Terminally Incoherent

Today’s post is not really a post. It is an attempt to create a workable Vim cheat-sheet. I know that there hundreds vi/vim chat-sheets online, some better than other but naturally none of them is complete and includes all the commands that I care about.

By far the most popular sheet is probably this one which actually hangs over my desk. It is a very good one and I use it all the time to remind myself certain key-strokes. Still, it is not very comprehensive since you just can’t physically fit all the useful key-strokes in that format. I decided to organize mine into sections rather typographical groupings. The result is below.

Please note that I skipped the obvious stuff like ‘hjkl’ and some of the advanced stuff like marking, folding, and register operations. That’s because I don’t really use these commands that often, and furthermore a lot of Vi emulators (like the one in Komodo Edit) do not support them.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to add your favorite commands and/or indispensable shortcuts which I have omitted. And yes, I omitted a lot here. There are just to many things to list – this is why I’m relying on you guys!

Movements

w – next word
W – next white space delimited word
b – previous word
B – previous space delimited word
e – end of word
E – end of white space delimited word
0 or ^ – to the physical beginning of the line
$ – to the physical end of the line (ie. the newline char)
g0 – to the beginning of the virtual screen line
gm – to the middle of virtual screen line
g$ – to the end of the virtual screen line
gk – up screen line
gj – down screen line
fchar – till the next occurrence of character ‘char’ (inclusive)
Fchar – till the previous occurrence of character ‘char’ (inclusive)
tchar – till the previous occurrence of character ‘char’ (exclusive)
Tchar – till the previous occurrence of character ‘char’ (exclusive)
G – end of file
gg – start of file
gd – go to the definition (first occurrence of the word under cursor)
{} – begging/end of paragraph
() – begging/end of sentence
[{ ]} – beginning/end of a code block
[[ ]] – beginning/end of a method
[* ]* – beginning/end of a comment block
% – find next open block char ({[ and jump to it's matching close char
'. - go to the line with the latest change
* - search to the next occurrence of the word under cursor
# - search to previous occurrence of the word under cursor
/pattern - search to next occurrence of "pattern"
?pattern - search to previous occurrence of "pattern"
n - repeat last search (*,#,/,?) forward
N - repeat last search (*,#,/,?) backward

In the examples below I indicate a movement specified above as mov

Entering Insertion Mode

i - insert at the cursor
I - insert at the beginning of the line
gI - insert in column 1 of the line
a - append after the cursor
A - append at the end of the line
o - open a blank line below cursor
O - open a blank line above cursor
r - replace character under cursor and exit insert mode
R - insert at the cursor in overstrike mode
cmov - delete (change) movement and enter insert mode
cc - replace entire line
C - delete (change) line and enter insert mode
s - delete character under cursor and enter insert mode
S - delete line under cursor and enter insert mode

Deleting

x - delete char under cursor
X - delete char before cursor
dmov - delete range of movement m
dd - delete current line (text moves up)
D - delete to the end of line
J - join the line below to the current
gJ - append the line below to the end of current line

Block Modifiers

When dealing with blocks of text delimited by parentheses (), brackets [], braces {} or <> you can apply the command to either the contents of the block or the whole thing by following it with:

iblk – inner block (everything inside braces, parenthesis etc..)
ablk – all (whole parenthesized block)

Where ‘blk’ is ), ], } or >

Copy/Paste

yy – copy current line
ymov – copy movement m
p – paste after cursor
P – paste before cursor
vipy – visual interior paragraph yank – copy the current paragraph

Visual Mode
v – enter visual mode highlighting 1 char at a time
V – enter visual mode highlighting 1 line at a time
Ctrl+V – enter visual block mode
aw – highlight word
as – highlight sentence
ap – highlight paragraph
ab – highlight a parenthesized block
aB – highlight a {} blocks
ib – highlight contents of a parenthesized block
iB – highlight contents of a {} block

Special

< > – indent left/right
. – repeat last command
u – undo last command
U – undo all changes on the current line
Ctrl+R – redo last undo
Ctrl+O – jump outwards (up-back) to the previous cursor position
Ctrl+I – jump inwards (down-forward) to the previous cursor position

Completion

Ctrl+X – enter completion mode
Ctrl+N – auto complete word in insert and completion mode
Ctrl+P – auto complete word in insert and completion mode
Ctrl+L – auto complete whole line in completion mode
Ctrl+K – dictionary completion in completion mode
Ctrl+F – filename completion in completion mode

Useful Tricks

g~mov – toggle uppercase/lowercase on the range of ‘mov’
gumov – lowercase the range of ‘mov’
guu – lowercase the current line
gUmov – uppercase the range of ‘mov’
gUU – upercase the whole line
g?mov – rot13 on the range of ‘mov’

Regexp Replace

:ranges/foo/bar/arg – replace foo with bar in ‘range’ with

Values of ‘range’:

% – whole file
number – that particular line
none – apply to current line only

Values of ‘arg’:

none – apply to first occurrence
g – global (all occurrences)
i – ignore case
I – don’t ignore case
c – confirm each substitution
p – print the last line containing substitution
e – ignore errors

Macros

qchar – start recording macro storing it in register ‘char’
q – end recording
@char – replay the macro stored in ‘char’

That’s all I have for now. I will update this page with any useful suggestions. If we have enough perhaps I will take this, re-format it nicely and generate some sort of nice looking single sheet PDF that you could hang in your cube or above your fireplace or whatnot.