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This is an overview of features of vim that I find are useful. I do not describe them in detail. This has already
been made (and much better than I could do so) in the help files that come with vim.
Support for Sessions
:mksession mySession
| Store a session into the file mySession, so It can be used the next day.
| :so mySession
| Load (source) yesterday's session.
| vim -S mySession
| alternative way to source mySession
| :set sessionoptions
| What needs to be stored with :mksession and what doesn't |
Support for Views
:mkview myView
| Store the currentview into file mySession
| :mkview
| Have vim determine the file (use :loadview when file re-opened)
| :mkview 4
| Store up to 9 configurations per file
| :so myView
| Get the view stored with :mkview myView |
Editing
Maps
Maps are a powerful features that recognizes specific sequences of keys and does something that
would require more key presses. For example, I might define a map that is just rn and whenever
type rn, it is expanded to my email adress.
hasmapto
| Check if a specific map already exists |
Tabulators
expandtab
| Fills spaces when using the tabulator
| :set listchars=tab:<-
| Shows tabs as <- when using :list
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Setting options
More detailled help with :help options.txt. Get a table with a quick explanation on each option with :help Q_op.
Globally
Per File type basis
:augroup
| Tell me what autocommand groups exist
| :filetype on
| Enables file type detection, by reading $VIMRUNTIME/filetype.vim.
This file defines many, many autocommands,
for example au BufNewFile,BufRead *.pl setf perl |
Setting Options for a particular File
It's possible to set options for a specific file by including a line at the beginning of that
file like this: // vim: shiftwidth: 44. When the file containing such a line is opened, the
shiftwidth for that file is set to 44. Note that only set commands are allowed in order to
prevent trojan horses.
:set modeline
| Enable the feature, don't forget :set modelines=xxx
| :set modelines=5
| Check the first five lines in a file for vim: |
Searching
:set incsearch
| Search incrementally
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Initialization
gvim -u NONE -U NONE foo.txt | Don't read no stinky .vimrc, .gvimrc , and plugin files |
Scripts
function! Name() | Defines a function, function's first letter must be capitalized, end function with endfunction |
exe "normal iString" | Prepend typing in Normal Mode |
exe "%s/X/Y/" | Substituting in a function |
Variables
let i=input('foo')
| Ask for foo, assign to i |
Miscallany
:set ff=unix,dos | Fileformat (end of line) |
:set ffs=unix | file formats |
:set lazyredraw | Useful for macros: the screen will not be redrawn if a macro is running. |
ctrl-f | If pressed in command mode: pops up a window to edit the history |
Numbering
| :g/^/exec "s/^/".line(".") | Replacing start of line with line number |
Built in functions
expand()
| Expands file names (for example expand("*.txt"). There are also modifiers that allow to extract parts of file names. expand("%:e") gives
the extension of the file currently edited. Getting the name under the cursor:
expand("<cfile>")
| strpart() | Getting substrings |
line(".") | Return current line number |
col(".") | Return current column |
String Operations
By no means is this an exhuaustive list of string functions. I merly want to to have the ones
that are not necessarly clear if coming from another language.
==? ==# =~ !~
| Equal ignoring case, really equal, regex match, regex fail
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The global command
The following global command deletes 10 lines before a line containing My search strin.
:g/My search string/-10,.d
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