CSC 101 Winter 2008

Vim Operations (courtesy Dr. O'Gorman)

Updates

• This document was last modified on 11 Jan 2008.

Contents

These entries are roughly in the order I expect you'll need them.

• Basic Operation

• Insert Mode

• Normal Mode

• Quitting

• Add Text

• Delete Text (Small Amounts)

• Delete Text (Larger Amounts)

• Oops

• Indent

• Move the Cursor (navigate through your document)

• Paste Text

• Work with Files

• Search for Text

• Repeating Commands

• Split the Screen

Basic Operation

Vim has three main modes. Four if you count "insert" and "replace" as different.

• This means that the editor will behave differently depending on the mode it is in

• The modes are “normal”, “insert/replace” and “visual”

• Normal mode allows you to enter many commands, to modify text, move it around, save it, and so on.

• Insert and replace modes are for placing text in your document.

• Visual mode is for special operations on blocks of text.

• Usually, you can tell what mode the editor is in by looking at the leftmost part of last line of the display. If it says “--INSERT--”, “--REPLACE--” or “--VISUAL--”, that's the mode you are in.

• If it's blank, either you're in normal mode, or that part of the display has been turned off. You can make sure you're in normal mode by pressing the <ESC> key (usually in the far upper left of your keyboard). Do this until the computer beeps, indicating you've already arrived. This will return to normal mode no matter what mode you're in.

• If the mode is not being shown, you can enable it (from normal mode) by typing a command. This command is “:set smd” (8 characters followed by the enter key).

• Note that as soon as you type the first character (:), the command is echoed on the last line of the display. There are a lot of these :-commands and they all do this. They're called ex-commands.

Insert Mode

• To get into insert mode, position the cursor where you want to do the inserting, and use an insert command ("i", "I", "A", "a", "o", and "O" are possible choices that I use a lot). See Add Text.

• This is the mode for adding stuff to a document, so you'll spend a lot of time here, particularly at the beginning.

• Because you can also do some other simple editing chores, beginners tend to stay here all the time, and not learn that there are good reasons to get back to "normal" mode. In plain gvim you might just forget that normal mode even exists, at least until you want to do some of the other stuff.

• If you're using plain vim, you'll need to get to normal mode just to do basic file operations. The way out is the "Escape" key, whose key cap usually reads "Esc" and is in the upper left corner of the keyboard, perhaps next to the function keys.

Normal Mode

• This is the mode where you enter most commands. This document is mostly about the commands you can use in normal mode.

• You get here from other modes by pressing the <Esc> key, usually in the far upper-left of your keyboard.

Quitting

• You can quit the current window with ":q", but if there are changes that have not been saved, it will not work.

• You can quit the current window and throw away unsaved changes with ":q!" (that's an excamation point).

• You can save changes and quit the current window with ":wq", or with "ZZ".

• If you have split the screen, these only close one window at a time.

Add Text

From normal mode, enter one of the following commands (just a single letter). Choose the command according to where you want the text to go, relative to the position of the cursor (which is usually sitting on one of the characters in your document.

The command will put you in insert mode, and allow you to type new text until you leave insert mode (by pressing <Esc>). To begin with, you may want to just learn the first two. I mostly use the "i" command. That works for me everywhere except at the end of a line. For that, I use "a" or "A". You can do everything with just "i" and "A".

• Before the cursor character: enter "i"

• After the cursor character: enter "a"

• At the beginning of the line (but after any beginning whitespace): enter "I"

• At the end of the line: enter "A"

• In a new line below the current line: enter "o"

• In a new line above the current line: enter "O"

Delete Text (small amounts)

From normal mode, enter one of the following commands. Choose the command according to how much text you want to delete:

• The character under the cursor: “x”

• The word after the cursor: “dw”

• Everything to the end of the line containing the cursor: “D” or “d$”

• The entire line containing the cursor: “dd”

Whatever you delete in this way is saved in a “cut register”, and can be put back in the document (see "Cut and Paste Text" below).

Delete Text (larger amounts)

Some of these commands can delete a lot of text. If it's too much, see the Oops topic.

• Multiple lines: enter a number before the “dd”. That's a line count.

• To the end of the file: “dG”

• To the beginning of the file: “d1G”

You'll notice the “d” keeps showing up.

Whatever you delete in this way is saved in a “cut register”, and can be put back in the document (see "Cut and Paste Text" below).

Oops.

• So you messed up. In normal mode, you can undo the last operation with the "u" command. If your vim is set to be “ompatible” with the older “vi”, that's all you can do. If not, there's pretty much unlimited undo capability.

• You can set the no-compatible mode (with unlimited undo" with the command ":set nc"<enter>. It's an ex-command, so it starts with a colon and echoes at the bottom of your window, and needs you to touch the key to execute it. It's better, though, to arrange that you always have compatibility off. More on that when we get to the startup files like .vimrc.

• You can also restore the current line to its original state with the "U" command. This will undo all the changes since the cursor last arrived at this line.

• If you undo too much, you can re-do with the "Control-R" command (usually written "^r").

Indent

These commands will work on multiple lines if you preceed them by a number.

• Add one “shiftwidth” of indentation to the current line: “>>”.

• Remove one &dlquo;shiftwidth” of indentation from the current line: “<<”.

• Add one “shiftwidth” of indentation to the rest of the document: &dlquo;>G”.

• Center the current line (assuming 80 columns total): ":ce 80<enter>".

Move the cursor (navigate through your document)

The cursor keys on the keyboard almost always work. The mouse may work if you're actually using gvim instead of vim. Power users can do more work faster without a mouse, but the choice of what to learn is up to you.

The commands below can all be used with the “d” command to delete all the text that the command moves over. This is why “d1G” deletes to the beginning of the file (line 1), and so on.

In addition, there are commands for moving larger distances than may be otherwise convenient.

• To line 1: “1G”

• To the last line “G”

• To the left margin: “0” (zero)

• To the beginning of the line: “^” (not control, just the shifted 6)

• To the end of the line: “$”

• To the top line of the screen: “H”

• To the middle of the screen: “M”

• To the last line of the screen: “L”

• To a specific line: <line number>”G”

• To a specific percentage of the file: enter a number and the “%” character, like “100%” for the end of the file.

• Forward (down) a screen-height: “^F”

• Back (up) a screen-height: “^B”

• Down (forward) half a screen-height: “^D”

• Up (back) half a screen-height: “^U”

• One character up, down, right or left: cursor keys

• One character left, down, up or right: the “hjkl” keys in that order. This is a holdover from an old character-based computer game named “rogue”.

• Right one word: “w”

• To a column by its number (#): “#|”

Copy and Paste Text

There is a “cut register” which can be used for cut-and-paste operations. There are actually 27 of these, but this will just talk about the default cut register.

You can put the contents of the “cut register” back into the document with the “p” and “P” commands. kk

• What you delete from the document is actually "cut" into the cut register.

• You can put it back into the document in another place by positioning the cursor and pasting it back:

  • Before the cursor (or the current line): “P”

  • After the cursor (or the current line): “p”

• You can copy text into the cut register (without deleting it from the document) with the "y" (yank) commands that work much like the "d" (delete) commands without actually deleting. For instance:

  • yy to yank the current line.

  • 12yy to yank the next 12 lines.

You can paste more than once to make multiple copies.

Work with Files

Very important. These are all ex-commands so they start with a colon. Like all ex-commands, you have to press <enter> before the command is executed.

• Save with the current name (if any): “:w”<enter>

• Save with a new name (but does not change the current name): “:w “<filename><enter>

• Start working with a different file: “:e “<filename><enter>

• Insert a file into the current document: “:r “<filename><enter>

Search for Text

• Search forward for text: “/”<text><enter> Like “/myvar” This will be shown on the bottom line

• Search backward for text: “?”<text><enter> Like “?myvar” This will be shown on the bottom line

• Search again: “n”

• Search again, backwards: “?”

• Find a particular character in the current line to the left of the cursor: “F”<char>

• Find a particular character in the current line to the right of the cursor: “f”<char>

• Find a character in the current line, but stop the cursor just before reaching it: “T” and “t”

Repeating Commands

You can put a number in front of most vim commands, and this will have some effect on the command. Examples:

• 44dd deletes 44 lines

• 12>> indents 12 lines

• >12j Indents 12 lines (here it's the “j” that repeats, so at the end, the cursor has moved down.

• Just for fun, try “80i=<esc>” to insert 80 “=” characters.

Split the Screen

You can split the screen horizontally, vertically, or both into parts called windows. These are mostly ex-commands, so they start with a colon (:) and require the <enter> key. Once they're open, you use normal-mode commands to manipulate the windows or switch among them. Here are the basics.

• :sp splits the current window (horizontally) so both windows are looking at the same file.

• :vsp splits the current window (vertically) so both windows are looking at the same file.

• :sp filename splits the current window (horizontally) so the new window is looking at filename.

• :vsp filename splits the current window (vertically) so the new window is looking at filename.

• ^w^w Cycle to the next window. This one is not an ex-command; it's two control-w characters.

• ^wp or ^w^p Cycle to the previous window.

• ^wo or ^w^o Close all but the current window (think "only").

• ^w+ Make the current window bigger.

• ^w- Make the current window smaller.

There are a LOT more ^w-commands. You can do just fine with these, however.

You write files and close parts of the screen with the same commands (:wq)(:w)(:q) that worked when the screen had only one part. They affect the part of the screen that the cursor is in. When the last one is closed, vim quits.