Vimrc

Regex

&

& Is replaced with the entire text matched by the search pattern when used in a replacement string. This is useful when you want to avoid retyping text:

:%s/Yazstremski/&, Carl/

The replacement will say Yazstremski, Carl. The & can also replace a variable pattern (as specified by a regular expression). For example, to surround each line from 1 to 10 with parentheses, type:

:1,10s/.*/(&)/

from Learning the vi and Vim Editors, Seventh Edition by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb.

Insert a space between # and the character that follows it

:%s/#\(\w\)/# \1/g

general

.  any character except new line
\s whitespace character
\S non-whitespace character
\d digit
\D non-digit
\x hex digit
\X non-hex digit
\o octal digit
\O non-octal digit
\h head of word character (a,b,c...z,A,B,C...Z and _)
\H non-head of word character
\p printable character
\P like \p, but excluding digits
\w word character
\W non-word character
\a alphabetic character
\A non-alphabetic character
\l lowercase character
\L non-lowercase character
\u uppercase character
\U non-uppercase character

Quickfix

C-w<Enter> Open file from list

Vim cool fonts

Linux

$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts
$ cd ~/.local/share/fonts && curl -fLo "Droid Sans Mono for Powerline Nerd Font Complete.otf" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/master/patched-fonts/DroidSansMono/complete/Droid%20Sans%20Mono%20for%20Powerline%20Nerd%20Font%20Complete.otf
  • In vimrc, set
set guifont=Droid\ Sans\ Mono\ for\ Powerline\ Plus\ Nerd\ File\ Types\ 11

MacOS

cd ~/Library/Fonts && curl -fLo "Droid Sans Mono for Powerline Nerd Font Complete.otf" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/master/patched-fonts/DroidSansMono/complete/Droid%20Sans%20Mono%20for%20Powerline%20Nerd%20Font%20Complete.otf
  • In .vimrc,
set guifont=Droid\ Sans\ Mono\ for\ Powerline\ Plus\ Nerd\ File\ Types:h11

Make vim automatically read file as some filetype

Insert this line in the file

# vim: set filetype=sh

Misc

:echo expand('%:p') print filename with full path

Vim diff

turn on

:windo diffthis

turn off

:windo diffoff

move between changes

[c jump back ]c and forward

Movements

  • gg Go to beginning of file
  • G Go to end of file

Windows et al

  • ^w Change subwindow
  • :q Command history

Search and replace

  • +?|& must be escaped for special function
  • \r is new line (for replacing)

normal mode

  • /wordtosearch + Enter Search for word
  • /\cwortosearch + Enter Case insensitive search for word
  • :%s/foo/bar/gci Replaces all ocurrences (g) in all the text (%) of the word foo by the word bar, ignoring cases (i) and asking confirmation (c) for each replacement
  • :%s/patata//gn counts ocurrences of patata in all the text

Buffers

  • :ls
  • :b 2 go to buffer# 2
  • :vsp filename vertical split
  • :sp filename horizontal split
  • :bnext mapped to (Ctrl + → ) next buffer
  • :bprev mapped to (Ctrl + ← ) previous buffer
  • :sb vertically split buffer on current file

External commands and writing (vimtutor# 5)

  • :!command executes an external command.
  • :w FILENAME writes the current Vim file to disk with name FILENAME.
  • v motion :w FILENAME saves the Visually selected lines in file FILENAME.
  • :r FILENAME retrieves disk file FILENAME and puts it below the cursor position.
  • :r !dir reads the output of the dir command and puts it below the cursor position.

Editing

Normal mode

  • :m .+1 Move line down
  • :m .-2 Move line up
  • `cw change word (deletes word and switches to insert mode)
  • ci" change insde " (also, ([{, etc)
  • 55,60d deleted lines 55-60 (can be applied to other actions)
  • gg=G format all file
  • # ngg go to line number # n
  • :set list show whitespaces
  • u undo
  • U undo changes on line
  • CTRL + R redo
  • A goes to end of line and enters insert mode

  • * goes to next appearance of the word pointed by the cursor

  • zb goes to bottom of screen

  • zz goes to middle of screen
  • zt goes to top of screen

Screen moving

  • ^f move one screen forward
  • ^b move one screen backwards

Insert mode

  • ctrl+Space (was Ctrl+N) Autocomplete

Visual Mode

  • v visual mode
  • V visual line mode
  • CTRL + v visual block mode
Add text to multiple lines (at the same cursor position: column)
  • Enter visual block mode
  • Select lines
  • Type I (capital i)
  • Write text
  • Press Escape

Plugins

Ultisnips

  • From here.
  • Configure custom snippets folder like this:
let g:UltiSnipsSnippetDirectories=["~/.vim/custom_snippets"]
  • As noted in the docs, do NOT map tab to trigger:
let g:UltiSnipsExpandTrigger="<c-e>"

NERDTree

  • RTFM
  • or
  • Read this: From within NERDTree Window
    • m bring up the NERDTree Filesystem Menu
    • a create new file
    • t open in tab
    • i open in h split
    • s open in v split
    • O expand selected folder recursively_
    • I show/hide hidden files
    • C change root to highlighted folder

Block move by patterns

From Learning the vi and vim editors Given the file with contents:

Rh 0 "Get status of named file" "STAT"
.Rh "SYNTAX"
.nf
integer*4 stat, retval
integer*4 status(11)
character*123 filename
...
retval = stat (filename, status)
.fi
.Rh "DESCRIPTION"
Writes the fields of a system data structure into the
status array.
These fields contain (among other
things) information about the file's location, access
privileges, owner, and time of last modification.
.Rh "PARAMETERS"
.IP "\fBfilename\fR" 15n
A character string variable or constant containing
the Unix pathname for the file whose status you want
to retrieve.
You can give the ...

Suppose that you decide to move DESCRIPTION above the SYNTAX paragraph. With pattern matching, you can move blocks of text on all 150 pages with one command!

:g /SYNTAX/.,/DESCRIPTION/-1 move /PARAMETERS/-1

This command works as follows. First, ex finds and marks each line that matches the first pattern (i.e., that contains the word SYNTAX). Second, for each marked line, it sets . (dot, the current line) to that line, and executes the command. Using the move command, the command moves the block of lines from the current line (dot) to the line before the one containing the word DESCRIPTION (/DESCRIPTION/-1) to just before the line containing PARAMETERS (/PARAMETERS/-1).

Snippets

Reverse lines

  • All :g/^/m0
  • Range (reverse only lines 100-150) :100,150g/^/m99