VIM Editor

Some useful commands for VIM

 

Text Entry Commands (Used to start text entry)

a Append text following current cursor position

A Append text to the end of current line

i Insert text before the current cursor position

I Insert text at the beginning of the cursor line

o Open up a new line following the current line and add text there

O Open up a new line in front of the current line and add text there

The following commands are used only in the commands mode.

 

Cursor Movement Commands

h Moves the cursor one character to the left

l Moves the cursor one character to the right

k Moves the cursor up one line

j Moves the cursor down one line

nG or :n Cursor goes to the specified (n) line

(ex. 10G goes to line 10)

^F (CTRl F) Forward screenful

^B Backward screenful

^f One page forward

^b One page backward

^U Up half screenful

^D Down half screenful

$ Move cursor to the end of current line

0 (zero) Move cursor to the beginning of current line

w Forward one word

b Backward one word

 

Exit Commands

:wq Write file to disk and quit the editor

:q! Quit (no warning)

:q Quit (a warning is printed if a modified file has not been saved)

ZZ Save workspace and quit the editor (same as :wq)

: 10,25 w temp

write lines 10 through 25 into file named temp. Of course, other line

numbers can be used. (Use :f to find out the line numbers you want.

 

Text Deletion Commands

x Delete character

dw Delete word from cursor on

db Delete word backward

dd Delete line

d$ Delete to end of line

d^ (d caret, not CTRL d) Delete to beginning of line

Yank (has most of the options of delete)-- VI's copy commmand

yy yank current line

y$ yank to end of current line from cursor

yw yank from cursor to end of current word

5yy yank, for example, 5 lines

Paste (used after delete or yank to recover lines.)

p paste below cursor

P paste above cursor

"2p paste from buffer 2 (there are 9)

u Undo last change

U Restore line

J Join next line down to the end of the current line

 

File Manipulation Commands

:w Write workspace to original file

:w file Write workspace to named file

:e file Start editing a new file

:r file Read contents of a file to the workspace

To create a page break, while in the insert mode, press the CTRL key

And l. ^L will appear in your text and will cause the printer to start

A new page.

 

 

Other Useful Commands

Most commands can be repeated n times by typing a number, n, before

the command. For example 10dd means delete 10 lines.

. Repeat last command

cw Change current word to a new word

r Replace one character at the cursor position

R Begin overstrike or replace mode – use ESC key to exit

:/ pattern Search forward for the pattern

:? pattern Search backward for the pattern

n (used after either of the 2 search commands above to

continue to find next occurrence of the pattern.

:g/pat1/s//pat2/g replace every occurrence of pattern1 (pat1) with

pat2

 

Example :g/tIO/s//Ada.Text_IO/g

This will find and replace tIO by Ada.text_IO everywhere in the file.

:g/a/s// /g replace the letter a, by blank

:g/a/s///g replace a by nothing

note: Even this command be undone by u