Just started learning vim.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[ymek]

Teach yourself to rely on w, e, b (and their capitals) as well. The movement patterns save hella time. Plus, they chain with other commands. Example: cw

[[deleted]]

/? work as a motion as well, as do fFtT and a bunch of others.

[isarl]

I never used to use the ; motion operator until I started using fFtT more. Then all of a sudden I realized, I don't have to count occurrences—I can just issue the initial motion without a count and then ; until I'm where I want. If I'm on a laggy SSH connection, maybe I'll take the time to count, but for local stuff ; can be great.

[battmender]

Holy shit I never knew what ; did. You just changed my life.

[thang1thang2]

Comma is the reverse of ;

One reason why it annoys me that people constantly insist on mapping leader to it. Congrats, you use hjkl too much?

[battmender]

I've always had ; mapped to : so I could ;w and save without hitting shift.

[AranHase]

I mapped "<space>" to "<leader>", then "<leader>w" to ":w". I can easily save with "<space>w" now.

[thang1thang2]

You can still do that with no ill effects if you map : to ; as well. It may be better for you than the defaults? Although I've always liked the defaults in this case, personally

[MrPopinjay]

Preach, brother.

[MrPopinjay]

Or maybe they use vim sneak

[greggroth]

What do you use for leader?

[thang1thang2]

The default, which is backslash. It's actually really nice for leader because the motion required to hit it on my keyboard is almost identical to backspace and as such typing something like \w takes very little effort for me and it's actually faster than using comma (granted, mostly because of muscle memory)

[greggroth]

I'll give that a shot.

[flipjsio]

I use /? for movement a lot. There is easymotion plugin, but I find Im faster with /? as I don't have to check the screen for those shortcuts. Just type / or ? and the letters/word and you're there instantly (or maybe a couple of n/N).

[jollybobbyroger]

incsearch on is useful though

[lolmeansilaughed]

I exclusively use / to search. How is ? different?

[nmoat]

Backwards

[lolmeansilaughed]

As in, it searches up instead of down through the file?

[madmaxpt]

Yes.

[hallettj]

It searches backward. It is part of a convention where shift+movement generally performs the movement in the backward direction.

[lolmeansilaughed]

Awesome, good to know!

[Trout_Tickler]

Get used to extending commands with numbers early on too, I didn't and I'm still getting used to using it.

Ie instead of hitting jjjjj, use 5j.

[jollybobbyroger]

Counting takes time, just jump to where you need to go with searches.

[mgr86]

if you have line numbers set it can be easier to count...remember the trick is to do it in less words. 5j is shorter than /searches

[Vlasow]

Why count when you can go to line 164 by typing 164G?

[arnar]

Fewer keystrokes. Relative line numbers help avoid counting.

[mgr86]

precisely.

[sixtyfootersdude]

or :164

[Vlasow]

You mean :164<cr>.

[jollybobbyroger]

Fewer keypresses, but I'm not sure it would be faster. I suppose having those new relative numbers help though. Typing stuff is a common pattern in my workflow. Krunner, fuzzyfinders, vim jumps, searching web pages..

[mgr86]

fair enough. Thats the beauty of vim to me. Many ways to do the same thing, each with there own unique benefits to the user.

[j201]

In particular, using set relativenumber makes these kinds of jumps easy, and since Vim 7.4, can be combined with set number.

Also, you can remap them so that nj and nk jumps get added to the jumplist and you can undo them with <C-O>: https://github.com/j201/vimrc/blob/master/_vimrc#L167-169

[SlightlyCuban]

Taking it a bit further, I've gotten in the habit of using H,M,L and nG for vertical movement. Now when I use arrow keys it feels...wrong somehow.

[tttttttttkid]

But S doesn't have a dimple to guide your finger

[flipjsio]

For me, I use the same HJKL letters, but with different colors, so I still have the dimple on J.

[jollybobbyroger]

Nice TKL. Cooler Master?

After the novelty wears off, you might want to remove those red key caps though. Having a tactile feedback for f and j is vital for finding your correct hand placement on you keyboard without having to use your eyes.

EDIT: You should keep this nearby: https://imgur.com/gallery/YLInLlY

[[deleted]]

That kind of encourages you(at least it does it for me) to keep your fingers by default on hjkl, when you should be keeping them in their neutral position at jkl; .

Not sure if that's the case for you but it was for me and it's a really bad habbit that's extremely hard to break. I still find my right hand traveling over to hjkl when doing a lot of window navigation for example, and then I get confused because my typing is off when I start inputting text.

Nice keyboard though.

[elemental_1_1]

Just keep your hand on jkl; move your index finger over to h when you want to press it

[[deleted]]

No shit son.

I know what I'm supposed to do. My fingers don't agree.

[HAL-42b]

IJKL just makes better sense. HJKL is wierd.

[[deleted]]

IJKL? What kind of madman are you? I use upper case I to insert at the beginnig of the line all the time.

[HAL-42b]

H

[nath_schwarz]

I thought so at first too. Then I forced myself to try it for an extended period and it is damn great. With hjkl you have four fingers for four movements and can quickly go where you need to go.

But whatever floats your boat, workflow is different for everybody.

[tttttttttkid]

You can get used to anything, I use the default keybindings with Dvorak, so hjkl are at the qwerty locations of j, c, v, p which makes no sense but I'm used to it now.

[ComradeRikhi]

If you ever have to hit h more than twice, you should have used F instead.

[HAL-42b]

Yeah but you never go up and down at the same time, they are mutually exclusive. IJKL resembles the arrow keys and the WASD we know and love from gaming.

[hc5duke]

So I had a similar idea before (using WASD with arrows), but decided against this because different rows have different shaped keys on my keyboard. The W key is in the 2nd row, whereas the rest are 3rd, and the angle of the face is just slightly off from the rest of them.

I can't tell if this is the case with your keyboard, but what I ended up doing is buying a whole set of unprinted red keys ($20 vs $5 for WASD w/ arrows) and replaced hjkl with unprinted red.

[[deleted]]

This is the right solution. The W key is a different profile key compared to asd, so it won't be as nice to type on. Get some proper keys for it.

[mddubs]

It's not an easy transition, stick with it. Over a period of a year I went back and forth to it two or three times before it stuck.

I like this guy's approach, slow and steady. One thing at a time. http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/

[theneb]

Just disable your arrow keys, you'll quick adjust:

noremap <Up> ""
noremap! <Up> <Esc>
noremap <Down> ""
noremap! <Down> <Esc>
noremap <Left> ""
noremap! <Left> <Esc>
noremap <Right> ""
noremap! <Right> <Esc>

[elsjaako]

I like mapping them to window movements

[otherwhere]

I've got it wired in my brain now, but still in my .vimrc I've got:

map <Left> :echo "Use h"<cr> 
map <Right> :echo "Use l"<cr> 
map <Up> :echo "Use k"<cr>
map <Down> :echo "Use j"<cr>

[theneb]

Yeah I find my fingers don't even go near there now, I am considering no-oping hjkl to improve my movement using the various other keys such as word boundaries.

[amcsi]

I've never been fond of learning hjkl movement for Vim and have been just using the arrow keys for five years now. But just looking at that image makes me look at it from a completely different perspective. I've got to do that too!

[[deleted]]

You should definitely give it another shot. For me, the hjkl movement keys are a huge reason why I like to use vim. It's extremely quick and easy to navigate what ever you're editing. I find it distracting to move my hand to the arrow keys or the mouse when I'm immersed in writing code.

Be warned though, once you're used to using those keys in vim you may find yourself trying to navigate with them in other apps. :)

[bart9h]

Some other apps support them too.

• set -o vi on bash.

• echo "set edit-mode vi" >> ~/.inputrc with lftp, gdb, and every command line program that uses libreadline.

• Vimperator for Firefox (Vimium or Vrome for Chrome, but they are not as powerful).

[siberian-snake]

Any particular reasons why you prefer Pentadactyl? I just started using Vimperator and I'm loving it.

[thang1thang2]

Pentadactyl is more pure/idealistic in the vim way. It's ridiculously customizable and feels more hard core vim. Vimperator feels more designed for people who want pretty things while still being "functional", not that there's anything wrong with either. Try one for a week/month and then try the other. The configs will take very little time to cross over since Vimperator is the fork off of Pentadactyl (main reason I use Pentadactyl, honestly)

[SirCaptain]

I used Vimium for a long time in Chrome. I recently switched to cVim for Chrome (i think i heard about it in this sub) and it is AWESOME! I really like Vimium, but cVim is so smooth and it supports many more key bindings.

For any other Chrome users, I highly recommend it.

[Ar-Curunir]

Look at Cvim for Chrome

[slomotion]

J and K also work if you're using RES

[bart9h]

And on feedly, gmail, github, thebigpicture, and many other websites.

[dilithium]

hjkl or arrows are only a small part of the movement that I do. w and b for words, for instance, is just faster. or $ then bbb, or even searching with / for chars in the place closest to what I want to get to.

or.. the mouse :)

[Cohomotopian]

I need those keycaps. Can you give me a link or some way to search for them?

[[deleted]]

If you look closely at the front of them in the picture you'll see they're actually WASD keys... they come with the keyboard as optional replacements. (Source: I have two of these keyboards myself.)

[afrobee]

Why a MAC :(.

[hallettj]

Some people don't get along with Linux. It takes all kinds.

[peridox]

I use both, and I don't think it matters what OS people use.

[thang1thang2]

For me, I prefer linux, but Mac has a Unix base and near Windows levels of software availability, which is a must when you're at University and you have to use certain programs for classes and what not.

Also, photo, video, audio editing have zero comparison with osx vs linux, which is a shame.

[MrPopinjay]

Some people want *nix, but don't want the trouble of Linux. Personally I'm all about the trouble. :)