Vim Editor

WareLogging. TextBased. A feature-rich, post-minimalist implementation of ViEditor. Brennen's favorite text editor.

vim.org
VimExtensions
A cheat sheet: p1k3.com/2004/11/8/vimcheat.txt
An HTML-based improvement: p1k3.com/2004/11/11/vimcheat
The current version: VimCheatSheet.
Someone else's cheatsheet.
BramMoolenaar: Seven habits of effective text editing. There's a video of him giving a presentation on this somewhere.
VimAsShell
VimAndPerl

= ideas =

Can you mix syntax highlighting in a single file? Maybe. Here's a thought: How about something that recognizes filetypes in PerlLanguage (or others) HereDocuments and applies the right syntax? Like

print <<HTML; <p>Here is some HTML.</p>

<p>And stuff.</p> HTML

...turns out this works for PHP heredocs by default, I assume it'd be do-able for Perl.

= keys, commands, settings =

VimCheatSheet

Use tags. ctrl-] to follow a tag, ctrl-t moves backwards through the stack.
gU''motion'' - uppercase. gUw, for example.
:colorscheme <name> - use tab completion to cycle various schemes.
:%sort
grepping: * :grep -ri pattern ./ ** :copen
ctrl-v enters a visual mode that allows for selection of a rectangular block.
q: gives a command line history.
:%!''command'' feeds all text to an external command and returns the output. ** frex, :%!sort will sort all lines.
:set showcmd displays commands on the status line as you enter them.
:set showmatch & :set matchtime=1 will briefly bounce to the matching bracket whenever a new bracket is typed in.
vim has a file browser plugin now, which does sort of what you would expect - it lists the files in a directory, and when the cursor is over one, you hit enter to open it. What's cool is that if you hit ?, you get a set of extra commands - o will open a file in a new window, O in a window that's already open. i turns on size/date info, s toggles sorting, etc. Try doing :help file-explorer.

= record macros =

<Brennen> Tonight I was doing something stupid-repetitive to a text file - enclosing certain blocks but not others in HTML paragraph tags. It came to me that I ought to try vim's recording feature, rather than screwing around with writing a search and replace that would actually work. Turns out it's really simple to use. Just hit 'q', followed by the name of a register (0-9a-zA-Z), and then go about your business. Once you've finished with the string of commands you wanted to record, just hit q again. Then to execute them, do '@' followed by the name of the register you used.

Think of this as writing a miniature program on the fly. Since vi-style commands are built around a simple verb-object-number syntax, it's surprisingly elegant.

pick a name (required to comment or edit a page)
last edited November 10, 2008