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VIM Customisation

vim color scheme

I use the VI (or VIM) editor. It comes standard on most Linux and UNIX distributions, or can otherwise be installed. A key feature I configure is the VIM colour scheme, as the standard colour scheme does not work well with black background terminal windows I prefer to use. Simply create the file on home directory, “.vimrc” (vim ~/.vimrc) and add the line :colorscheme desert.

The different VIM colour scheme definition files are located at /usr/share/vim/vim90/colors.

vim syntax color

If syntax color is not working in the file .vimrc (vim ~/.vimrc), add the following line syntax on.

vim line numbers

VIM Text Editor

A powerful text editor, standard in most Linux distributions and available in Windows. Need some time and effort to learn though, particularly if moving from graphical user environment.

Some Informative Links:

Simple VIM Reference!!!
Troubleshooters - VI & Vim!!!
The VIM Wiki, contains a lot of VIM help / user information.
The VIM Wiki -Copy, cut and paste
The VIM Wiki -Copy, Search and replace
VIM FAQ
Seven habits of effective text editing

Some Quick tips: *There are two (2) main modes: Command mode and Insertion mode. You only normally type text in Insertion mode. The Esc (escape) key enters command mode and the i or INS(insert) keys return to Insertion mode. *If like me you use a keyboard without an insert key, eg. Microsoft Surface, you can get into insert mode directly from command mode by typing i. When you open VIM you are in command mode, so simply type i (or insert) to get into insert mode. *To copy, cut and paste:

First go into command mode (ESC or CTRL-[)
Move using cursor keys to place to start highlight, hit v key and highlight area to be copied (or cut)
key y to copy, or d to cut
Move to place to paste, key P to paste before cursor or p to paste after

CheatSheet: Vim Commands

This source is no longer available and taken from www.archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20190515212443/http://jeffskinnerbox.me/posts/2014/Dec/21/cheatsheet-vim-commands/

Working with files

Vim Command	Action
:w filename	Save changes to a file. If you don't specify a file name, Vim saves as the file name you were editing. For saving the file under a different name, specify the file name.
:q	Quit Vim. If you have unsaved changes, Vim refuses to exit.
:q!	Exit Vim without saving changes.
:qa	quit all (close Vim, but not if there are unsaved changes)
:qa!	quit all (close Vim without saving—discard any changes)
:wq	Write the file and exit.
:wa	write all changed files (save all changes), and keep working
:ZZ	write current file, if modified, and exit.
:1,10 w outfile	Saves lines 1 to 10 in outfile
:1,10 w » outfile	Appends lines 1 to 10 to outfile
:r infile	Insert the content of infile
:23r infile	Insert the content of infile under line 23
:x	Almost the same as :wq, write the file and exit if you've made changes to the file. If you haven't made any changes to the file, Vim exits without writing the file.
CTRL-Z	Suspend Vim, like “:stop”. Works in Normal and in Visual mode. In Insert and Command-line mode, the CTRL-Z is inserted as a normal character.

Moving around in the file

These Vim commands and keys work both in command mode and visual mode.

Vim Command	Action
j or Up Arrow	Move the cursor up one line
k or Down Arrow	Down one line
h or Left Arrow	Left one character
l or Right Arrow	Right one character
Ctrl + b	Move back one full screen
Ctrl + f	Move forward one full screen
Ctrl + d	Move forward 1/2 a screen
Ctrl + u	Move back 1/2 a screen
Ctrl + e	Move screen down one line (without moving cursor)
Ctrl + y	Move screen up one line (without moving cursor)
Ctrl + o	Move backward through the jump history
Ctrl + i	Move forward through the jump history
gg	Move to top of file
Shift + g	move to end of file
w	Move to next word
W	Move to next blank delimited word
e	To the end of a word
E	To the end of a whitespace-delimited word
b	To the beginning of a word
B	To the beginning of a whitespace-delimited word
(	Move a sentence back
)	Move a sentence forward
{	Move a paragraph back
}	Move a paragraph forward
0	To the beginning of a line
^	To the first non-whitespace character of a line
$	To the end of a line
1G	Move to the first line of the file
G	Move to the last line of the file
nG	Move to nth line of the file
fc	Move forward to c
Fc	Move back to c
:n	Jump to line number n. For example, to jump to line 42, you'd type :42
H	To the first line of the screen.
M	To the middle line of the screen.
L	To the last line of the screen.
%	Move to associated ( )

Inserting and overwriting text

Vim Command	Action
i	Insert before cursor.
I	Insert to the start of the current line.
a	Append after cursor.
A	Append to the end of the current line.
o	Open a new line below and insert.
O	Open a new line above and insert.
C	Change the rest of the current line.
r	Overwrite one character. After overwriting the single character, go back to command mode.
R	Enter insert mode but replace characters rather than inserting.
Esc	Exit insert/overwrite mode and go back to command mode.

Deleting text

Vim Command	Action
Del-key	Delete characters under the cursor.
x	Delete characters under the cursor.
X	Delete characters before the cursor.
dd or :d	Delete the current line.
dw	Delete the word under the cursor.
d$	Delete to the end of the line.
d	Delete text that

Yanking Text

Note that “ and ”+ work both ways. So if you have selected some text in another application, you can paste it into vim using “p and if you have copied some text (using, say, Ctrl-C) then you can paste it into vim using ”+p.

Vim Command	Action
yy	Yank the current line
:y	Yank the current line
nyy	Yank n lines from current down
yw	Yank the word under the cursor
y$	Yank to the end of the line
"+y	copies to the “usual” clipboard buffer (so you can paste using Ctrl+V, right click and select “Paste” etc)
“*y	copies to the X11 selection - you can paste from this buffer using middle click

Putting Text

Vim Command	Action
p	Put after the position or after the line
P	Put before the position or before the line

Changing Text

Vim Command	Action
C	Change to the end of the line
cc	Change the whole line
cw	Change the word under the cursor

Other

Vim Command	Action
J	Join lines
.	Repeat last text-changing command
u	Undo last change
U	Undo all changes to line

Entering visual mode

Vim Command	Action
v	Start highlighting characters. Use the normal movement keys and commands to select text for highlighting.
V	Start highlighting lines.
The ESC key	Exit visual mode and return to command mode.

Editing blocks of text

Note: the Vim commands marked with (V) work in visual mode, when you've selected some text. The other commands work in the command mode, when you haven't selected any text.

Vim Command	Action
~	Change the case of characters. This works both in visual and command mode. In visual mode, change the case of highlighted characters. In command mode, change the case of the character under cursor.
> (V)	Shift right (indent).
< (V)	Shift left (de-indent).
c (V)	Change the highlighted text.
y (V)	Yank the highlighted text. In Windows terms, “copy the selected text to clipboard.”
d (V)	Delete the highlighted text. In Windows terms, “cut the selected text to clipboard.”
yy or :y or Y	Yank the current line. You don't need to highlight it first.
dd or :d	Delete the current line. Again, you don't need to highlight it first.
p	Put the text you yanked or deleted. In Windows terms, “paste the contents of the clipboard”. Put characters after the cursor. Put lines below the current line.
P	Put characters before the cursor. Put lines above the current line.

Spelling

Vim Command	Action
]s	move to the next misspelled word
[s	move to the previous misspelled word
zg	add a word to the dictionary
zug	undo the addition of a word to the dictionary
z=	view spelling suggestions for a misspelled word

Alignment

Vim Command	Action
:%!fmt	Align all lines
!}fmt	Align all lines at the current position
5!!fmt	Align the next 5 lines

Undo, redo and report

Vim Command	Action
u	Undo the last action
U	Undo all the latest changes that were made to the current line
Ctrl + r	Redo
.	repeat last command

Search

Vim Command	Action
/pattern	Search the file for pattern.
n	Scan for next search match in the same direction.
N	Scan for next search match but opposite direction.
/word	Search word from top to bottom
?word	Search word from bottom to top
*	move the cursor to any word, press * to search forwards for that word
#	move the cursor to any word, press # to search backward for that word
/jo[ha]n	Search john or joan
/\< the	Search the, theatre or then
/the>	Search the or breathe
/\< the>	Search the
/\< ¦.>	Search all words of 4 letters
/\/	Search fred but not alfred or frederick
/fred\	joe
/\<\d\d\d\d>	Search exactly 4 digits
/^\n{3}	Find 3 empty lines
:bufdo /searchstr/	Search in all open files

Replace

Vim Command	Action
:rs/foo/bar/a	Substitute foo with bar. r determines the range and a determines the arguments.
The range ® can be
nothing	Work on current line only.
number	Work on the line whose number you give.
%	The whole file.
Arguments (a) can be
g	Replace all occurrences in the line. Without this, Vim replaces only the first occurrences in each line.
i	Ignore case for the search pattern.
I	Don't ignore case.
c	Confirm each substitution. You can type y to substitute this match, n to skip this match, a to substitute this and all the remaining matches (“Yes to all”), and q to quit substitution.
Examples
:452s/foo/bar/	Replace the first occurrence of the word foo with bar on line number 452.
:s/foo/bar/g	Replace every occurrence of the word foo with bar on current line.
:%s/foo/bar/g	Replace every occurrence of the word foo with bar in the whole file.
:%s/foo/bar/gi	The same as above, but ignore the case of the pattern you want to substitute. This replaces foo, FOO, Foo, and so on.
:%s/foo/bar/gc	Confirm every substitution.
:%s/foo/bar/c	For each line on the file, replace the first occurrence of foo with bar and confirm every substitution.
:%s/old/new/g	Replace all occurrences of old by new in file
:%s/old/new/gw	Replace all occurrences with confirmation
:2,35s/old/new/g	Replace all occurrences between lines 2 and 35
:5,$s/old/new/g	Replace all occurrences from line 5 to EOF
:%s/^/hello/g	Replace the beginning of each line by hello
:%s/$/Harry/g	Replace the end of each line by Harry
:%s/onward/forward/gi	Replace onward by forward, case insensitive
:%s/ *$//g	Delete all white spaces
:g/string/d	Delete all lines containing string
:v/string/d	Delete all lines containing which didn’t contain string
:s/Bill/Steve/	Replace the first occurrence of Bill by Steve in current line
:s/Bill/Steve/g	Replace Bill by Steve in current line
:%s/Bill/Steve/g	Replace Bill by Steve in all the file
:%s/\r//g	Delete DOS carriage returns (^M)
:%s/\r/\r/g	Transform DOS carriage returns in returns
:%s#<[^>]+>##g	Delete HTML tags but keeps text
:%s/^(.*)\n\1$/\1/	Delete lines which appears twice
Ctrl+a	Increment number under the cursor
Ctrl+x	Decrement number under cursor
Regular Expressions
. (dot)	Any single character except newline
*	zero or more occurrences of any character
[...]	Any single character specified in the set
[^...]	Any single character not specified in the set
^	Anchor - beginning of the line
$	Anchor - end of line
\<	Anchor - beginning of word
>	Anchor - end of word
(...)	Grouping - usually used to group conditions
\n	Contents of nth grouping
[...] - Set Examples
[A-Z]	The SET from Capital A to Capital Z
[a-z]	The SET from lowercase a to lowercase z
[0-9]	The SET from 0 to 9 (All numerals)
[./=+]	The SET containing . (dot), / (slash), =, and +
[-A-F]	The SET from Capital A to Capital F and the dash (dashes must be specified first)
[0-9 A-Z]	The SET containing all capital letters and digits and a space
[A-Z][a-zA-Z]	In the first position, the SET from Capital A to Capital Z. In the second character position, the SET containing all letters
Regular Expression Examples
/Hello/	Matches if the line contains the value Hello
/^TEST$/	Matches if the line contains TEST by itself
/^[a-zA-Z]/	Matches if the line starts with any letter
/^[a-z].*/	Matches if the first character of the line is a-z and there is at least one more of any character following it
/2134$/	Matches if line ends with 2134
/(21	35)/
/[0-9]*/	Matches if there are zero or more numbers in the line
/^[^#]/	Matches if the first character is not a # in the line

Case

Vim Command	Action
Vu	Lowercase line
VU	Uppercase line
g~~	Invert case
vEU	Switch word to uppercase
vE~	Modify word case
ggguG	Set all text to lowercase
:set ignorecase	Ignore case in searches
:set smartcase	Ignore case in searches excepted if an uppercase letter is used
:%s/\<./\u&/g	Sets first letter of each word to uppercase
:%s/\<./\l&/g	Sets first letter of each word to lowercase
:%s/.*/\u&	Sets first letter of each line to uppercase
:%s/.*/\l&	Sets first letter of each line to lowercase

Tabs

Vim Command	Action
:tabnew	Creates a new tab
gt	Show next tab
:tabfirst	Show first tab
:tablast	Show last tab
:tabm n(position)	Rearrange tabs
:tabdo %s/foo/bar/g	Execute a command in all tabs
:tab ball	Puts all open files in tabs

Tab versus Spaces has an interesting discussion on this matter. Near the end of the article it explains methods to configure vim tab action.
Standard vi interprets the tab key literally, but there are popular vi-derived alternatives that are smarter, like vim.

set softtabstop=2, To get vim to interpret tab as an indent command instead of an insert-a-tab command
set shiftwidth=2, To set the mod-N indentation used when you hit the tab key in vim (what Emacs calls c-basic-offset)
set tabstop=4, To cause the TAB file-character to be displayed as mod-N in vi and vim (what Emacs calls tab-width)
set expandtab, To cause TAB characters to not be used in the file for compression, and for only spaces to be used (what emacs calls indent-tabs-mode)
In vi (and vim), you can do this stuff on a per-file basis using modelines, magic comments at the top of the file, similarly to how it works in Emacs: /* ex: set tabstop=8 expandtab: */

Window Splitting

Vim Command	Action
:e filename	Edit filename in current window
:split filename	Split the window and open filename
ctrl-w up arrow	Puts cursor in top window
ctrl-w ctrl-w	Puts cursor in next window
ctrl-w_	Maximize current window
ctrl-w=	Gives the same size to all windows
10 ctrl-w+	Add 10 lines to current window
:vsplit file	Split window vertically
:sview file	Same as :split in read-only mode
:hide	Close current window
:nly	Close all windows, excepted current
:b 2	Open #2 in this window

Marks

Vim Command	Action
mk	Marks current position as k
˜k	Moves cursor to mark k
dk	Delete all until mark k

Recording Macros

Vim Command	Action
q	Record typed characters into register
q	Stops recording. (Implementation note: The 'q' that stops recording is not stored in the register, unless it was the result of a mapping)
qq	Start recording a new macro to the register q.

Play Back Macros

Vim Command Action

@q	Play back the macro.
	Play back the macro q
@@	Repeat the last macro played

Folding

Vim Command	Action
zf#j	creates a fold from the cursor down # lines
zf/v	string creates a fold from the cursor to string
zf	operator to create a fold
zf'a	fold to mark
zn	fold none: reset 'foldenable'. All folds will be open
zN	fold normal: set 'foldenable'. All folds will be as they were before
zi	invert 'foldenable'
zj	moves the cursor to the next fold
zk	moves the cursor to the previous fold
zo	opens a fold at the cursor
zO	opens all folds at the cursor
zm	increases the fold-level by one
zM	closes all open folds
zr	decreases the fold-level by one
zR	decreases the fold-level to zero – all folds will be open
zd	deletes the fold at the cursor
zE	deletes all folds
[z	move to start of open fold
]z	move to end of open fold

Vim Resource File

Using Vim's scripting language (and a great deal of insight and tools from others), I have setup Vim on my local machine to be an effective development environment for my needs.

Sources

These are the sources for the commands documented above in the tables, and generally good sources to learn Vi/Vim.

Requires More Research

These links should be explored to see what additional information could be gathered for this cheat sheet.

neovim

NvChad
LunarVim