Missing Semester 03 - Editors (Vim)

Vim's interface is a programming language 🤯.

• 📹 YouTube Link

• ✏️ Official Notes

Vim Modes

• Normal: for moving around a file and making edits (Esc)
• Insert: for inserting text (i)
• Replace: for replacing text (R)
• Visual (plain v, line V, or block ctrl+v): for selecting blocks of text
• Command-line: for running a command (:)

Some Vim Vocabulary

• a buffer: a set of open files (A given buffer may be open in multiple windows, even within the same tab)
• a session: A Vim session has a number of tabs, each of which has a number of windows (split panes)
• a tab: each tab has a number of windows
• a window: a view (each window shows a single buffer)

Command Mode

• :q close the current window
• :qa close all windows (quit Vim)
• :q! close and discard any changes you've made (force-quit)
• :w save
• :wq save and quit
• :help [topic] open help (:help :w opens help for the :w command)
• :e [name of file] open file for editing
• :ls show open buffers

Movement (normal mode)

• Basic movement: hjkl (left, down, up, right)
• Words: w (next word), b (beginning of word), e (end of word)
• Lines: 0 (beginning of line), ^ (first non-blank character), $ (end of line)
• Screen: H (top of screen), M (middle of screen), L (bottom of screen)
• Scroll: Ctrl+u (up), Ctrl+d (down)
• File: gg (beginning of file), G (end of file)
• Find: f[character], t[character], F[character], T[character] (Find and To)
  • find/to forward/backward [character] on the current line
  • , / ; for navigating matches
• % (find the corresponding item - brackets, quotation marks etc)
• search: /[regex], n / N for navigating matches

Editing (insert mode)

• o / O insert line below / above
• d[motion] delete [motion]
  • e.g. dw is delete word, d$ is delete to end of line, d0 is delete to beginning of line
  • dd deletes the whole line
• `c[motion] change [motion] (similar to delete, but puts you in insert mode)
  • e.g. cw is change word
• x delete character (equal do dl)
• r[character] replaces the current character with the one you typed
• u to undo, ctrl+r to redo
• y to copy / “yank”
• p to paste
• ~ flips the case of a character (or selection)

Selection (visual mode)

• do motion action and select everything in between
• in Visual Line mode (V) you'll be selecting by lines at the time
• in Visual Block mode (ctrl+v) you'll be selecting by rectangular blocks

Counts

To perform a given action a number of times.

• 3w move 3 words forward
• 5j move 5 lines down
• 7dw delete 7 words

Modifiers

Particularly useful for changing stuff inside/around brackets, quotes.

• i, “inside”, and a, “around”.
• ci( change the contents inside the current pair of parentheses
• ci[ change the contents inside the current pair of square brackets
• da' delete a single-quoted string, including the surrounding single quotes