03-basics.md

03: basics

Vim can teach you the basics also

Type vimtutor in your terminal or :h. The documentation is a good place to find out things vim can do that you didn't know it could.

But let's demo

cd demo-app && npm run serve to start the demo project.

Here's some vim commands we've used

Starting vim

• vim <file>...

Movement (Normal mode)

• <Esc>
• h
• j
• k
• l
• gg
• G and {line number}G

Quitting

• :q!
• :wq or :x

Editing

Deletion

• x
• dw
• d$
• dd

Insertion (Insert Mode)

• i and I
• a and A
• r and R
• o and O
• c and C

Operators and Motions

• d is an operator
• w, e, $, 0 are motions
• motions and operators take counts
  • e.g., 2w or 2dw or d2w
• %

Undo & Redo

• u
• U
• <C-r>

Copy & Paste (Yank & Put)

• some operators grab text into registers
• p
• y

Substitution

• :{range}s/{old}/{new}/{flags}
• g and c flags

Ranges

• :{line number},{line number}
• :%
• :'<,'>

External Commands

• :!{ext command}

Reading & Writing Files to & from Disk

• :w {file name}
• :r {file name}
• :r !{ext command}
• :w !{ext command}

Visual Mode

• v

I told you I would teach you over 10,000 commands

Vim is like a language. Operator/action followed by a motion or text object just like a sentence. Pro tip: always try to return to normal mode (hence the name).