Let’s learn the top 20 best Linux Vim commands that you must know to gain amazing levels of productivity. Remember, the VIM text editor has a pretty steep learning curve. But once you put in the time to get used to the commands, you will attain unmatched productivity in your day-to-day tasks that require working with text (perfect text-editor. Vim is a modal text editor, which means that it has a mode for writing text, a mode for running commands, etc. Vim has a total of 12 different editing modes. The three main modes are.
spf13 presents
spf13-vim is a distribution of vim plugins and resources for Vim, GVim and MacVim.
It is a completely cross platform distribution that stays true to the feel of vim while providing modern features like a plugin management system, autocomplete, tags and tons more.
- Featured Plugins
- Other Awesome stuff
- Community
Easy Installation *nix and os x
The easiest way to install spf13-vim is to use our automatic installer by simply copying and pasting the following line into a terminal. This will install spf13-vim and backup your existing vim configuration.
If you are upgrading from a prior version (before 3.0) this is also the recommended installation.
Updating to the latest version
Installing on Windows
On Windows and *nix Git and Curl are required.
Installing dependencies
Install msysgit
After installation try running git --version within command prompt (press Win-R, type cmd, press Enter) to make sure all good:
Setup Curl
Instructions blatently copied from vundle readmeInstalling Curl on Windows is easy as Curl is bundled with msysgit!But before it can be used with Vundle it's required make curl run in command prompt.The easiest way is to create curl.cmd with this content
And copy it to C:Program FilesGitcmdcurl.cmd, assuming msysgit was installed to c:Program FilesGit
to verify all good, run:
Installing spf13-vim on Windows
The easiest way is to download and run the spf13-vim-windows-install.cmd file.
The .vimrc file is suited to programming. It is extremely well organized and folds in sections. Each section is labeled and each option is commented.
It fixes many of the inconveniences of vanilla vim including
- A single config can be used across Windows, Mac and linux
- Eliminates swap and backup files from littering directories, preferring to store in a central location.
- Fixes common typos like :W, :Q, etc
- Setup a solid set of settings for Formatting (change to meet your needs)
- Setup the interface to take advantage of vim's features including
- omnicomplete
- line numbers
- syntax highlighting
- A better ruler & status line
- & more
- Configuring included plugins
Customization
Create ~/.vimrc.local and ~/.gvimrc.local for any local customizations.
For example, to override the default color schemes:
Vundle The best plugin manager
Vundle is an excellent system built on the same principles as Pathogen, but with an integrated plugin management system that is Git and Github aware.
spf13-vim uses the Vundle plugin management system to have a well organized vim directory (Similar to mac's app folders). Vundle also ensures that the latest versions of your plugins are installed and makes it easy to keep them up to date.
NERDTreefile navigation
NERDTree is a file explorer plugin that provides 'project drawer' functionality to your vim editing. You can learn more about it with :help NERDTree or checkout my post on NERDTree.
QuickStart Launch using <Leader>e.
Customizations:
- Use
<C-E>to toggle NERDTree - Use
<leader>eor<leader>ntto load NERDTreeFind which opens NERDTree where the current file is located. - Hide clutter ('.pyc', '.git', '.hg', '.svn', '.bzr')
- Treat NERDTree more like a panel than a split.
ctrlpfast file finder
Ctrlp replaces the Command-T plugin with a 100% viml plugin. It provides an intuitive and fast mechanism to load files from the file system (with regex and fuzzy find), from open buffers, and from recently used files.
QuickStart Launch using <c-p>.
Surroundmanaging all the '[{}]' etc
This plugin is a tool for dealing with pairs of 'surroundings.' Examples of surroundings include parentheses, quotes, and HTML tags. They are closely related to what Vim refers to as text-objects. Provided are mappings to allow for removing, changing, and adding surroundings.
Details follow on the exact semantics, but first, consider the following examples. An asterisk (*) is used to denote the cursor position.
For instance, if the cursor was inside 'foo bar', you could type cs' to convert the text to 'foo bar'.
There's a lot more, check it out at :help surround
NERDCommentercomment++
NERDCommenter allows you to wrangle your code comments, regardless of filetype. View help :NERDCommenter for all the details.
QuickStart Toggle comments using <Leader>c<space> in Visual or Normal mode.
Syntasticintegrated syntax checking
Syntastic is a syntax checking plugin that runs buffers through external syntax checkers as they are saved and opened. If syntax errors are detected, the user is notified and is happy because they didn't have to compile their code or execute their script to find them.
numbers.vimbetter line numbers
Best Vim Themes
This plugin will alternate between relative numbering (normal mode) and absolute numbering (insert mode) depending on the mode you are in. This allows you to easily move code around with the relative line numbers when in normal mode. As well as providing accurate line numbers when writing code in insert mode
neocomplcacheautocomplete++
NeoComplCache is an amazing autocomplete plugin with additional support for snippets. It can complete simulatiously from the dictionary, buffer, omnicomplete and snippets. This is the one true plugin that brings Vim autocomplete on par with the best editors.
QuickStart Just start typing, it will autocomplete where possible
Customizations:
- Automatically present the autocomplete menu
- Support tab and enter for autocomplete
<C-k>for completing snippets.
Fugitive deep git integration
Fugitive adds pervasive git support to git directories in vim. For more information, use :help fugitive
Use :Gstatus to view git status and type - on any file to stage or unstage it. Type p on a file to enter git add -p and stage specific hunks in the file.
Use :Gdiff on an open file to see what changes have been made to that file
QuickStart<leader>gs to bring up git status
Customizations:
<leader>gs:Gstatus<leader>gd:Gdiff<leader>gc:Gcommit<leader>gb:Gblame<leader>gl:Glog<leader>gp:Git push- :Git ___ will pass anything along to git.
PIV PHP editing
The most feature complete and up to date PHP Integration for Vim with proper support for PHP 5.3+ including latest syntax, functions, better fold support, etc.
PIV provides:
- PHP 5.3 support
- Auto generation of PHP Doc (,pd on (function, variable, class) definition line)
- Autocomplete of classes, functions, variables, constants and language keywords
- Better indenting
- Full PHP documentation manual (hit K on any function for full docs)
Tabularize align everything
Tabularize lets you align statements on their equal signs and other characters
Customizations:
<Leader>a=:Tabularize /=<Leader>a::Tabularize /:<Leader>a:::Tabularize /:zs<Leader>a,:Tabularize /,<Leader>a<Bar>:Tabularize /
Tagbartag generation and navigation
spf13-vim includes the Tagbar plugin. This plugin requires exuberant-ctags and will automatically generate tags for your open files. It also provides a panel to navigate easily via tags
QuickStartCTRL-] while the cursor is on a keyword (such as a function name) to jump to it's definition.
Customizations: spf13-vim binds <Leader>tt to toggle the tagbar panel
Note: For full language support, run brew install ctags to install exuberant-ctags.
Tip: Check out :help ctags for information about VIM's built-in ctag support. Tag navigation creates a stack which can traversed via Ctrl-] (to find the source of a token) and Ctrl-T (to jump back up one level).
EasyMotionjump anywhere
EasyMotion provides an interactive way to use motions in Vim.
It quickly maps each possible jump destination to a key allowing very fast and straightforward movement.
QuickStart EasyMotion is triggered using the normal movements, but prefixing them with <leader><leader>
For example this screen shot demonstrates pressing ,w
Adding Your Own Bundles
Create ~/.vimrc.bundles.local for any additional bundles.
To add a new bundle
Custom Settings
Create ~/.vimrc.local and ~/.gvimrc.local for any local customizations.
For example, to override the default color schemes:
Additional Syntaxes
spf13-vim ships with a few additional syntaxes:
- Markdown (bound to *.markdown, *.md, and *.mk)
- Twig
- Git commits (set your
EDITORtomvim -f)
Amazing Colors
spf13-vim includes solarized and spf13 vim color pack:
- ir_black
- molokai
- peaksea
Use :color molokai to switch to a color scheme.
Snippets
It also contains a very complete set of snippets for use with snipmate or NeoComplCache.
Tutorials
- Type
vimtutorinto a shell to go through a brief interactive tutorial inside VIM. - Read the slides at VIM: Walking Without Crutches.
Modes
- VIM has two (common) modes:
- insert mode- stuff you type is added to the buffer
- normal mode- keys you hit are interpreted as commands
- To enter insert mode, hit
i - To exit insert mode, hit
<ESC>
Useful commands
- Use
:qto exit vim - Certain commands are prefixed with a
<Leader>key, which by default maps to. - Spf13-vim uses
let mapleader = ','to change this to,which is in a consistent and convenient location. - Keyboard cheat sheet.
Mailing List
Be notified of major updates
Discussion Group
Discuss issues, ideas, plugins
Contributing
GitHub makes for easy contribution
All development is done via GitHub. Fork and issue a pull request or file an issue.
Hot tips to bring the awesomeness of Visual Studio Code to Vim.
Front-Matter
I want to start by saying, this is not an editor-shame article. You can use whatever text editor you want. It really doesn’t matter. I’m only writing this because I found a level of productivity in Vim that I haven’t had in any of the editors I used before (Sublime Text, Atom or VSCode).
If you’ve heard about Vim, and want to try it out, I hope this article can provide a bit of familiarity you’d find from VSCode.
Why Vim?
Best Vim Books
There are lots of reasons to use Vim, so here’s a few of mine.
Keep your hands at 10 and 2
When you are solely using the keyboard, there is going to be an inherent speed boost just from not having to physically move your hands. And hey, maybe you’re a black belt in mouse movement, and you can move back in forth with a speed invisible to the naked eye. For the rest of us simple humans, it takes time.
Let’s do some quick math.
It takes 600ms to move my hand from the “home keys” to the mouse. On average, for sake of argument, I do that once a minute while I’m writing code. Whether that be to scroll, navigate to a new file, or something similar.
600 (wasted time in ms) x 60 (times per hour) x 5 (hours I am actually coding) = 180,000ms wasted =
3. Minutes. Every. Day.
Yeah, okay, maybe that doesn’t sound so bad, but, those 3 minutes could be spent writing a function, or refactoring code, not flailing your hand about like you're Harry Potter!
Speed
My favorite quote that describes what it’s like to code in VIM:
“Code at the speed of thought”
Vim is built around the idea that you are directly communicating with your computer. You tell it what you want, and it does it for you. The biggest eye-opener for me was this little tidbit:
Best Vimeo
To delete everything in between two objects (parentheses, quotes, etc), it's as simple as:
di'
That’s just the surface of amazing shorthand things you can do with Vim.
I’m a real programmer!
Part of the journey of learning VIM is exposing yourself to how UNIX works. I’m under the impression that the more you expose yourself to things like bash, the better programmer you are going to be.
Chances are, you have a pretty sweet command line setup. Wouldn’t it be nice if your code editor and your command line worked in concert?
How do you exit Vim?
Probability is high that you’ve ever edited a file on a Linux server, and couldn’t figure out how to exit the file. Let’s say, for example, changing an SSH key on Digital Ocean. If you know VIM…you don’t have to worry about that!
The real reason I switched to Vim
Honesty time. The real catalyst for wanting to switch to Vim was watching Kyle Mathews (creator of Gatsby.js) using it during a demo.
VS Code Features and their equivalents
Convinced? Cool, here’s some tools!
Plugin System
Vim by itself is pretty barebones. In order to add plugins, we have to have a mechanism to manage them. Enter Plug:
Note: There are a few plugin managers out there. I landed on Plug for no particular reason. I like it, and I’ve had no issues with it. FYI, Vundle is deprecated.
File Search
There has been a bunch of solutions for file searching over the years, as indicated by the multitude of answers in forums. I tried a couple of different ones, but landed on this combination:
Fuzzy Finder(fzf) + Ripgrep
Fzf is a really well built/maintained fuzzy search that works in both the command line and vim.
Note: You may see Ag(Silver searcher) in a lot of articles, however the Ag related vim plugin is no longer maintained, so it's suggested to use RipGrep.
Intellisense
The auto-completion system (Intellisense) in VSCode is arguably its best feature. Lucky for us, it’s been ported over to Vim!
CoC has its own extension system, that mirrors that of VSCodes. It's easy to use and well-documented (the most important part).
Note: You may see some old articles talking about YouCompleteMe, but as far as I can tell, that isn’t maintained anymore.
File System Explorer
VSCode, like most modern text editors, comes with a file explorer. Vim’s native netrw is alright, and I’ve seen quite a few articles saying you don’t need anything else, like here. However, I find NERDTree is too useful to not use.
Git integration
I gotta be honest here, I do most of my git stuff straight in Iterm. However, VSCode has an incredibly nice Git Diff split screen. To get that level of git integration, check out this plugin:
Additional plugins that you may want
This is some of the stuff I used in Visual Studio Code, that I wanted to bring into Vim.
Autocomplete Brackets
This nice little package will auto close those pesky brackets.
File Icons
This will add icons to stuff like NERDTree.
Prettier
Wouldn’t you know it, but the official prettier team has a vim plugin. How nice! Also, incredibly simple to set up.
Get it to work on autosave, check out this article.
Snippets
Wouldn’t you know it, using the Conquer of Completion, you can import VSCode snippets!
Check this out to show you how to do that:
Here is the React snippets package I’m using.
Additional Stuff
THE home for Vim plugins is Vim Awesome.
Great place to watch people use Vim:
Dotfiles
I have a few remapped keys to make things easier. Check out my dotfiles for all those.
Final Thoughts
My Journey
I solely use Vim now, after spending about a year to learn it. Initially, I was using it just for my personal projects, because my productivity level was low. I had to keep stopping to look up how to do something. However, I dropped VSCode completely about 4 months ago, and I don’t plan on going back.
It takes discipline
Learning Vim can seem daunting, and frankly, it is. It requires self-imposed discipline. However, doesn’t everything in development? There is no tool/language/framework I’ve ever learned that didn’t require some level of deliberate practice.
Vim is a lifestyle choice. It will take a while to get used to it, and it WILL be frustrating at times. However, if you stick to it, I guarantee it’ll improve your workflow. If you have any additional tips or questions, please drop them below. As always, happy coding!