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Esoteric vim

Jan 01, 20247 min read

I think I know vim pretty well. I’m at the stage where I’m the crusty old man complaining that most vim emulators (like the VSCode vim-plugin) don’t have support for the expression register or using i_CTRL-X_CTRL-F to autocomplete file names.

I figured I’d write up some of the more esoteric vim/neovim features that I use on a regular basis, since these have a high impact on my workflow but I don’t see them on most “top vim commands” lists. If you don’t know vim, I’d recommend typing vimtutor into any terminal, going until you get bored, and then coming back here.

NOTE: I’m going to make each trick a heading, so you/I can link to it

ctrl-z and fg

This isn’t technically a vim command, it’s just a plain shell send-to-background keystroke. But I use it so, so, much. ctrl-z will send vim to the background. Faster than quitting and reopening vim, no lost context, handy for working in the terminal (it’s painful using :! for anything semi serious)

(f or F or t or T) then ; then .

First jump to a letter (with f or F or t or T) and do some action. Then repeat the jump with ; and repeat the action with . Now spam them like ;.;.;.;. (the ; and . keys are close together on a QWERTY keyboard, making this nice and fast) And now you’ve done your operation on the entire line without thinking about vim-style regex. For example, If I’ve got this line:

struct.member = struct.othermember + struct.foo - struct.bar;

And I want it to become

struct->member = struct->othermember + struct->foo - struct->bar;

I could use a regex on that line

'<,'>s/\./->/g

But I’ve got to remember to escape the . and generally vim’s regex doesn’t roll off the tongue. But I could also do this:

0f.s->^[;.;.;.

Which can be explained like:

0     go to the start of the line
f.    go forward, until the cursor is over the first `.`
s     delete the character under the cursor and enter insert mode (AKA substitute)
->    enter the literal characters `->`
^[    escape from insert mode to command mode
;     repeat the last fFtT command (in this case, go to the next `.`)
.     repeat the last "action" (in this case, substitute `.`  with `->`
;.;.  go to next `.`, substitute with `->`, repeat

And lets you stay “in vim mode” instead of having to recall vim’s regex, you can just use regular vim commands to do what you want. Using fFtT;. is like baby’s first macro.

Capital-letter macros

Macros are obviously a big one, but “recording” to a capital letter macro (like qQ instead of qq) will append whatever actions you perform to the macro (in this case, the q macro). Super nice for quickly adding something you forgot, or monkey patching a badly recorded macro.

Special registers "" and "%

Special registers are handy. Use CTRL-r to insert the value of a register.

  • "" Contains your last yank
  • "% is the filename. So CTRL-r% in insert mode will fill out the name of whatever file you’re editing.

Expression register "=

The calculator/expression register ”= is also really good. Use CTRL-r in insert mode to get a simple calculator, but if you have an expression visually selected then the following will evaluate the expression:

cCTRL-r=CTRL-r"CTRL-j

Insert mode commands

Insert mode command are very nice:

  • CTRL-h to backspace (keeps your fingers on the home row)
  • CTRL-j or CTRL-m for a newline (keeps your fingers on the home row)
  • CTRL-w to delete the word (faster than tapping backspace a bunch)
  • CTRL-u to delete the line (faster than tapping backspace a bunch)
  • CTRL-k for mnemonics of funky characters. For example, CTRL-k:e gives you ë, CTRL-k12 gives you ½, and a lot more which are all very intuitive. Most times I just mash various two-character combinations to get what I want, like +- for ± or p* for π. See :digraphs for a list of examples
  • CTRL-x CTRL-f to autocomplete a filename in the current working directory

See :h ins-special-keys for lots more

Remapping CAPS LOCK to CTRL at the OS level

Remapping caps lock to control at the OS level makes a lot of sense, for all shortcuts on your computer, and it means you can very easily exit out of insert mode with caps lock + [ (keeping your fingers on the home row).

CTRL-a and CTRL-x

Using CTRL-a and CTRL-x to increment/decrement a number is useful, but even more so when paired with gCTRL-a and gCTRL-x, which (when used over a visual selection) will increment the first line by 1, the second by 2, etc. Making it really easy to get a numbered list.

Faster macro invocation

On macOS I’ve got alt+character nnoremap’ed to the @ character. So typing alt-r is the same as @r, with the difference being that alt-r is slightly more ergonomic:

" Remap the ALT key so that it is used to trigger macros. For example, ALT-q is
" equivalent to @q in normal mode. This requires some finagling because in
" MacOS, ALT-q sends the character "œ" and not a literal ALT and then a literal
" q.
" In iTerm2, you'll need to adjust the settings in profiles>keys>general>left
" option key so that iTerm2 sends a literal ALT.
"
" normal key: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
" alt+key:    å ∫ ç ∂ ´ ƒ © ˙ ˆ ∆ ˚ ¬ µ ˜ ø π œ ® ß † ¨ √ ∑ ≈ \ Ω
nnoremap å @a
nnoremap ∫ @b
nnoremap ç @c
nnoremap ∂ @d
nnoremap ´ @e
nnoremap ƒ @f
nnoremap © @g
nnoremap ˙ @h
nnoremap ˆ @i
nnoremap ∆ @j
nnoremap ˚ @k
nnoremap ¬ @l
nnoremap µ @m
nnoremap ˜ @n
nnoremap ø @o
nnoremap π @p
nnoremap œ @q
nnoremap ® @r
nnoremap ß @s
nnoremap † @t
nnoremap ¨ @u
nnoremap √ @v
nnoremap ∑ @w
nnoremap ≈ @x
nnoremap \ @y
nnoremap Ω @z

Various g commands

  • gf open file under your cursor in vim.
  • gx open URL under your cursor in browser.
  • g& repeat last :s command for entire file.
  • g*/g# like */# but without \< \>.
  • ge opposite of e, go backwards through the last character of each word.
  • gv select whatever your previous selection was (useful after pasting something).
  • gCTRL-g get a word count for the current file, something like: 
    Col 67 of 67; Line 182 of 195; Word 1120 of 1168; Char 6259 of 6611; Byte 6328 of 6680

See :help g

:cq

:cq is useful when writing a commit message in git (ie after git commit)

It will exit without saving and return a non-zero error code, causing git to abort the commit.

Using your terminal :!

You can also pipe commands between vim and the shell. So if you’ve got some text:

a,b,c,d
123,312,513,543
23,3121312,53,543
123,32,513,53
123,312,53,53

And you want to align all the values into a table, you can visually select the lines and then type :!column -t -s, (-t will create a table, -s, will use , as the separator):

a    b        c    d
123  312      513  543
23   3121312  53   543
123  32       513  53
123  312      53   53

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