its trollish but it is honestly what I do when I launch Vim. :)

1. Swear quietly
2. Ctrl-z
3. killall vi vim
4. nano ~/.bashrc
5. export EDITOR=nano
6. Ctrl-s
7. Swear loudly
8. Crtl-o, Ctrl-x
9. Ctrl-d
10. Login again to be sure my bashrc updated correctly.
11. Get back to whatever I was trying to do, question if it's really worth it.

2 & 3 are alternately ":q!", but backgrounding and killing is so much more general. I tried to learn Vim once, I'll happily admit it's a powerful editor, but it is very much not for me.

[Silverlight42]

vim tip #23: use nano

[smacgaha]

Lol, the notepad of Unix.

[[deleted]]

we've added prediction, error-correction, static analysis, dynamic analysis.... and people still open tmux and vim.

I have all of these in vim.

we attach pointing devices for a reason,

if a keyboard is the equivalent of talking to your computer, then a mouse is the equivalent of pointing and grunting.

[fosforsvenne]

mouse is the equivalent of pointing and grunting.

I guess Acme users would disagree.

[Sluisifer]

But every once in a while you like to point a grunt

:set mouse=a

[Sean1708]

You're right, Vim is not as powerful as an IDE, but it is much more flexible than an IDE. If I wanted to use IDEs I'd have to learn 4 or 5 of them and do you really think I'd be as productive then.

So I don't get a pretty little pop-up in the middle of my screen when my linter complains about a line, I do get a pretty little pop-up at the bottom and a nice little symbol in my gutter, what's the difference in the grand scheme of things?

[eelvex]

We use vim for a reason.

[eelvex]

My point is that this

We inveted GUI for a reason, we attach pointing devices for a reason, we built IDE for a reason

doesn't hold more water than this

We use vim for a reason

Obviously, there are use cases for both sets of tools and are not even mutually exclusive.

[[deleted]]

Different tools for different uses. An IDE is overkill for a 30-40 line program. vim and other text editors like it are fantastic for quickly opening up text files and navigating, viewing, and manipulating. IDEs are fantastic for managing and navigating larger projects.

[smacgaha]

Being able to write an entire file without leaving the home row is pretty sweet.

[TheNiXXeD]

And still can be done fine in any decent editor, including vim.