vi

vi is a family of visual text editors originated in BSD Unix.

In contrast to most editors, vi is a modal editor, in which its behavior depends on the current mode that is in. For example, the starting mode is the normal mode in which vi accept commands; the insert mode, where vi accepts keys and writes them to the current buffer; the replacement mode, similar to insert mode but replaces the characters under the cursor instead of adding them to the buffer; the visual mode which allows for selection of text.

Tutorial

Vim provides a tutorial, accesible through the vimtutor shell command; Neovim provides the same tutorial with the :Tutor editor command.

TODO

Cheatsheet

Some of these can be prefixed with a register name and a count number (in that order). Commands that work with registers use by default an anonymous registers if none is explicitly specified.

c: command mode, i = insert mode; v: visual mode; n: normal mode.

Basics

:e: open file in a new buffer, file needn't exist
:w: save current buffer
:wa: save all modified buffers
:wq: save current buffer and exit
:wqa: same as above, but all buffers
:x: same as :wq, saves only if buffer was changed
:q: quit
:q!: quit without saving current buffer
:qa!: quit regardless anything
:new: open empty buffer as split window
:enew: open empty buffer in current window

Common operations

(c,i,v) <Esc>: escape from insert, visual modes to normal mode.
(n) w: Jump to next word
(n) e: Jump to the end of the current word (and of the next one if you keep pressing it)
(n) b: Jump to previous word
(c,i) Ctrl-n: move to the next item in the completion menu
(c,i) Ctrl-p: move to the previous item in the completion menu
(c,i) Ctrl-y: confirm current selection
(i): Ctrl-o: temporarily exit insert mode to normal mode; goes back to insert mode after a command or normal mode binding was executed.
(n): Ctrl-e: scroll a line forward
(n): Ctrl-y: scroll a line backwards
(n): Ctrl-f: scroll a page forward
(n): Ctrl-b: scroll a page backwards
(n): Ctrl-o: moves to previous position
(n): Ctrl-i: moves to next position
(n) d: delete [works with registers, prefix count, movement]
- dd: delete current line
- "add: delete current line to the register a
- 9dd: delete 9 lines (last d can also be a movement like j or k to control the direction)
- dk: delete current line and the one above
- dj: delete current line and the one under
(n) y: yank (copy) [works with registers, prefix count]
- yy: yank current line
- "ayy: yank current line to the register a
- yk: yank current line and the one above
- yj: yank current line and the one under
- "+yy: yank current line to the system clipboard
- 9yy: yank 9 lines (last y can also be a movement like j or k to control the direction)
(n) p: paste after cursor [works with registers, prefix count, movement]
- "ap: paste from a register
- 4p: paste from anonymous register 4 times
- "a4p: paste from a register 4 times
(n): P: paste before cursor [works with registers, prefix count, movement]
(n) r: Replace a single character under the cursor
(n) x: Delete character under the cursor [works with registers, prefix count]
- 2x: delete two characters
(n) X: delete character before the cursor
(n) c: change, roughly equivalent to a combined delete and insert

Mode changing

(n) i: Enter insert mode after the cursor
(n) I: Enter insert mode, at the start of the line
(n) a: Enter insert mode before the cursor
(n) A: Enter insert mode at the end of the line
(n) o: Enter insert mode, adding a newline under
(n) O: Enter insert mode, adding a newline above
(n) R: Enter replace mode
(n) v: Enter visual mode
(n) V: Enter visual line mode
(n) Ctrl-v: Enter visual block mode

Movement keys [can be prefixed with count]

It has to be noted that Home, End, PageUp/Down and cursor keys also work.

(n) h: Move left
(n) j: Move down
- 4j: Move 4 lines down
(n) k: Move up
(n) l: Move right
(n) 0: move to start of line
(n) ^: move to first non-whitespace character of line
(n) $: move to the end of the line
(n) f: move to specified character, forwards
- fe: move to e
(n) F: move to specified character, backwards

Searching

(n) /: search for pattern, forwards
(n) ?: search for pattern, backwards

Other

(n) ~: change case of current character under the cursor
(v) u: lowercase the current selection
(v) U: uppercase the current selection
(n) q:: open command-line history window, here you can edit the commands and execute them with enter.
(n) q/: search pattern history
:help, :h: Vim help pages

Windows (splits)

:vs: create vertical split
:sp: horizontal split
:sb: open buffer as window
(n) Ctrl-w q: close window (buffer remains open)
(n) Ctrl-w w: cicle though opened windows
(n) Ctrl-w =: make windows have the same width
(n) Ctrl-w s: split current window horizontally
(n) Ctrl-w v: split current window vertically
(n) Ctrl-w +, Ctrl-w -: increase/decrease height of window
(n) Ctrl-w <, Ctrl-w >: change width of window

Undo-redo

(n) u: undo
(n) Ctrl-r: redo
(n) g+: go to newer undo tree state (see :h undo-tree)
(n) g-: go to older undo tree state

Buffers

:bd: delete (quit) current buffer (file is not deleted)
:bd!: same but doesn't nag if the buffer wasn't been saved
:bp: go to previous buffer
:bn: go to next buffer
:b#: go to last buffer (# holds the last buffer ID)

"Go to" binds

gg: go to..
- gg: go to top of file
- 30gg: go to line 30
G: go to bottom of file
- 30G: same as 30gg
gT: move to previous tab
gt: move to next tab
gf: open the file path under the cursor in a new buffer
gx: tries to open whatever is under the cursor with the system handler (for example, you can use this to open an URL)

Special registers

+: system clipboard
*: system's clipboard primary selection

vi-like editors

Vim: vi improved, one of the most popular vi-like editors; includes a scripting language, VimScript for extending the editor.
Neovim: a fork of Vim, adds Lua as a replacement for VimScript, improves performance.
nvi: reimplementation of the original Berkley vi, is the default vi editor in the BSDs.
vis: minimalistic vi-like editor, adds structured regular expressions inspired by the Sam and Acme editors, includes Lua for scripting.
...

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