Usefull keys and sequences
Insert Text
a append right to the cursor A append right to the line ea append at end of word i insert left to the cursor I insert at beginning of line s substitute character S substitute line o insert line below cursor O insert line above cursor
Moving the cursor
H to beginning of page M to middle of page L to end of page gg to the beginning of the document G to the end of the document $ to the end of the line 0 to the geginning of line ^ to the beginning of line (first non space char) h left (one character) l right (one character) j one line down k one line up 4k four lines up 13G instantly to line 13 w to beginning of next word e to end of next word b to beginning of previous word 3w to the beginning of the next third word <C - e> move screen one line up <C - y> move screen one line down
Deleting
x character right to the cursor
X character left to the cursor
diw the current word where the cursor is over
dd the current line (where the cursor is)
ggdG the whole document (you can also use :%d)
3dd the next three lines (incl. the cursors line)
dgg all lines from cursor to the documents beginning
dG all Lines from the cursor to the documents end
dw from cursor to end of word
d3w from cursor the next three words
di" inside "", you can also use di' di( di{ di[ to delete inside
dit all content inside two tags like <b> blabla</b>
dtX from cursor to next X (excluding X)
dfX from cursor to next X (including X)
dTX from cursor to previous X (excluding X)
dFX from cursor to previous X (including X)
cit delete inside tags and write immediately something
Marking, Copy and paste
* highlight all words, like that under the cursor
V visually mark the whole current line
viw visually mark word under cursor
p paste what has been copied before
4p paste what has been copied before 4 times
yy copy whole line where the cursor is
Y copy whole line where the cursor is
3Y copy three lines, from the line where the cursor is
yiw copy word under cursor
yi" copy text between ". Works for (, [, {, ', < too
ya" copy text between ", including the ".
Works for (, [, {, ', < too
Search and replace
replace all foo with bar (% = in all lines, s=substitute) :%s/foo/bar/g replace all foo with bar (c = ask for confirmation before) :%s/foo/bar/gc list the number of the occurence of searchterm :%s/searchstring//gn replace lines start with 123 with aaa, from line 10 to 25aaa :10,25 s/^123/aaa/g my/old with my/new. To avoid masking specialcharacters use: s:my/old:my/new/g :% s/my\/old/my\/new/g remove all leading spaces in all lines :%le delete everithing before the pattern http :s/^.*\(FOO\)/\1/
Working with files
:ls list all buffers (files) currently open
:bnext goto next buffer
:bprevious goto previous buffer
:buffer X jump to buffer X (get buffer-number with :ls command)
Working with windows and Tabs
<C – w>s splits the current window horizontally
<C – w>v splits the current window verically
<C – w>c close the current window
<C – w>w walk through the windows
<C – w>= fit all windows to the same size
<C -w>T moves the current window into a new Tab
:tabnew create a new tab
:tabclose closes the current tab
gt goto next tab
:tabnext goto next tab
gT goto previous tab
:tabprevious goto previous tab
:map <F5> gt map „goto next tab“ to the F5 key
Sorting and manipulating the contents structure
:sort sort all lines alphabetically :sort u sort all lines alphabetically and remove duplicates ggVGu lowercase whole Text
Shortkeys
fe go to next letter "e" in the current line Fe go to pevious letter "e" in current line ; go to next occurence of what you found with t/T/f/F :h f show the vim internal help for f <C-a> increase a marked number <C-x> decrease a marked number J hang next line to the end of current line
Settings
show all visible characters like spaces, tabs, line breaks / hide all visible characters
set list set nolist
Enable / Disable syntax highlighting
syntax on syntax off
Enabling current row and column highlighting
set cursorline set cursorcolumn
Enabling relative line numbering (cursor is always at zero)
set relativenumber
Indentation in vi
you want to mark something in visual mode, and indent the selected part several times to the left or the right?
First, you add these lines to your .vimrc
vnoremap < <gv vnoremap > >gv
Now you can visually select a text passage (press v move the arrow keys), afterward, indent it to the left by pressing < or indent it to the right by pressing >