Ask HN: What is your favorite lesser known VIM shortcut you can share
9 comments
When I'm showing people the power of vim, I often use the `i` verb, like `ci"` and how it's not a "shortcut" but instead a sentence: change in quotes. If you start thinking about vim as a language instead of a collection of things to memorize, it becomes much easier, IMO.
Maybe one lesser known is changing to visual mode within operation. A few examples (^ marks the cursor):
Another example, say we want to delete from "two" to "five".
one two three
^
Another example, say we want to delete from "two" to "five".
one
two
^
three
four
five
six
sometimes when I copy data into a file, I get some blank lines depending on how the data was formatted. This can often happen when copying from websites.
I find this shortcut useful to delete all blank lines in a file
:g/^$/d
I find this shortcut useful to delete all blank lines in a file
:g/^$/d
To add to this, I would say :g in combination with :norm would be my choice.
Edit: Oh, also, since vim ships with xxd: xxd -r -p is a very useful thing to know.
Edit: Oh, also, since vim ships with xxd: xxd -r -p is a very useful thing to know.
:Lexplore opens a split window with a directory listing you can navigate.
:33Lexplore opens the split with a slimmer, 33% width, window. :Lex<tab> to autocomplete if you do not want to type as much.
:33Lexplore opens the split with a slimmer, 33% width, window. :Lex<tab> to autocomplete if you do not want to type as much.
I never know what is lesser known but my faviourite is: * searches for the word under the cursor, # searches backwards. You can also use n for next and N for previous hit.
Favorite is hard, but if you use vim and don't know that `.` repeats the last change then you're missing out. It's really useful for those times where you need to make the same change in lots of places in a file, but not everywhere.
Why it's helpful: It acts like a time machine for your edits! If you regret changes but don’t want to undo manually, you can jump back in time.
You can also use it with changes, e.g., :earlier 5c (5 changes earlier).