rod.info: How-To: Vim

How-To: Vim

Documentation & resources

vimrc

Take a look at my personal vimrc for some useful vim configuration settings and tweaks.

Plug-ins

Tag list

Taglist is a source code browser that provides an overview of the structure of a file making it easy to browse through source. To install under Ubuntu run the following (this requires the vim-scripts and vim-addon-manager packages to be installed first):

vim-addons install taglist

snipMate

snipMate aims to be an unobtrusive, concise vim script that implements some of TextMate's snippets features in Vim. A snippet is a piece of often-typed text that you can insert into your document using a trigger word followed by a <tab>.

CVScommand

CVScommand is a plug-in for dealing with CVS repositories.

SVNcommand

SVNcommand is a plug-in for dealing with SVN repositories.

More plug-ins!

See the Vim.org website for a complete list of plug-ins (or run vim-addons under Ubuntu).

Spell check

Vim (as of version 7) has a built-in spell checker. To enable the spell checker add the following to your vimrc:

	se spell
	setlocal spell spelllang=en_us
	set spellfile=~/.vim.spell.add

To make it even easier add the following, which enables spell checking with F7 and disables it with shift-F7, to your vimrc :

	map <F7> <Esc>:setlocal spell spelllang=en_us<CR>
	map <S-F7> <Esc>:setlocal nospell<CR>

You can find the above in my personal vimrc.

Here are some of the more useful spell checking commands:

zg to mark a word as correctly spelled

zw to mark a word as misspelled

zug undo zg

zuw undo zw

z= show a list of alternate spellings

:spellr repeat the last z= replacement for all matches in the current window

]s skip to next misspelled word

[s skip to previous misspelled word

For more information run :help spell inside a Vim session!

Tabs

Vim (as of version 7) has tab support. To make it a little easier to move back and forth between tabs, add the following, which maps shift-left (arrow) to move to the previous tab and shift-right to the next tab, to your vimrc:

	map <S-left> :tabp<CR>
	map <S-right> :tabn<CR>

Of course, you can find the above in my personal vimrc.

Here are some of the more useful tab commands:

:tabnew create a new tab

:tabnew filename open filename in a new tab

:tabm n moves the current tab to position n (Vim starts tab numbering from 0)

For more information run :help tab-page-intro inside a Vim session!

Useful Commands

} move cursor to the end of the current paragraph
{ move cursor to the beginning of the current paragraph
) move cursor to the end of the current sentence
( move cursor to the beginning of the current sentence
^ move to the first non-blank character in the current line
$ or , move to the end of the current line
0 move to the beginning of the current line
w or W move to the beginning of the next word
b or B move to the beginning of the previous word
fX move to the next 'X' character on the current line
FX move to the previous 'X' character on the current line
e move to the end of the next word
H move to the first line of the screen
M move to the middle line of the screen
L move to the last line of the screen
G move to the end of the file
gg move to the beginning of the file
gq<CR> format the line (Q also worked in earlier versions, restore with this: :nnoremap Q gq)
v start highlighting characters
V start highlighting entire lines
dw delete words from the current position onward
db delete words from the left of the current cursor position backwards
dl or x delete the character at the current cursor position
dh or X delete the character to the left of the current cursor position
d0 delete text from the current cursor position to the beginning of the line
d$ or D delete the entire line starting at the current cursor position
. redo last command
:bufdo cmd executes cmd in each buffer in the buffer list
[[ go to the start of a section, backward
]] go to the start of a section, forward
[] go to the end of a section, backward
][ go to the end of a section, forward
:w >> /tmp/file.txt append to a file
:set list shows unprintable characters
:set noai disable auto indenting
:set paste enter paste mode (disables auto indenting amongst other things)
while in insert mode press ^P (previous) and ^N (next) to scroll through word completion matches
[count]["x]yy or [count]["x]Y yank [count] lines (default of 1) [into register x]
{Visual}["x]y yank the highlighted text [into register x]
:[range]y [x] {count} yank {count} lines, starting with last line number in [range] [into register x]
["x]p put the text [from register x] after the cursor [count] times
["x]P put the text [from register x] before the cursor [count] times
["x]gp put the text [from register x] after the cursor [count] times, leaving the cursor just after the new text
["x]gP put the text [from register x] before the cursor [count] times, leaving the cursor just after the new text
:[line]pu [x] put the text [from register x] after [line] (default current line)
:[line]pu! [x] put the text [from register x] before [line] (default current line)