The doctor from crates

Yet another quick reference for Vim text editor

Quit the Vim
What is Vim?
- History of Vim
- Vim Forks and Neovim
Creating a file
Vim modes
General
Moving around
Entering insert mode
Working more than one file
- using tabs
Repeating commands without repeating yourself
- repating more than one command by recording
Editing
- find and change
Some frequently used commands
Configure
Links
- sites
- books
- cheatsheets
Building Vim from source code

Quit the Vim

<esc> :q! <enter>

What is Vim?

Vim is a highly configurable text editor for fast and effective text editing.

Vim is not designed for hold users hand, it's a tools and must be learned how to use. Vim is not a word processor.

History of Vim¹

ed was the original Unix text editor. It was written at a time when video displays were uncommon. Source code was usually printed onto a roll of paper and edited on a teletype terminal. Commands entered at the terminal would be sent to a mainframe computer for processing, and the output from each command would be printed. In those days, the connection between a terminal and a mainframe was slow, so much so that a quick typist could outpace the network, entering commands faster than they could be sent for processing. In this context, it was vital that ed provide a terse syntax. Consider how p prints the current line, while %p prints the entire file. ed went through several generations of improvements, including em (dubbed the “editor for mortals”), en, and eventually ex.

By this time, video displays were more common. ex added a feature that turned the terminal screen into an interactive window that showed the contents of a file. Now it was possible to see changes as they were made in real time. The screen-editing mode was activated by entering the :visual command, or just :vi for short. And that is where the name vi comes from. Vim stands for vi improved. That’s an understatement—I can’t stand to use regular vi! Look up :h vi-differences for a list of Vim features that are unavailable in vi. Vim’s enhancements are essential, but it still owes much to its heritage. The constraints that guided the design of Vim’s ancestors have endowed us with a highly efficient command set that’s still valuable today.

Vim Forks and Neovim

Neovim is a fork of Vim and defines itself extension of Vim with the goal make easy for contribution.

Creating a file

$ vim <enter>
$ vim filename
$ vim directory/filename

Vim modes

Vim provides different modes to users for focus on content.

normal mode: vim starts with this mode. Esc is used for enter this mode. :h Normal-mode
insert mode: used for add text to editor, can be entered by one of insert commands :h Insert-mod`
replace mode: used for replace existing text by directly typing over it. :h Replace-mode
visual mode: used for select an area on text. Character-wise selection can be made by v, line-wise selection can be made by V, and block-wise with C-v
command mode: From the normal mode, can be entered by : and used for enter command. Example: :h ctrl-r <enter>

General

$ vimtutor          Official tutorial of Vim
:h user-manual
:h subject          help about the *subject*. Ex: `:h python` (Ctrl-] to click hyperlinks, and Ctrl-T to back)

:q                  quit
:w                  write
:saveas filename    save as
:wa                 write all the changes
:wa[!]              force Vim write all the changes
:wq                 write and quit
:x                  update and quit
:wqa                write quit all
:q!                 if file is changed and not supposed to saved, quit

u                undo example: 4u
C-r              redo (push Ctrl button then r)
U                Undo all line

s=seconds, m=minute, h=hour, d=day
:earlier #m     turn back # minute ago of the file Ex: :earlier 2m or :ea 3d
:later #m       turn back # minute later state of the file Ex: :later 7s  or  :lat 9h

y                yank, copy 
yy               yank all line
p                paste to below of cursor
P                Paste to above of the cursor
c                change, change the selected area
"<reg>y          copy selected area to regıster (a-z den register) 
"<reg>p          paste to register (a-z register) 
.                repeat latest command


:term    start a terminal session inside vim, more at `:h terminal`
:!<cmd>   execute <cmd> commands without leaving Vim Ex: `!g++ -wall -std=c++14 main.cpp`, `!ruby %`
:sh      go to shell, return by `exit`
C-z      send vim to background, return by fg

Moving around

:h motion
                                k
h        cursor left            ^
j        cursor down       h <     > l
l        cursor right           v
k        cursor up              j

0        beginning of line
$        end of line

w        jump to first character of next word
e        jump to last character of the currect word
b        jump to first character of the current word

H        jump to *top* of the screen
M        jump to *middle* of the screen
L        jump to *lower* of the screen

C-b      jump a full screen size up
C-f      jump a full screen size down
C-u      jump half screen size up
C-d      jump half screen size down

`:h scroll-cursor`

z<enter> redraw, cursor on the top of window, and put cursor at first non-blank in the line
zt       like above but leave the cursor in the same column

z-       redraw, cursor on the bottom of window, and put cursor at first non-blank in the line
zb       like above but leave the cursor in the same column

z.       redraw, cursor on the center of window, and put cursor at first non-blank in the line
zz       like above but leave the cursor in the same column

w        jump beginning of next word (punctuation considered as a word)
e        jump end of the word
ge       jump end of the previous word
b        jump begining of the previous word
^        jump to first non space character on line
gg       top of the file
G        bottom of the file
+        begining of the next line
-        beginning of the previous line

W        jump beginning of the next word (punctuation not considered words) Example:  e (abcd)    E (abcd)
E        jump end of the next word (punctuation not considerd as words) 
B        jump begining of the previous word
#G       go to line number #  Ex: 38G
#gg      same as #G

In more general^{2^:}

                gg
                 ?
                C-b
                 H
                 {
                 k
^ F T ( b ge h       l w e ) t f $
                 j
                 }
                 L
                C-f
                 /
                 G

Entering insert mode

                           /~~~~~~~~~~~~\
                           |command mode|
                           \~~~~~~~~~~~~/
                           |           |
                           ^ :/        v Esc Esc
                           |           |
 /~~~~~~~~~~~~\----Esc---->/~~~~~~~~~~~\<---Esc------/~~~~~~~~~~~\
 |replace mode|            |normal mode|             |insert mode|
 \~~~~~~~~~~~~/<----R------\~~~~~~~~~~~/--aAiIoOsS-->\~~~~~~~~~~~/
                           |           |
                           v vV        ^ Esc
                           |           |
                           /~~~~~~~~~~~\
                           |visual mode|
                           \~~~~~~~~~~~/

i        insert text before cursor
I        insert text to start of the line
a        append after cursor
A        append text to end of line
o        make newline below to current line and add text
O        make newline above to current line and add text
s        delete character under cursor and enter insert mode
S        delete all line and enter insert mode
cc       same as above
cw       change from cursor position to start of the next word

S-r      enters [replace mode](#replace-mode), change text in place

Working more than one file

:h usr_08.txt

C-ws       split current window horizontally (alternative :split)
C-wv       split current window vertically (alternative :vsplit)
C-ww       jump to next window

C-w h      jump from current window to window on the left
C-w j      jump from current window to window on below
C-w k      jump from current window to window on above
C-w l      jump from current window to window on left
C-w t      jump to top most left window
C-w b      jump to bottom most right window

C-wq       close current window
:close     same as above
:only      close windows other than current

C-w#<      resize current window to the left # of times (default 1)
C-w#>      resize current window to the right # of times (default 1)
:res #     resize horizontally splitted window # of times

:h window-moving
C-wH       move current window to the far left
C-wJ       move current window to the very bottom
C-wK       move current window to the very top
C-wL       move current window to the far right

$ vim -O2 f1.txt f2.txt   open Vim with `-O[N]` paramater, (N=2 here), vertically splitted f1.txt and f.txt  (more parameters `vim --help`)
$ vim -o2 f1.txt f2.txt   like above but horizontally splitted
$ vim -P2 f1.txt f2.txt   like above but on tab pages

$ vim f1.txt f2.txt f3.txt          open the files at one but show only one at a time (:next to next file and  :prev)

using tab pages

:tabedit filename   edit specified file in a new tab
:tabfind filename   open a new tab with filename given, searching the 'path' to find it

:tabn       next tab
:tabp       previous tab
:tabfirst   first tab
:tablast    last tab

:tabm {i}    move current tab to i+1 place

:tabclose i   close tab i
:tabclose     close current tab
:tabonly      close other tabs but current

:tabs         list tabs

Repeating commands without repeating yourself

operator [number] move or [number] operator move

c3w      or 3cw, cw cw cw
4j       jjjj 
2w       w w,  go to the begining of 2 next words
2dd      delete 2 lines

repating more than one command by recording

Recording more than 1 move would be greatly useful. Vim has 26 register(a-z), which can be considered 26 different clipboard!!!

start recording with q and choose a register to record on. Ex: qa
exit from recording with Esc.
apply what you record qith @ Ex: @a

q[a-z]   start recording
@[a-z]   apply record

Editing

x        delete the character under the cursor
X        delete the character before the cursor
dw       delete word from cursor position to start of the next word(punctuation considered as a word)
dW       delete Word from cursor position to start of the next word 
d^       delete from first non-whitespace character to end of line (inclusively)
d$       delete till end of the line
D        same as above
dd       delete all line
dib      delete content inside the paranthesis

r<c>     change the character under the cursor to <c>

*        find next word under cursor
f<c>     find character <c> from current cursor position inside the line
'.       jump to last edited line
g;       jump back to last editted position

:ab sth something         in insert mode, when written 'sth'<space> change it with 'something'

:g/^#/d  delete all the lines start with #
:g/^$/d  delete all the empty lines

find and change

:s/old/new      change first 'old' with 'new' on the current line
:s/old/new/g    change all 'old' with 'new' on the current line
:s/old/new/gc    change all 'old' with 'new' on the current line but before ask for permission

:#,#s/old/new/g   change all 'old' with 'new' between the lines # and #
:%s/old/new/g    change all 'old' with 'new' on the current file
:%s/old/new/gc    change all 'old' with 'new' on the current file but before ask for permission

Some frequently used commands

yyp     copy line and paste to below
yyP     copy line and paste to above
ddp     swap current line with the below
ea      add end of the word
xp      exchange two chacter  Ex: sometihng -> something
dgg     delete from current line to beginning of the file

Configure

dotfiles and .vimrc

:h vimrc-intro
:options

On Unix-like operating systems, most of system tools are C programs and some of these programs take arguments written in a file. Dotfiles, files with starts with ., gives these paramaters and define program behaviour on runtime. You can read interesting story of born this trend from here. Dotfiles are specially useful when you set up a new machine, it make you avoid to configure all the things from beginning. Keeping dotfiles in a version control system is a good practice, most of users share their dotfiles in public repos.

.bashrc, .profile, .vimrc are examples of dotfiles.

.vimrc file defines setting of Vim at runtime. There are a system .vimrc and user .vimrc in home directory of every user. The one on home directory override system .vimrc. If you don't have .vimrc file on your home, you can create by vim .vimrc. Look: default .vimrc içeriği

mapping

:help mapping

we can create shortcuts using mapping.

General formula:

map shortcut longCommands

we need to add mappings to .vimrc make them permanent.

there are 3 basic mappings for three modes:

to work in normal mode nmap
to work in insert mode imap
to work in visual mode xmap

nmap m <C-d>        "in normal mode: when typed m, ctrl-d (half page below) will be executed
imap jk <ESC>       "in inesert mode, when typed jk, pass to normal modee

Some special characters:

Karakter	Anlamı
`<Esc>`	Esc(ape)
`<CR>`	Enter
`<Enter>`	Enter
`<Tab>`	Tab
`<S-Tab>`	Shift + Tab
`<M-d>`	Alt + d
`<A-d>`	Alt + d
`<Space>`	Space
`<BS>`	Backspace
`<Del>`	Delete
`<S-p>`	Shift + p

:h key-notation

To check whether your mapping conflict other mappings:

:verbose map shortcut

Sometimes mappings conflict other mappings, so that defining your mappings as no-recursive is a good practice.

The example below demostrates such a case, the o goes one line below and enter insert mode. The expected 4 lines below and enter insert mode behaviour, end up with endless loop. The o will call 4o and it will call another 4o etc.

nmap o 4o

To make no-recursing mapping we add nore

for normal mode nnoremap
for insert mode inoremap
for visual mode vnoremap

The mapping below does what we expect, from normal mode, goes 4 lines below and enter insert mode:

nnoremap o 4o

we can specify mappings to filetypes:

autocmd FileType cpp nnoremap <f5> :w <bar> !clang++ -stdlib=libc++ -fsyntax-only -std=c++1z % <cr>
autocmd FileType d nnoremap <f8> :call DTest()<cr>
autocmd FileType text nnoremap <C-s> :w <cr>

leader variable

You can choose a variable as a leader and you can use it in mapping prefix.

let mapleader = "-"

I chose - character as a leader.

nnoremap <leader>ve :vsplit $MYVIMRC<cr>

Now when I want to edit the .vimrc, in normal mod, I can press -ve characters.

To see all the mappings:

:map

Adding plugin

The easiest way to adding plugin to Vim is make use of a plugin manager. There are several of them:

adding plugin with vim-plug

vim-plug is a plugin manager for Vim which allows you to add, update, remove plugins.

run the follong command:

$ curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

and than add your .vimrc to this:

call plug#begin()
" plugins
call plug#end()

Add the plugin you want to install between call plug#begin() and call plug#end() commands. Most of vim plugins host and maintain on Github.

For example, to add plugin on the link https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible you should put:

call plug#begin()
Plug 'https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible'
call plug#end()

call plug#begin()
Plug 'tpope/vim-sensible'
call plug#end()

and then invoke

:PlugInstall

command, that's it!

Creating your own plugin

:h plugin

You can write your own plugin! A Vim plugin is a program written in vimscript (VimL) language. Generally consist of following parts.

MyAwesomePlugin/
.
├── autoload   Autoloaded functions according to filetype
├── doc        Documantation file
├── ftdetect   File type detection
├── ftplugin   Plugin for a particular file type
├── plugin     Plugin file
├── syntax     Syntax highlighting
└── after     
└── indent    
└── compiler

Hello World plugin

Add the folder contain the plugin to runtimepath:

set runtimepath+=/path/to/helloworld

helloworld/
.
├── autoload
│   └── greet.vim
├── plugin
    └── greet.vim

" plugin/greet.vim
if exists('g:loaded_greet')
	finish
endif
let g:loaded_greet = 1

command! Greet call greet#hello_world()

" autoload/greet.vim
function! greet#hello_world() abort
	echo "Hello World!!"
endfunction

That's all :)) Try with :Greet on command mode.

An incomplete list of plugins

For newcomers

vim-sensible

Code completion and language client

List of language servers

Language Servers

Lint and syntax check

Snippet

Programming language

GUI-like

Theme and colors

Plugings for better user experience

Building Vim from source code

If you're using an Unix based operating system, Vi or Vim is probably preinstalled but Vim needs to some features that not enabled by default. To enable them you might need to build Vim from its source code.

Which features enabled by default is changing distro to distro, check out with:

:version

Download repo with Git:

$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vim/vim.git

$ cd vim

before start building, we need to do configure, this is the phrase you'll choose which features to enable.

./configure --help

These are the paramaters I use:

$ sudo ./configure --enable-fail-if-missing \
--disable-darwin \
--disable-smack \
--disable-selinux \
--enable-luainterp=yes \
--with-python3-command=python3interp \
--enable-python3interp=yes \
--with-python3-config-dir=/usr/lib/python3.5/config-3.5m-x86_64-linux-gnu \
--enable-cscope \
--disable-netbeans \
--enable-terminal \
--enable-autoservername \
--enable-multibyte \
--disable-rightleft \
--disable-arabic \
--disable-farsi \
--enable-fontset \
--enable-gui=no \
--enable-gtk2-check=no \
--enable-gtk3-check=no \
--enable-athena-check=no \
--enable-nextaw-check=no \
--enable-carbon-check=no \
--disable-gtktest \
--with-compiledby=p1v0t

yours might be different according to your need and be ready to search and install third-party libraries. After this step, the files build system need are generated, with GNU make build tool:

$ sudo make -j 8

The '-j' parameter says how many cores we dedicate to the build process. Generally the more cores used, the faster the build process, therefore the less time the build will take. At the end of this process, an executables will be created. To make them available as system command we need to copy them to appropriate directories (you need superuser permissions):

$ sudo make install

Don't delete the repo yet, in order to apply patches or experiment with the latest features by git pulling them. The subsequent build will be a lot faster, because make compiles only changed files.

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