My Tiny Bag Of Vim Tricks

Basic Operations

Open a file: vim /some/file

Open a file within vim: :e /some/file

Save file: :w

Exit vim: :q

Save and exit vim: :wq

Force save/exit (when you don't have permission): :w!, :q!, :wq! (but, why don't you have permission?)

Navigation

Go to top: gg

Go to bottom: [shift] + g

Go to beginning of line: [home]

Go to end of line: [end]

Scroll up and down quickly: [PgUp], [PgDown], or just mousewheel back and forth

Searching

Go to place containing some given string (i.e. search): /somegivenstring, then, hit n to cycle through occurrence.

Highlight all occurrences of some given string (i.e. search): /somegivenstring

Get rid of search highlights: /alskjdflksjdf (basically mash on keyboard for a string that probably won't exist in your file)

Search and replace via regex: :%s/something/somethingelse/gci

Note: "gci" means replace all occurrences, confirm with user for each case, and do so case insensitively, which is usually what you want

Highlighting

Highlight characters (i.e. visual mode):

• v to highlight current character, [left], [right], [up], [down] to highlight more characters

Highlight line (i.e. visual line mode):

• [shift] + v to highlight current line, [up] or [down] to highlight more lines

Highlight block (i.e. visual block mode):

• [ctrl] + v to highlight current character, [left], [right], [up], [down] to highlight more characters as if you're drawing a box

Copy/Pasting

Copy (or "yank"): y after highlighting what you want to copy

Cut (or "delete"): d after highlighting what you want to cut

Cut current line: dd

Paste: p to paste after current position or current line (depending on what you've copied/cutted)

Indents

Indenting lines left or right: < or > after highlighting the lines

Indenting lines left or right by more than one indent level: press a number before hitting the < or >.

Indent to the left by some number of spaces: block-highlight those spaces and cut/delete

Making Edits

[insert] to go into insert mode and start typing

[esc] to get out of insert mode

Multiple Windows In Same Vim Session

Get a top and bottom split of windows: :split

Get a left and right split of windows: :vsplit

Jump between windows: <ctrl> + w, then [left], [right], [up], [down] in the direction you want to jump

In each window you can do regular vim things. You can copy/paste/yank/cut/etc... between windows. You can exit each individual window and it won't quit vim until you exit the last window.

Miscellaneous

Activate syntax highlighting: :setf <language>