vim cheat sheet

Keep this handy as you experiment with vim:

http://www.fprintf.net/vimCheatSheet.html

Here is another guide that covers the commands incrementally:

http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressively/

moving around - hjkl

In insert mode, the arrow keys do work, but you should practice not using them!

Instead, in command mode:

• h - moves left one character
• j - moves down one line
• k - moves up one line
• l - moves right one character

moving around - even more!

You can move all kinds of places quickly in command mode:

• ^ or 0 - move to the start of the current line
• $ - move to the end of the current line
• gg - jump to the beginning of the file
• G - jump to the end of the file

delete

There are so many ways to delete!

• x - delete the character under the cursor
• dd - delete the current line
• d$ or D - delete from the cursor to the end of the current line
• d0 or d^ - delete from the cursor to the start of the current line

You'll notice that we've already seen 0 and $ before! You can repurpose each of the moving around commands to delete text. These all work:

• dG - delete from the current position to the end of the file
• dgg - delete from the current position to the start of the file
• dj - delete the current line and the line below
• dk - delete the current line and the line above
• 2dd, 3dd etc - delete the next N lines

Even dl and dh work!

Remember that vim is a language!

searching

You can search for text using regular expressions.

• /PATTERN - search forward for PATTERN
• ?PATTERN - search backward for PATTERN

Press:

• n - jump to the next match
• N - jump to the previous match

PATTERN is a regular expression, but you can just treat it as an ordinary text match for the most part.

You can combine searching with deleting too:

• d/PATTERN - delete to the next match of PATTERN
• d?PATTERN - delete to the previous match of PATTERN
• dn - delete to the next already matched pattern
• dN - delete to the previous already matched pattern

jumping

You can also skip ahead to individual characters in a simple way on the current line:

• f + CHAR - search forward on the current line to CHAR
• t + CHAR - search forward on the current line to the character before CHAR
• F + CHAR - search backward on the current line to CHAR
• T + CHAR - search backward on the current line to the character after CHAR