Resources

• vim official site
• Vim Doc
• wikia tips for featured tips
• A Byte of Vim, a wonderful book for beginners
• vim cook book
• Seven habits of effective text editing - read it often, inspiring video
• VIM tips - 15 Years of Vi + 5 years of Vim and still learning
• Quick Reference Card 1
• http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2006/11/vim-more-vim-tidbits.html
• http://www.unb.ca/documentation/UNIX/tips/vim/
• http://www.apmaths.uwo.ca/~xli/vim/vim_tutorial.html
• Dr. Chip’s DrawIt plugin

Useful plugins

snipmate ————— in .vimrc

autocmd FileType python set ft=python.django 
autocmd FileType html set ft=html.markdown.django_template 

不知道什么原因, 我的vim在编辑时HTML不能正确调用出snippets来, 我不得不再敲一遍

:set ft=html.markdown.django_template 

可是之后所有的syntax highlight又都没有了. 大概是filetype中有冲突, 可又找不出原因来.

Do it quick

Exit —— ZZ (two strokes) :wq (three strokes) :wqa (save all files and quit)

open files with read-only

• vi -R
• with vi editor, :view file
• reload the file: :e file or :vi file

Movement

scroll up & down

• CTRL-b and CTRL-f: one page Back/Forward
• CTRL-u and CTRL-d: half page Up/Down

Marks

• make a mark, you can use [a-z A-Z]: ma
• go to the beginning of the line of a mark: 'a
• go to the exact position of a mark: `a
• display marks: :marks

copy between two vi programs

The trick is to use clipboard register (“*).

• in the source file, mark the text need to copy with "*y
• in the destination file, "*p to paste the text, cool

insert/filter

• !motion command: e.g. !10G sort to sort current line to line 10
• !!ls: list all files under current folder and insert them into current position
• !!date: insert date/time stamp to current position

substitution/replace

:#,#s/old/new/g
Do a search and replace only between two line numbers. 

or 
:1,$s/old/new/g
to replace all instances

:% s/old/new/gc
Do a search and replace with prompts.

trim off the blanks at the end of line

:%s/\s*$//

把某个字符换成TAB

常见的是CSV中的’,’

%s/,/<TAB>/g

<TAB> 是真实的键,　可能会显示成^I

To display ,

:set list | nolist
or 
/\t
or 
hyh

completion

1. Whole lines

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-L

   this mataches the whole line

2. keywords in the current file

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-N

3. keywords in ‘dictionary’

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-K

4. keywords in ‘thesaurus’, thesaurus-style

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-T

5. keywords in the current and included files

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-I

6. tags	i_CTRL-X_CTRL-]

7. file names

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-F

8. definitions or macros

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-D

9. Vim command-line

   i_CTRL-X_CTRL-V

10. User defined completion

    i_CTRL-X_CTRL-U

11. omni completion

    i_CTRL-X_CTRL-O

12. Spelling suggestions

    i_CTRL-X_s

13. keywords in ‘complete’

    i_CTRL-N

encryption

You can add password protection to a file (note that it is rather weak).

vim -x your_file
enter encrption key:

digraph

• to enter a symbol: CTRL-Kxx
• show all digraphs: :digraphs

windows/buffers/files

A buffer contains a file content, marks, settings and other stuff.

• :next :previous :last :first
• :bn :bp :last :first
• CTRL-^ == :e #
• [count]CTRL-^ == :e #[count], switch to [count]th file in the list
• control window size:
  • [count]CTRL-W+ to increase windows by one line
  • [count]CTRL-W- to decrease windows by one line
  • CTRL-W= to make all windows equal size

Show ASCII code

:ascii or ga to show the encoding of current charactor under the cursor, for Chinese, show the double-byte value.

Settings

• for i_CTRL-X_CTRL-K: set dictibnary=/usr/share/dict/words,file1,file2 ...
• set complete=k/your_file (# k is for key in dictionary)
• CTRL-L: redraw the screen
• CTRL-S: stop the output, CTRL-Q to resume

Autocommands

• autocmd group events file_pattern nested command
• list all autocommands: :autocmd
• remove autocommand: :autocmd! [group event pattern nested command]

Convention

• Control Key: CTRL-