Vim is Awesome!

(don't use Vim 🎉)

Asa Smith

Yahoo!

What is Vim?

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. It is included as "vi" with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X.

Its features include:

• persistent, multi-level undo tree
• extensive plugin system
• support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
• powerful search and replace
• integrates with many tools

Vim is terminal based editor

Why use vim?

Efficiency

All file navigation controls happen using the keyboard

Most controls originate from the keyboard home keys/row

Never use your mouse again

Vim is (basically) everywhere

Available with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X

Easily edit dot files from the terminal

or...

Edit files live on a server using an SSH connection

(not recommended)

via GIPHY

Last but not least

You can silently judge anyone who isn't using Vim

Especially Emacs users

Vim sounds amazing! Why isn't everyone using it?

"Highly customizable" === A lot of configuration

Fortunately, you have options to use Vim without using Vim

Whichever course you take, Vim can still pose some unique challenges...

How to exit Vim

First, make sure you're in Normal mode

Press ESC once

More on modes later.

Normal mode in iterm

Normal mode in VS Code

Enter Command mode

Press : (colon) once.

More on modes later, I promise

Command mode Iterm

Command mode VS Code

If no changes made to file

:q

q === quit

If you've made changes to the file

:wq

wq === write and quit

I don't know why I'm here

I don't know what happened

LET ME OUT OF THIS PRISON

:q! // force quit without the write operation

MODES 🎉

Thanks for your patience

Normal mode

Moving the cursor

• h move one character left
• j move one row down
• k move one row up
• l move one character right

That doesn't sound efficient at all

And might have disatrous effects...

reminder, please follow me on twitter 🐦

But composability...

• 5h moves the cursor 5 chars to the left
• 10j moves the cursor 10 rows down

There's also word movements

• w move to beginning of next word
• b move to beginning of the previous word
• e move to end of word
• W move to beginning of next word after a whitespace
• B move to beginning of previous word before a whitespace
• E move to end of word before a whitespace

These are composable as well

5w move to the beginning of the 5th word

Some other useful navigation items

• 0 move to the beginning of the line
• $ move to the end of the line
• % move to opening/closing bracket/parens depending on where the cursor is located
• gg move to top of file
• GG move to bottom of file
• zz center current row vertically in window
• . repeat last operation

Insert mode

Basic Commands

• i for insert, this immediately switches vim to insert mode
• a for append, this moves the cursor after the current character and enters insert mode
• o inserts a new line below the current line and enters insert mode on the new line
• I moves the cursor to the beginning of the line and enters insert mode
• A moves the cursor to the end of the line and enters insert mode
• O inserts a new line above the current one

To leave Insert mode and return to Normal mode

Press ESC

A lot of people map ESC to caps lock to make this easier

Command mode

Reminder, press : to enter command mode

More complex commands can be executed in command mode

Like search and replace

:%s/foo/bar/g

:%s/foo/bar/g

• : Enters command mode
• % Search across all lines
• s Substitute
• foo Regex to find items to replace
• bar Regex to replace found items with
• g Global, update all occurences in this file

Resources

and if you really want to make your life difficult...

Spacemacs

The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs and Vim!