1 Vim:Frequently Used Bits and Doodads
2 ====================================
3 :author: Aaron Ball
4 :email: nullspoon@iohq.net
5
6
7 == {doctitle}
8
9 I have a friend (yes, you Zeke) who is considering changing from a graphical
10 editor to a CLI editor, namely vim, for his web developement. His primary
11 hesitation though is the learning curve for vim, and rightfully so. Coming from
12 a GUI with menus to an environment you can't even exit unless you know what
13 you're doing already is pretty intimidating (or fun
14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY8jaGs7xJ0[if that's what you're into]).
15
16 I understand this well. When I first started in vim, I was quite taken
17 back by the tremendous amount of documentation. Lots of documentation
18 [hopefully] means lots of functionality. Lots of documentation is great
19 but if you don't know where to start, it doesn't do you
20 http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html[alot]
21 of good. Here I'm hoping to narrow things down a bit for you folks
22 thinking of learning vim.
23
24
25 [[two-modes]]
26 == Two Modes
27
28 Before we start anywhere else, you need to know that there are two modes for
29 vim: *command mode* and **insert mode**. Since vim is a command line editor, it
30 doesn't [technically] support a mouse (it kind of does, but we won't get into
31 that) which means all of your controls are keyboard-based. However, if you also
32 use the keyboard keys to write text, you're going to have a lot of conflicts -
33 hence two modes.
34
35 When you open a text file, you are first put in command mode. That means that
36 your whole keyboard won't insert text. Instead, it interprets all key presses
37 as commands. The first command you'll want is the letter __i__. This will put
38 you into insert mode. Once in insert mode, all key presses will insert text. To
39 get/escape out of insert mode, hit the escape key a la top left of yonder
40 http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Kybard[kybard].
41
42
43 [[frequently-used-features]]
44 == Frequently Used Features
45
46
47 [[find]]
48 === Find
49
50 Finding in vim is actually fairly simple. You just have to remember that it
51 searches in two directions: forwards and backwards. To search fowards in
52 thedocument from the present position of the cursor, type the following in
53 command mode
54
55 ----
56 /searchterm
57 -----
58
59 To search backwards in the document from the present position of the cursor,
60 type the following in command mode <pre>?searchterm</pre>
61
62
63 [[replace]]
64 === Replace
65
66 This one is pretty complex unfortunately. However, for those of you who like to
67 weild the power of the gods, find and replace in vim uses
68 http://www.regular-expressions.info/[regex].
69
70 I won't get heavily into this because this topic is so broad and can take so
71 much time to learn because of how robust it can be. You can actually put this
72 piece on your resume and you'll likely get quite a few bites.
73
74 A basic find and replace would perform a replace on the entire document. For
75 example, we want to replace the word _foo_ with __bar__. To do this, do the
76 following (actually type the : at the beginning of the expression):
77
78 ----
79 :%s/foo/bar/
80 ----
81
82 That will replace all instances of foo with bar from the beginning to the end
83 of the document (the % here means the whole file), unless there is more than
84 one instance of foo on a particular line. That will only replace the first
85 instance found on each line. To replace all for real this time, just append the
86 letter "g" for "global" (at least I think that's what it stands for).
87
88 ----
89 :%s/foo/bar/g
90 ----
91
92
93 [[code-folding]]
94 === Code Folding
95
96 Depending on the distribution of Linux you are using, code folding may or may
97 not be enabled already. To enable it however, you need to type exactly the
98 following command in command mode: +:set foldmethod=indent+. You could also put
99 that in your +\~/.vimrc+ file and it will enable it for all future vim
100 sessions. Next up, here's how you open and close folded code...
101
102 **za/A**: Toggles code folding. Capital A toggles all folds inside of the
103 currently selected fold.
104
105 **zc/C**: Closes the folded code. Capital C closes all folds inside of the
106 currently selected fold.
107
108 **zo/O**: Opens the folded code. Capital O opens all folds inside of the
109 currently selected fold.
110
111 **zr/R**: Opens the first level of folded code throughout the file. Capital R
112 will open all folds, including nested.
113
114 **zm/M**: Closes the first level of folded code throughout the file. Capital M
115 will close all folds, including nested.
116
117 I pretty much only every use zR (open all), zM (close all), and zA (toggle all
118 nested under currently selected).
119
120
121 [[syntax-highlighting]]
122 === Syntax Highlighting
123
124 Depending on what distro of Linux you use, syntax highlighting may or may not
125 be enabled for you by default. If it isn't already, there are two ways to turn
126 'er on.
127
128 When in command mode, type exactly (with the preceeding colon) <code>:syntax
129 on</code>. That should enable syntax highlighting for you. If it doesn't, it's
130 possible either the file you are editing doesn't have a known extension (eg:
131 .pl for Perl, .php for PHP, .cpp for C+\+, etc) or it doesn't start with a
132 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_%28Unix%29[shebang] that indicates what
133 the language is (eg: #!/usr/bin/perl).
134
135
136 [[line-numbers]]
137 === Line Numbers
138
139 I don't typically put this piece into my .vimrc file because I don't always
140 like to see line numbers, especially when I need to copy and paste code.
141 However, they do come in handy occasionally. For instance, when you're working
142 on a really big perl script and you want to know what line you are presently on
143 so when you close the file you can come back and hit ":742" and you're back
144 where you left off. To show or hide line numbers respectively, try the
145 following commands
146
147 .Turn on line numbers
148 ----
149 :set nu
150 ----
151
152 .Turn off line numbers
153 ----
154 :set nonu
155 ----
156
157
158 [[reading-in-the-output-of-a-command]]
159 === Reading in the Output of a Command
160
161 This is super handy for me very often. When I'm editing a file and I need to
162 put the the output of a command (typically data that I need) into my document
163 for further parsing, this really saves the day. Without this, I'd have to close
164 vim (or open a new terminal), then run the command and redirect the output to
165 append to the end of my file. If I need it somewhere else in the file though, I
166 then have to reopen the file in vim and and move the data around. Here's how we
167 can read in output from a command. For this example, we'll use the output of
168 __ifconfig -a__. Put the cursor where you want the data to go and then in
169 command mode, type
170
171 ----
172 :read !ifconfig -a
173 ----
174
175
176 [[visual-mode]]
177 === Visual Mode
178
179 This one is a real live saver. If any of you have used vi, you likely know the
180 wonders of this bit of functionality. For those of you who don't know, in old
181 vi, to make a change to more than one line, you had to perform the action and
182 tell vim to apply it to the current line and however many lines forwards. That
183 means that you have to count lines. If you're going to delete say, 87 lines,
184 that's a really big pain. With visual mode, we can highlight the lines we want
185 to modify (delete, shave some characters off the front, indent, unindent, etc)
186 and simply perform the action and it will be applied to all highlighted lines.
187
188 To do this, in command mode, hit <code>Shift+v</code> (or capital V for short).
189 Move the cursor up or down and you will see lines being highlighted. To delete
190 those lines, hit the _d_ key. To indent them, hit the _>_ key. To unindent, hit
191 the _<_ key. To copy/yank them, hit the _y_ key.
192
193 To escape visual mode without making changes, just hit the escape key.
194
195
196 [[an-awesome-cheatsheet]]
197 === An Awesome Cheatsheet
198
199 http://tnerual.eriogerg.free.fr/vimqrc.html
200
201 Category:Linux Category:Unix Category:Vim Category:Editors
202
203
204 // vim: set syntax=asciidoc:
|
