What are the dark corners of Vim your mom never told you about?

Might not be one that 99% of Vim users don't know about, but it's something I use daily and that any Linux+Vim poweruser must know.

Basic command, yet extremely useful.

:w !sudo tee %

I often forget to sudo before editing a file I don't have write permissions on. When I come to save that file and get a permission error, I just issue that vim command in order to save the file without the need to save it to a temp file and then copy it back again.

You obviously have to be on a system with sudo installed and have sudo rights.

Something I just discovered recently that I thought was very cool:

:earlier 15m

Reverts the document back to how it was 15 minutes ago. Can take various arguments for the amount of time you want to roll back, and is dependent on undolevels. Can be reversed with the opposite command :later

:! [command] executes an external command while you're in Vim.

But add a dot after the colon, :.! [command], and it'll dump the output of the command into your current window. That's : . !

For example:

:.! ls

I use this a lot for things like adding the current date into a document I'm typing:

:.! date

Not exactly obscure, but there are several "delete in" commands which are extremely useful, like..

• diw to delete the current word
• di( to delete within the current parens
• di" to delete the text between the quotes

Others can be found on :help text-objects

de Delete everything till the end of the word by pressing . at your heart's desire.

ci(xyz[Esc] -- This is a weird one. Here, the 'i' does not mean insert mode. Instead it means inside the parenthesis. So this sequence cuts the text inside parenthesis you're standing in and replaces it with "xyz". It also works inside square and figure brackets -- just do ci[ or ci{ correspondingly. Naturally, you can do di (if you just want to delete all text without typing anything. You can also do a instead of i if you want to delete the parentheses as well and not just text inside them.

ci" - cuts the text in current quotes

ciw - cuts the current word. This works just like the previous one except that ( is replaced with w.

C - cut the rest of the line and switch to insert mode.

ZZ -- save and close current file (WAY faster than Ctrl-F4 to close the current tab!)

ddp - move current line one row down

xp -- move current character one position to the right

U - uppercase, so viwU upercases the word

~ - switches case, so viw~ will reverse casing of entire word

Ctrl+u / Ctrl+d scroll the page half-a-screen up or down. This seems to be more useful than the usual full-screen paging as it makes it easier to see how the two screens relate. For those who still want to scroll entire screen at a time there's Ctrl+f for Forward and Ctrl+b for Backward. Ctrl+Y and Ctrl+E scroll down or up one line at a time.

Crazy but very useful command is zz -- it scrolls the screen to make this line appear in the middle. This is excellent for putting the piece of code you're working on in the center of your attention. Sibling commands -- zt and zb -- make this line the top or the bottom one on the sreen which is not quite as useful.

% finds and jumps to the matching parenthesis.

de -- delete from cursor to the end of the word (you can also do dE to delete until the next space)

bde -- delete the current word, from left to right delimiter

df[space] -- delete up until and including the next space

dt. -- delete until next dot

dd -- delete this entire line

ye (or yE) -- yanks text from here to the end of the word

ce - cuts through the end of the word

bye -- copies current word (makes me wonder what "hi" does!)

yy -- copies the current line

cc -- cuts the current line, you can also do S instead. There's also lower cap s which cuts current character and switches to insert mode.

viwy or viwc. Yank or change current word. Hit w multiple times to keep selecting each subsequent word, use b to move backwards

vi{ - select all text in figure brackets. va{ - select all text including {}s

vi(p - highlight everything inside the ()s and replace with the pasted text

b and e move the cursor word-by-word, similarly to how Ctrl+Arrows normally do. The definition of word is a little different though, as several consecutive delmiters are treated as one word. If you start at the middle of a word, pressing b will always get you to the beginning of the current word, and each consecutive b will jump to the beginning of the next word. Similarly, and easy to remember, e gets the cursor to the end of the current, and each subsequent, word.

similar to b/e, capital B and E move the cursor word-by-word using only whitespaces as delimiters.

capital D (take a deep breath) Deletes the rest of the line to the right of the cursor, same as Shift+End/Del in normal editors (notice 2 keypresses -- Shift+D -- instead of 3)

One that I rarely find in most Vim tutorials, but it's INCREDIBLY useful (at least to me), is the

g; and g,

to move (forward, backward) through the changelist.

Let me show how I use it. Sometimes I need to copy and paste a piece of code or string, say a hex color code in a CSS file, so I search, jump (not caring where the match is), copy it and then jump back (g;) to where I was editing the code to finally paste it. No need to create marks. Simpler.

Just my 2cents.

:%!xxd

Make vim into a hex editor.

:%!xxd -r

Revert.

Warning: If you don't edit with binary (-b), you might damage the file. – Josh Lee in the comments.

gv

Reselects last visual selection.

Sometimes a setting in your .vimrc will get overridden by a plugin or autocommand. To debug this a useful trick is to use the :verbose command in conjunction with :set. For example, to figure out where cindent got set/unset:

:verbose set cindent?

This will output something like:

cindent
    Last set from /usr/share/vim/vim71/indent/c.vim

This also works with maps and highlights. (Thanks joeytwiddle for pointing this out.) For example:

:verbose nmap U
n  U             <C-R>
        Last set from ~/.vimrc

:verbose highlight Normal
Normal         xxx guifg=#dddddd guibg=#111111 font=Inconsolata Medium 14
        Last set from ~/src/vim-holodark/colors/holodark.vim

Not sure if this counts as dark-corner-ish at all, but I've only just learnt it...

:g/match/y A

will yank (copy) all lines containing "match" into the "a/@a register. (The capitalization as A makes vim append yankings instead of replacing the previous register contents.) I used it a lot recently when making Internet Explorer stylesheets.

Want to look at your :command history?

q:

Then browse, edit and finally to execute the command.

Ever make similar changes to two files and switch back and forth between them? (Say, source and header files?)

:set hidden
:map <TAB> :e#<CR>

Then tab back and forth between those files.

^O and ^I

Go to older/newer position. When you are moving through the file (by searching, moving commands etc.) vim rember these "jumps", so you can repeat these jumps backward (^O - O for old) and forward (^I - just next to I on keyboard). I find it very useful when writing code and performing a lot of searches.

gi

Go to position where Insert mode was stopped last. I find myself often editing and then searching for something. To return to editing place press gi.

gf

put cursor on file name (e.g. include header file), press gf and the file is opened

gF

similar to gf but recognizes format "[file name]:[line number]". Pressing gF will open [file name] and set cursor to [line number].

^P and ^N

Auto complete text while editing (^P - previous match and ^N next match)

^X^L

While editing completes to the same line (useful for programming). You write code and then you recall that you have the same code somewhere in file. Just press ^X^L and the full line completed

^X^F

Complete file names. You write "/etc/pass" Hmm. You forgot the file name. Just press ^X^F and the filename is completed

^Z or :sh

Move temporary to the shell. If you need a quick bashing:

• press ^Z (to put vi in background) to return to original shell and press fg to return to vim back
• press :sh to go to sub shell and press ^D/exit to return to vi back

Assuming you have Perl and/or Ruby support compiled in, :rubydo and :perldo will run a Ruby or Perl one-liner on every line in a range (defaults to entire buffer), with $_ bound to the text of the current line (minus the newline). Manipulating $_ will change the text of that line.

You can use this to do certain things that are easy to do in a scripting language but not so obvious using Vim builtins. For example to reverse the order of the words in a line:

:perldo $_ = join ' ', reverse split

To insert a random string of 8 characters (A-Z) at the end of every line:

:rubydo $_ += ' ' + (1..8).collect{('A'..'Z').to_a[rand 26]}.join

You are limited to acting on one line at a time and you can't add newlines.

This is a nice trick to reopen the current file with a different encoding:

:e ++enc=cp1250 %:p

Useful when you have to work with legacy encodings. The supported encodings are listed in a table under encoding-values (see help encoding-values). Similar thing also works for ++ff, so that you can reopen file with Windows/Unix line ends if you get it wrong for the first time (see help ff).

imap jj <esc>

Let's see some pretty little IDE editor do column transposition.

:%s/\(.*\)^I\(.*\)/\2^I\1/

Explanation

\( and \) is how to remember stuff in regex-land. And \1, \2 etc is how to retrieve the remembered stuff.

>>> \(.*\)^I\(.*\)

Remember everything followed by ^I (tab) followed by everything.

>>> \2^I\1

Replace the above stuff with "2nd stuff you remembered" followed by "1st stuff you remembered" - essentially doing a transpose.

Not exactly a dark secret, but I like to put the following mapping into my .vimrc file, so I can hit "-" (minus) anytime to open the file explorer to show files adjacent to the one I just edit. In the file explorer, I can hit another "-" to move up one directory, providing seamless browsing of a complex directory structures (like the ones used by the MVC frameworks nowadays):

map - :Explore<cr>

These may be also useful for somebody. I like to scroll the screen and advance the cursor at the same time:

map <c-j> j<c-e>
map <c-k> k<c-y>

Tab navigation - I love tabs and I need to move easily between them:

map <c-l> :tabnext<enter>
map <c-h> :tabprevious<enter>

Only on Mac OS X: Safari-like tab navigation:

map <S-D-Right> :tabnext<cr>
map <S-D-Left> :tabprevious<cr>

Often, I like changing current directories while editing - so I have to specify paths less.

cd %:h

I like to use 'sudo bash', and my sysadmin hates this. He locked down 'sudo' so it could only be used with a handful of commands (ls, chmod, chown, vi, etc), but I was able to use vim to get a root shell anyway:

bash$ sudo vi +'silent !bash' +q
Password: ******
root#

I often use many windows when I work on a project and sometimes I need to resize them. Here's what I use:

map + <C-W>+
map - <C-W>-

These mappings allow to increase and decrease the size of the current window. It's quite simple but it's fast.

:r! <command>

pastes the output of an external command into the buffer.

Do some math and get the result directly in the text:

:r! echo $((3 + 5 + 8))

Get the list of files to compile when writing a Makefile:

:r! ls *.c

Don't look up that fact you read on wikipedia, have it directly pasted into the document you are writing:

:r! lynx -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whatever

Map F5 to quickly ROT13 your buffer:

map <F5> ggg?G``

You can use it as a boss key :).

I use vim for just about any text editing I do, so I often times use copy and paste. The problem is that vim by default will often times distort imported text via paste. The way to stop this is to use

:set paste

before pasting in your data. This will keep it from messing up.

Note that you will have to issue :set nopaste to recover auto-indentation. Alternative ways of pasting pre-formatted text are the clipboard registers (* and +), and :r!cat (you will have to end the pasted fragment with ^D).

It is also sometimes helpful to turn on a high contrast color scheme. This can be done with

:color blue

I've noticed that it does not work on all the versions of vim I use but it does on most.

I just found this one today via NSFAQ:

Comment blocks of code.

Enter Blockwise Visual mode by hitting CTRL-V.

Mark the block you wish to comment.

Hit I (capital I) and enter your comment string at the beginning of the line. (// for C++)

Hit ESC and all lines selected will have // prepended to the front of the line.

Ctrl-n while in insert mode will auto complete whatever word you're typing based on all the words that are in open buffers. If there is more than one match it will give you a list of possible words that you can cycle through using ctrl-n and ctrl-p.

Here's something not obvious. If you have a lot of custom plugins / extensions in your $HOME and you need to work from su / sudo / ... sometimes, then this might be useful.

In your ~/.bashrc:

export VIMINIT=":so $HOME/.vimrc"

In your ~/.vimrc:

if $HOME=='/root'
        if $USER=='root'
                if isdirectory('/home/your_typical_username')
                        let rtuser = 'your_typical_username'
                elseif isdirectory('/home/your_other_username')
                        let rtuser = 'your_other_username'
                endif
        else
                let rtuser = $USER
        endif
        let &runtimepath = substitute(&runtimepath, $HOME, '/home/'.rtuser, 'g')
endif

It will allow your local plugins to load - whatever way you use to change the user.

You might also like to take the *.swp files out of your current path and into ~/vimtmp (this goes into .vimrc):

if ! isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
   call mkdir(expand('~/vimtmp'))
endif
if isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
   set directory=~/vimtmp
else
   set directory=.,/var/tmp,/tmp
endif

Also, some mappings I use to make editing easier - makes ctrl+s work like escape and ctrl+h/l switch the tabs:

inoremap <C-s> <ESC>
vnoremap <C-s> <ESC>
noremap <C-l> gt
noremap <C-h> gT

Want an IDE?

:make will run the makefile in the current directory, parse the compiler output, you can then use :cn and :cp to step through the compiler errors opening each file and seeking to the line number in question.

:syntax on turns on vim's syntax highlighting.

gg=G

Corrects indentation for entire file. I was missing my trusty <C-a><C-i> in Eclipse but just found out vim handles it nicely.

I often want to highlight a particular word/function name, but don't want to search to the next instance of it yet:

map m* *#

HOWTO: Auto-complete Ctags when using Vim in Bash. For anyone else who uses Vim and Ctags, I've written a small auto-completer function for Bash. Add the following into your ~/.bash_completion file (create it if it does not exist):

Thanks go to stylishpants for his many fixes and improvements.

_vim_ctags() {
    local cur prev

    COMPREPLY=()
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
    prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"

    case "${prev}" in
        -t)
            # Avoid the complaint message when no tags file exists
            if [ ! -r ./tags ]
            then
                return
            fi

            # Escape slashes to avoid confusing awk
            cur=${cur////\\/}

            COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "`awk -vORS=" "  "/^${cur}/ { print \\$1 }" tags`" ) )
            ;;
        *)
            _filedir_xspec
            ;;
    esac
}

# Files matching this pattern are excluded
excludelist='*.@(o|O|so|SO|so.!(conf)|SO.!(CONF)|a|A|rpm|RPM|deb|DEB|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|mp?(e)g|MP?(E)G|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)'

complete -F _vim_ctags -f -X "${excludelist}" vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview

Once you restart your Bash session (or create a new one) you can type:

Code:

~$ vim -t MyC<tab key>

and it will auto-complete the tag the same way it does for files and directories:

Code:

MyClass MyClassFactory
~$ vim -t MyC

I find it really useful when I'm jumping into a quick bug fix.

% is also good when you want to diff files across two different copies of a project without wearing out the pinkies (from root of project1):

:vert diffs /project2/root/%

I use Vim for everything. When I'm editing an e-mail message, I use:

gqap (or gwap)

extensively to easily and correctly reformat on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, even with quote leadin characters. In order to achieve this functionality, I also add:

-c 'set fo=tcrq' -c 'set tw=76'

to the command to invoke the editor externally. One noteworthy addition would be to add 'a' to the fo (formatoptions) parameter. This will automatically reformat the paragraph as you type and navigate the content, but may interfere or cause problems with errant or odd formatting contained in the message.

:setlocal autoread

Auto reloads the current buffer..especially useful while viewing log files and it almost serves the functionality of "tail" program in unix from within vim.

Checking for compile errors from within vim. set the makeprg variable depending on the language let's say for perl

:setlocal makeprg = perl\ -c \ %

For PHP

set makeprg=php\ -l\ %
set errorformat=%m\ in\ %f\ on\ line\ %l

Issuing ":make" runs the associated makeprg and displays the compilation errors/warnings in quickfix window and can easily navigate to the corresponding line numbers.

Input a character from its hexadecimal value (insert mode):

<C-Q>x[type the hexadecimal byte]

Put this in your .vimrc to have a command to pretty-print xml:

function FormatXml()
    %s:\(\S\)\(<[^/]\)\|\(>\)\(</\):\1\3\r\2\4:g
    set filetype=xml
    normal gg=G
endfunction

command FormatXml :call FormatXml()

I was sure someone would have posted this already, but here goes.

Take any build system you please; make, mvn, ant, whatever. In the root of the project directory, create a file of the commands you use all the time, like this:

mvn install
mvn clean install
... and so forth

To do a build, put the cursor on the line and type !!sh. I.e. filter that line; write it to a shell and replace with the results.

The build log replaces the line, ready to scroll, search, whatever.

When you're done viewing the log, type u to undo and you're back to your file of commands.

A few useful ones:

:set nu # displays lines
:44     # go to line 44
'.      # go to last modification line

My favourite: Ctrl + n WORD COMPLETION!

:sp %:h - directory listing / file-chooser using the current file's directory

(belongs as a comment under rampion's cd tip, but I don't have commenting-rights yet)

When working on a project where the build process is slow I always build in the background and pipe the output to a file called errors.err (something like make debug 2>&1 | tee errors.err). This makes it possible for me to continue editing or reviewing the source code during the build process. When it is ready (using pynotify on GTK to inform me that it is complete) I can look at the result in vim using quickfix. Start by issuing :cf[ile] which reads the error file and jumps to the first error. I personally like to use cwindow to get the build result in a separate window.

I love :ls command.

For making vim a little more like an IDE editor:

• set nu - for line numbers in the left margin.
• set cul - highlights the line containing the cursor.

Reuse

Motions to mix with other commands, more here.

tx
fx
Fx

Use your favorite tools in Vim.

:r !python anything you want or awk or Y something

Repeat in visual mode, powerful when combined with tips above.

;

map macros

I rather often find it useful to on-the-fly define some key mapping just like one would define a macro. The twist here is, that the mapping is recursive and is executed until it fails.

Example:

enum ProcStats
{
        ps_pid,
        ps_comm,
        ps_state,
        ps_ppid,
        ps_pgrp,
:map X /ps_<CR>3xixy<Esc>X

Gives:

enum ProcStats
{
        xypid,
        xycomm,
        xystate,
        xyppid,
        xypgrp,

Just an silly example :).

I am completely aware of all the downsides - it just so happens that I found it rather useful in some occasions. Also it can be interesting to watch it at work ;).

Use the right mouse key to toggle insert mode in gVim with the following settings in ~/.gvimrc :

"
"------------------------------------------------------------------
" toggle insert mode <--> 'normal mode with the <RightMouse>-key
"------------------------------------------------------------------
nnoremap  <RightMouse> <Insert>
inoremap  <RightMouse> <ESC>
"

Replace all

  :%s/oldtext/newtext/igc

Give a to replace all :)

Some of my must-haves are:

cscope + ctags + vim, which can be found on the web.

Some abreviations for quickly starting new code files such as:

ab cpph #include <iostream><CR>#include <string><CR>#include <cstdlib><CR>#include <cassert><CR>#include <vector><CR>#include <
stdexcept><CR>using namespace std;<CR>int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
ab perlh #!/usr/bin/perl<CR>use strict;<CR>use warnings;<CR>
ab chdr #include <stdio.h><CR>#include <sys/types.h><CR>#include <unistd.h><CR>#include <stdlib.h><CR>#include <sys/stat.h><CR>
#include <sys/wait.h><CR>#include <string.h><CR>int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
ab xhtmlhdr <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><CR><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.o
rg/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><CR><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><CR>  <head><CR>  <title></title><CR><link h
ref="style.css" rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css"><CR></head>

For example cpph will insert a basic skeleton of a main.cc file

There is also my mapping of the function keys:

map <F1> <Esc>:w<CR>:perl $e = `./error.pl`; my ($f,$l,@w) = split(":",$e); my $w=join(":",@w); $curwin->Cursor($l,0); VIM::Msg($w);<CR>
map <F2> :wincmd w<CR>
map <F3> :wincmd s<CR>
map <F4> :wincmd v<CR>
map <F5> :wincmd o<CR>
map <F6> :sball<CR>
map <F7> :wq<CR>
map <F8> :wincmd q<CR>
map <F9> :wincmd -<CR>
map <F10> :wincmd +<CR>
map <F11> :wincmd <<CR>
map <F12> :wincmd ><CR>

In this case my F1 is mapped to put the cursor over the next error that needs to be corrected for a source code migration.

map _ ebi"^[ea"^[

This map would make _ quote a string

Mappings to make movements operate on the current screen line in wrap mode. I discovered this in a comment for a Vim tip some time ago, and it has proven quite handy.

function! ScreenMovement(movement)
  if &wrap
    return "g" . a:movement
  else
    return a:movement
  endif
endfunction
onoremap <silent> <expr> j ScreenMovement("j")
onoremap <silent> <expr> k ScreenMovement("k")
onoremap <silent> <expr> 0 ScreenMovement("0")
onoremap <silent> <expr> ^ ScreenMovement("^")
onoremap <silent> <expr> $ ScreenMovement("$")
nnoremap <silent> <expr> j ScreenMovement("j")
nnoremap <silent> <expr> k ScreenMovement("k")
nnoremap <silent> <expr> 0 ScreenMovement("0")
nnoremap <silent> <expr> ^ ScreenMovement("^")
nnoremap <silent> <expr> $ ScreenMovement("$")

per this thread

To prefix a set of lines I use one of two different approaches:

One approach is the block select (mentioned by sth). In general, you can select a rectangular region with ctrl-V followed by cursor-movement. Once you've highlighted a rectangle, pressing shift-I will insert characters on the left side of the rectangle, or shift-A will append them on the right side of the rectangle. So you can use this technique to make a rectangle that includes the left-most column of the lines you want to prefix, hit shift-I, type the prefix, and then hit escape.

The other approach is to use a substitution (as mentioned by Brian Agnew). Brian's substitution will affect the entire file (the % in the command means "all lines"). To affect just a few lines the easiest approach is to hit shift-V (which enables visual-line mode) while on the first/last line, and then move to the last/first line. Then type:

:s/^/YOUR PREFIX/

The ^ is a regex (in this case, the beginning of the line). By typing this in visual line mode you'll see '<,'> inserted before the s automatically. This means the range of the substitution will be the visual selection.

Extra tip: if your prefix contains slashes, you can either escape them with backslash, or you can use a different punctuation character as the separator in the command. For example, to add C++ line comments, I usually write:

:s:^:// :

For adding a suffix the substitution approach is generally easier unless all of your lines are exactly the same length. Just use $ for the pattern instead of ^ and your string will be appended instead of pre-pended.

If you want to add a prefix and a suffix simultaneously, you can do something like this:

:s/.*/PREFIX & SUFFIX/

The .* matches the whole line. The & in the replacement puts the matched text (the whole line) back, but now it'll have your prefix and suffix added.

BTW: when commenting out code you'll probably want to uncomment it later. You can use visual-block (ctrl-V) to select the slashes and then hit d to delete them, or you can use a substitution (probably with a visual line selection, made with shift-V) to remove the leading slashes like this:

:s:// ::

Mine is using macros instead of searches - combining a macro with visual mode is sometimes more efficient.