This post was authored by guest author Mark Sanborn. Find out more below.

When it comes to productivity I can’t think of any application that has saved more time and frustration than Vim. Vim is the ultimate productivity tool for programmers. Most users of Vim that I know that have spent the time to learn it absolutely love it and couldn’t imagine a world without it. My only regret with Vim is not learning it sooner.

So what is Vim?

Vim is a modal text editor that is highly configurable, efficient, and lightweight. Some people refer to it as the programmer’s text editor because it has a plethora of features that make programming easier, although it could be used for other things like writing email and editing config files.

What makes Vim especially great is the shortcuts, commands, and the blistering speed at which you can edit text files since Vim has all the common editing tasks mapped to single keys on or near the home row on your keyboard.

Sounds great… but there is a catch:

Vim isn’t an editor designed to hold its users’ hands. It is a tool, the use of which must be learned.

Easing the learning curve

Vim is known for having a steep learning curve. I think Vim has this reputation because people tend to want to learn all of the features right away and quickly become overwhelmed.

Vim is a lot like Adobe Photoshop, you can learn just a few simple techniques in Photoshop that can make a world of a difference in the images you can create and ways you can manipulate them. Yet it may take you a lifetime to master all the functions Photoshop has to offer. Vim is the same way. You can learn only a few shortcuts and commands that will completely change the way you do text editing but may take years to learn them all (not that you would need to).

The great thing about Vim is everyone uses it differently. I have my favorite shortcuts that I use every day. Someone else might have a different set they use depending on what types of files they generally edit. Once you learn a few basics and get comfortable with the shortcuts and commands that you use every day you can learn another to increase your productivity.

Getting Started

I suggest going through vimtutor once right now and again after you have played around with Vim for a while. You can access vimtutor by typing in the command, ‘vimtutor’ for Linux users and by running vimtutor.bat in your Vim folder for Windows users.

Vimtutor has all the commands and how to use them as well as practice sections for all your basic editing needs. Don’t worry if you don’t remember all the commands when going through the vimtutor for the first time; however, it is important to do the exercises at the end of each section so you can get used to the way Vim works. It should only take about a half hour to make it through your first run through the tutorial.

You might consider bookmarking this article for your reference and checking out vimtutor now.

Making Vim Work for You

After using Vim for a while now I have a good idea which commands I use most often when doing web development, programming, and configuration editing. We will use this experience to look at different ways Vim can improve your programming and make it faster while trying not to overwhelm you with too many new commands. Grab a few of these, use them, and add more when you feel comfortable.

Vim modes

In Vim there are three major modes:

• Insert mode is like the Windows ‘notepad’. Simply type and text will output to the screen.
• Command mode is where Vim really shines. This mode is usually called "normal mode" since you will be using this mode a lot. To get into Command mode just hit ‘Esc’. When in command mode almost all letters numbers and keys on the keyboard are now shortcuts. The keys, ‘hjkl’ in command mode are now your "arrow keys".
• Visual mode is where you can highlight text.

If you ever made a mistake and hit the wrong key you can use ‘Esc‘ to get back to normal mode.

Commands by function

Note: As with other *nix tools, these commands are case sensitive.
You can use these commands in conjunction with another command or repeated x number of times by adding a digit to the beginning. For example, ‘4dd‘ would delete 4 lines. ‘dw‘ would delete a word.

Here are some of the most common vim commands and their meanings:

Open and save:

‘:e path/to/filename‘ – With Vim running, this will open the file you specify. This command can also be used to open remote files over SSH.
‘:w‘ – Will save the current file
‘:q‘ – Exits Vim

You can also use these commands together:

‘:wq‘ – Writes to the file and exits Vim

If you want to quit without saving your changes you can do

‘:q!‘ – Quit without saving

Moving Around:

To move your cursor around with vim you will use:

h – left
j – down
k – up
l – right

These movement keys are all located on the home row. It will take a little getting used to but you will thank yourself for not using arrows or the mouse when you realize much time is wasted moving your hands. I even find myself trying to use these keys in other programs and get frustrated when they don’t work. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised when programs can be navigated with these keys.

Undo and Redo:

Of course you can’t have an editor without undo and redo.

u – undo the last change
U – undo all changes on that line. This is very useful when programming.
Ctrl + r – redo the last change

Copy and Paste:

You will probably find yourself wanting to copy and paste at some point. I will first explain how to copy and paste lines of text in the way that you are used to and then describe a few alternative ways.

To highlight the text you want to copy you will need to put Vim into visual mode. You can do this different ways.

v – go into visual mode and highlight with the Vim movement keys.
V – go into visual mode and highlight lines of text

Once you have the text highlighted you will then "yank" the text with the ‘y’ key.

y – yank (copy) text.

Once you have the text yanked (copied) you can "put" (paste) it with the ‘p’ key.

p – put/paste text.

So far Vim has failed to show any real improvements over the way you are probably used to copying and pasting text. y/p probably isn’t much faster than ctrl+c ctrl+v other than the fact that you don’t have to stretch your fingers to do it. Here are some improvements.

yy – copy current line. This is incredibly useful and fast when doing programming or any type of editing. When using this command in conjunction with, ‘p’ it will automatically add a line to make room. For example you can go to the desired line, hit ‘yy’ then ‘p’ and it will copy the line paste it below and move your cursor to the newly created line.

My most commonly used commands

Like I have said earlier Vim has more shortcuts than you would ever even want to know about but here are the golden ones. These are the commands that I use daily.

• ‘h,j,k,l‘ – The movement keys are essential
• ‘w,b‘ – move forward ‘w’ and backward ‘b’ one whole word.
• ‘dw‘ – delete a word
• ‘u,ctrl+r‘ – Undo and Redo are a must
• ‘dd‘ – This deletes the current line. I am constantly using this. It also puts the text into a buffer so you can put/paste it.
• ‘0,$‘ – The ’0′ will put you at the beginning of the line and ‘$’ will put you at the end.
• ‘i,a‘ – The ‘i’ will put you in insert mode at the cursor. ‘a’ will put you in insert mode after the cursor. Think of it like append.
• ‘:52‘ – This will put you at line 52. When you have errors in your program on line X use this command.
• ‘o,O‘ – The ‘o’ will create a line below and put you in insert. ‘O’ does the opposite. It creates a line above. This doesn’t really seem all that useful because you can always hit the enter key if you are at the end of the line but you are not always in insert mode or at the end of the line when you decide to make another line.
• ‘f,F‘ – This is one of my favorite commands. ‘f’ will search forward in the line for the next character you type and ‘F’ will search backwards.

For example, lets say you have the following line of code:

print LOG "StateProvinceCode: $StateProvinceCode\n";

You could hit the ‘f‘ key then the ‘\‘ key and the cursor would be positioned right near the ‘n’ so I could change this to a tab character instead of a newline character.

This doesn’t mean it will keep on searching, there is a different key for that.

‘/‘ – Search. This is the key to initiate a search. You can use regular expressions or do a simple word search.

Special commands for programmers

Syntax highlighting — If for some reason Vim isn’t highlighting code by default you can turn it on by typing, ‘:syntax on‘ or add it to your .vimrc config file.
‘=%‘ – Will auto tab nested ifs/loops/functions. Although Vim automatically tabs everything out for you, sometimes you will run into old code or poorly tabbed code where you want to fix it up real quick. Just go to the first ‘{‘ in the code and hit this command and everything will be auto tabbed.
‘gd‘ – Jump to variable definition. The g stands for go. There are multiple ways you can use ‘g‘, ‘gg‘ will go to the beginning of the file and ‘G’ will go to the end. In this case we are using ‘gd’ to go to the variable definition. For example, lets say you are about a mile down your code and you have a function that calls the variable, $someOldVariable. To find out what is inside this variable or where it was first created you would move your cursor to that variable and hit, ‘gd’ this would auto-magically move you to where that variable was first seen, AKA the variable definition.
‘%‘ – Go to matching () [] {}. Sometimes you will have a very long loop and a bunch of nested functions. If your tabbing isn’t the best it is sometimes tricky to find out which bracket belongs to which function. The ‘%‘ will move your cursor to the start or end of the matching bracket.
‘>> and >‘ – The double arrow, ‘>>‘ will shift the current line over one tab. If you highlight a region of text you can shift the entire text over with ‘>‘.

Conclusion

Although there are literally hundreds of shortcuts and commands for Vim you will be far ahead of the regular text editor with just these few. If you simply learned the commands in this article alone you would program/edit much faster and be more productive.

Remember: learn just the basics first. Open a text file or project source file and move around and learn how to save it. Learn how to undo-redo and basic editing in insert modes. To really get the hang of Vim you will need to spend about 5 hours messing around in the editor.