Vim for dummies 😎

This a set of important commands and notes about vim made by Greisy Guzman and Fabian Pernia. This info could be useful for those who want to know more about this text editor.

Note: whenever you have any questions about any command in vim use :help {command-name}. Additionally, for any shortcut notation please refer to :help key-notation.

Commands

Basic functions

Modes

Name	Trigger key
Normal	ESC
Insertion	i
Visual	v

Save or exit

Command	Description
:w	Save changes
:wq	Save and quit
:q	Quit the current window
:q!	Quit without writing
:ZQ	Quit without checking for changes
:ZZ	Write current file, if modified, and quit
:x	Like :wq, but write only when changes have been made

Move functions

Note: default [count] is 1

Moving the cursor

Key	Direction
[count]H	[count] times to the left
[count]J	[count] times down
[count]K	[count] times up
[count]L	[count] times to the right

Moving through the file

Key	Moves to
0	First character of the line
$	End of the current line
gg	First line on the first non-blank character
G	Last line on the first non-blank character

Moving in a line

Key	Decription
[count]w	count words forward (punctuation considered words)
[count]W	count words forward (spaces separate words)
[count]e	count words forward (punctuation considered words)
[count]E	count words forward (no punctuation)
[count]b	count words backward (*)
[count]B	count WORDS backward (*)

(*) Note:

Like most of the capitalized movement pairs, b moves by word, but B moves by WORD. The difference is that vim considers a "word" to be letters, numbers, and underscores (and you can configure this with the iskeyword setting), but a "WORD" is always anything that isn't whitespace.

for more info about this, click here

Important

Key or Command	Action
u	Undo
Ctrl+r	Redo
.	Repeat the last change
:set number	See line numbers

Inserting / Appending text

Name	Trigger key
i	Insert text before the current cursor position
a	Append text following current cursor position
o	Open up a new line following the current line and add text there

Editing a file

Operator	Description	Motion
d	Delete the following command	w, $, d, j, 3j
c	Change/Cut -delete and enter in insert mode	w, <character>, e, b
p	Put or paste
y	Yank or copy	w, e, b
<>	Indent	$, 2j, 1k

Command bonus

Tabs

Command	Decription
vim -p <file1> <file2>...	Open more than one file at startup
:tabnew <filename>	Open a new tab
:tab f <path>	Open a new tab page and edit {file} in <path>
:tabn	Go to the next tab page. Wraps around from the last to the first one
:tabp	Go to the previous tab page. Wraps around from the first one to the last one
:tabfirst	Go to the first tab page
:tablast	Go to the last tab page
:tabclose [count]	Close current tab page or the one pointed by [count]. It fails if there is only one tab page on the screen)
:tabonly	Close all other tab pages
:tabs	List the tab pages and the windows they contain
:wqa	Write all changed buffers and exit Vim

Inner

The following commands are avaiable in visual mode

Command	Decription
iw	Inner word
it	Open a new tab
i"	Inner quotes
i[	Inner brackets
ip	Inner paragraphs

Plugins

You can find any number of plugin just searching on google, but there is an interesting web page called Vim Awesome where you can search and find almost any kind of plugin you can imagine for vim, including examples and direct references related to the docs, the stats and the current state (deprecated/up-to-date).

Note: We're using Plug as our plugin manager

Configuration file

Feel free to download and use (and modify if you want) the .vimrc file we provide on this repository, which was the reference to make our presentation.

Thanks for your interest! ❤️