Vim Tutorial

(Need a .vimrc to get you started on your way to customization glory? Use mine!)

Important Things: Starting, Quitting, Modes

• Start Vim by typing vim, not vi.
  • Some installations have separate binaries for each (eg., OpenBSD).
  • vi is the legacy, POSIX-standard program, vim is the new, not always compatible program
• Quit Vim in Normal mode by typing <Esc>:q!<CR>
  • Vim uses lots of mnemonics for its commands: :q is short for :quit.

• Access Vim’s built-in help system by typing <Esc>:help<CR>

• So what’s Normal mode? What are modes?
  • Vim is a modal editor, meaning it does different things based on which mode you have it in.
  • There are many modes:
    • Normal mode: used for navigation and text manipulation. The default mode. Hit to get back to it.
    • Insert mode: used for inserting new text into a buffer. Enter this mode by typing <i> in Normal mode (or <I>, or <o>, or <O>, or…).
    • Visual mode: used for manipulating text selections.
    • Select mode: same as visual, but more GUI-oriented.
    • Command mode: used for entering editor commands, like :q to quit.
    • ex mode: line-oriented mode. Run screaming.

Writing Our First Document

• Three steps:
  • Start Vim
  • Hit <i> to enter Insert mode
  • Start typing

• When done typing, hit <Esc> to go back to Normal mode, then :saveas doc.txt to save the file. (Shortcut: :sav <filename>)

• Hit <i> to add more text, then hit <Esc>:w to write the current file to disk.

• Congratulations, you’ve used Vim to write a document!

Moving Around

• Sure, you can use arrow keys, PageUp, PageDown, etc. with Vim.

• What if those don’t work?
  • Mac’s Terminal.app remaps PageUp/PageDown to scroll through the windows’s scrollback buffer instead of passing it through.
  • If you find yourself with a real vi (like OpenBSD’s nvi), it may not understand arrow keys
• Solution: use hjkl instead!
  • In Normal/Command mode
  • <h> moves the cursor one character left (think: h is the left-most character)
  • <l> moves the cursor one character right (think: l is the right-most character)
  • <j> moves the cursor one character down (think: j hangs below the line)
  • <k> moves the cursor one character up (think: k ascends above the line)
• What about paging up/down?
  • Use <C-d>/<C-u> to page down/up
• Why use hjkl and <C-d>/<C-u> instead of arrow and page keys if they work?
  • Your fingers never leave home row
• Do I have to use these weird keys?
  • No! Do what works for you, not for anyone else.

Advanced Movement

• <w> moves one word forwards
• <b> moves one word backwards
• <^> moves to the first non-whitespace character at the beginning of a line
• <0> moves to the beginning of a line, too (think: column zero)
• <$> moves to the end of a line (think: regular expressions)
• <G> moves to the last line of a document (think: Goto. No, it doesn’t make sense in this context. More later.)
• <gg> moves to the first line of a document
  • Note: this is a Vim command, and will not work in vi. Use :0 instead.
• :[line]<CR> moves the cursor to the line number specified. For instance, :16<CR> would move the cursor to line 16 of the current buffer.

More Advanced Movement

• <e> moves one word forwards, and places the cursor at the end of the word
• Most movement commands can take a count prefix. Examples:
  • <2w> moves two words forwards
  • <4j> moves four lines down
  • <12G> goto the twelfth line from the top of the document (I told you to wait for it.)
  • <3h> moves three characters backwards
• The z command can be useful to move the viewport around (in Normal mode)
  • <z<CR>> moves the current line to the top of the screen
  • <z.> moves the current line to the middle of the screen
  • <z-> moves the current line to the bottom of the screen

Text Manipulation

• Let’s talk about adding things.
  • As seen before, <i> enters Insert mode and lets you start typing exactly where the cursor is located
  • <I> will place the cursor at the first non-space character on a line, then put you in Insert mode.
  • <a> will let you append text. It places the cursor one character to the right, then places you in Insert mode.
  • <A> appends text to the end of a line.
  • <o> opens a new text line below the current line.
  • <O> opens a new text line above the current line.
• Let’s talk about deleting things.
  • Type the sentence, “The quick brown brown fox jumped over the lazy ddog.”
  • See how you misspelled “dog”?
    • In Normal mode, use <h> to move backwards until your cursor is resting on the extra “d”
    • Hit <x> to delete the character under the cursor
  • Oops, you wrote “brown” twice!
    • Method 1: still in Insert mode, arrow-key your way back to the second “brown” and hit <BS> (Backspace) to delete it
    • Method 2:
      • Hit <Esc> to go back to Normal mode
      • Use <b> to moves backwards by words until your cursor is at the beginning of the second “brown”
      • Type <dw> to delete the word at the cursor.
  • Most movement commands also accept a modifier (the d in the previous example). Other modifiers include:
    • <c> changes the following [character/word/etc.] by deleting it, then putting Vim into Insert mode so you can start typing
  • You know what, that sentence is terrible. Just delete the entire line.
    • Use <dd> to delete a line.

Searching

• To find the next occurrence of a text pattern, in Normal mode type /pattern<CR>
  • Example: To find the next occurrence of the word “Normal” in this document, I’d type <Esc>/Normal<CR>
    • Note that pattern can be a regular expression!

• The above is an example of a forwards search. To perform a backwards search, use ?pattern<CR> instead.

• To find the next occurrence of the same pattern, use n.
  • Note that using n when doing a backwards search will find the next occurrence earlier in the document.

• To find the previous occurrence of the same pattern, use N.

• To find the next occurrence of the word underneath the cursor, in Normal mode hit <*>

• Similarly, to find the previous occurrence of the word underneath the cursor, use <#>

Replacing

• There are many ways to replace text using Vim. The following are only a couple of the most useful methods. You should be in Normal mode (hit <Esc> to get there from Insert mode) for all of these.
  • To replace all occurrences of the word “cat” with “dog” in a document, type :%s/cat/dog/g
  • To replace all occurrences of the word “cat with ”dog" on the current line, type :s/cat/dog/g. (Note the absence of the percentage sign!)
  • To replace the next occurrence of the word “cat” with “dog” in the document, type :s/cat/dog/. (Note the absence of the g at the end!)
    • You can use <n> to search for the next occurrence of cat, and then use <&> to replace it with dog.

Selecting, Copying & Pasting

• Vim calls “copying” text “yanking”.
• To yank text, first you have to highlight it.
  • Navigate to the start of your selection, then press <v> (this enters Visual mode)
  • Using the movement keys, navigate to the end of the selection
  • Hit <y> to yank the text into Vim’s clipboard.
• To paste text, place your cursor where you’d like the yanked text to appear and hit <p> to paste it. Note: the yanked text will be placed after the cursor. Use <P> to paste yanked text before the cursor.
• If you want to select entire lines, use <V> instead of <v>.
• BIG NOTE: the <y> and <Y> commands do not work in regular vi!

Miscellaneous

• Show line numbers by typing :set number in Normal mode. Turn them off again by typing :set nonumber.
• To get help on any Vim command, type :help command. For example:
  • :help number
  • :help w (to get help on the movement command)
  • :help :w (to get help on the :write command)
  • :help vimtutor (a very useful built-in tutorial!)
• Fun tutorials:
  • OpenVim - an interactive Vim tutorial (http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html)
  • Vim Adventures - “Learning Vim while playing a game” (http://vim-adventures.com)

What Else Can Vim Do?

• A lot!
  • Custom keybindings
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Auto-indenting
  • Keyword completion
  • Custom color schemes
  • “Vimscript”
  • Plugins
  • Spell-checking
  • Built-in make support
  • Built-in ctags support
  • It’s not emacs!

• See my .vimrc for a fully-annotated example of a .vimrc configuration file that includes many of the above features. Clone the repo to $HOME/.vim and run make (OSX/Linux only) for added fun.