Vim select one word

Hightlight yanked text

First of all I would like to recommend highlight yanked text:
https://github.com/machakann/vim-highlightedyank (vim and neovim)

This is useful because it will give you a visual hint of what you have just copied.

For neovim:

augroup highlight_yank
    autocmd!
    au TextYankPost * silent! lua vim.highlight.on_yank({higroup="IncSearch", timeout=700})
augroup END

The vim philosophy goes way beond selecting, copying etc.

Start spending more time reading about vim/neovim and you will not going back to any other editor.

Nice to meet you dear «text-objects»

• Read more about them here

Copy a whole paragraph to the clipboard:

"+yip

"+ .................... clipboard register
y ..................... copy
ip .................... inner paragraph

Copy the whole file to the clipboard

:%y+

Test some vim commands from the clipboard

:@+

The above command allows you to run functions and vim commands even if did not pasted them into your vimrc, there are some exceptions but in general it will work.

You can define your own text-objects

" vim line text-objects
xnoremap al :<C-u>norm! 0v$<cr>
xnoremap il :<C-u>norm! _vg_<cr>
onoremap al :norm! val<cr>
onoremap il :norm! vil<cr>

So you can use vil or dil

Sometimes you don’t need to select to copy
If you wan to copy the second line to the end of the file you can do:

:2t$

If you want to move lines 4-7 to the beggining of the file you can do:

:4,7m0

copy from mark a to mark b:

ma .................. mark current line as mark a

Jump to a second place in your file and then

mb .................. mark current line as mark b

finally:

:'a,'by+

from mark a to mark b copy to the clipboard

Diving into advanced vim:

• What is your most productive shortcut with Vim?

This is a follow up post to this amazing post on vscode shortcuts. I thought it would be fun to try and make the same or similar shortcuts on vim for comparison. Now mind you I am a relative new vimmer, more like a casual vimmer lol. Staying within the home row does provide faster work flow, like a painter bonding with the canvas. For my everyday use I mostly use Intellij/Android Studio, and vscode. I have vim mode turned on and I do turn it off when I feel is getting in the way.

I’ll be using this repo for the examples
coreutils just clone it to your git directory.

1 Search Text Through All Files At Once

Probably one of the best utilities for terminal is fzf, if you’ve ever used everything on windows then you know what I am talking about. fzf as the name implies is a fuzzy finder. fzf is supercharged with a bunch of nice commands. To use it on vim you need to have it installed first.

brew install fzf

Then you add it to your Plug vimrc, I use vim-plug by the same author.

Plug '/usr/local/opt/fzf'
Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim'

For this next example, simply do :Lines then type whatever you’re looking for. Fzf will look in the opened buffers, if you are looking just in the current buffer then do :BLines. A cool thing about fzf is well that it finds anything even if missing a few letters here and there. Also if you don’t want fuzzy finding you can start the fzf commands with a single quote '.

Fzf is amazingly fast, no kidding try it on a big project.

2 Select lines inside brackets

There are quite a few ways to select text in vim, in fact you don’t even need visual mode to do it.

Place cursor in a bracket or inside the brackets.

ya(
ya{

If you’d like to do it visually, place cursor in a bracket, then you can do yank(y), or cut(d).

v%

3 Open a file in the buffer with fzf

If you ever need help on fzf utility you can do :help fzf within vim. You can see the help file, and all the commands it does. Buffers command show you all the buffers opened at the moment. Then if you start typing you can do fzf finding if you have lots of buffers opened.

:Buffers

4 Find a file in the project with fzf

Same as with the buffers command, but with all files within the directory you are working with.

:Files

Note how fzf picks up strnumcmp.c when searching for sum. If you start the search with ' it will look for whole words.

5 Launch terminal

This is just personal preference, because when you are in vim you are in the terminal, if you use iTerm2 then you can switch between tabs relatively easy.

If you want to have a terminal tab within vim I use split-term plugin. Keep in mind I use neovim, let me know if you also use this or some other plugin in vim.

There are far too many configurations to talk about to make sure to visit the repo.

• :Term Opens a new terminal buffer using :new (splits horizontally)
• :VTerm Opens a new terminal buffer using :vnew (splits vertically)
• :TTerm Opens a new terminal buffer using :tabnew (new tab)

6 Delete Everything to the Left/Right

This is far too easy with vim. Move your cursor to where you want it with motions or hjkl, if you want to delete everything to the left d0, if you want to do to the right d$.

Another good one is the t (until). So if you want to delete until a bracket you would do dt).

7 Delete Previous Word

If you are writing some text and you make a mistake, exit insert mode, and do daw (delete a word).

For more tips on this do :help diw in vim.

8 Select Words

Visual mode in vim is just another world in itself, it has line, block, and columns modes. To select words make sure you are in visual mode by hitting lower v. Then press w to select next word. Let’s say you selected a word you don’t want, hit b for back, most vim commands have some sort of pnemonic. There is also e for end of word.

9 Selecting Lines

Visual Lines mode, let’s you select lines easily.
Enter lines mode with upper case V.

10 Duplicate a Line

Simply yank the line with yy, the paste with p.

11 Move to Beginning/End of File

Moving in vim is such of breeze. Top of the file with gg, and G to the end of the file.

12 Move Up/Down a File

You can move up and down a file with CTRL+U and CTRL+D, also you can use SHIFT+ { and SHIFT+}.

13 Search Words in a File

Searching for words in a file with vim is pretty cool, but not as cool as fzf. To search for a word you do / then type the word to find. To go to next word you hit n, and to go to previous word N. In addition you can search backwards with ?.

14 Replace Words in a File

Search and replace can take various forms.

:%s/search/replace/gc

• % indicates search in the whole file
• g for global, meaning all occurrences
• c is for confirmation

When you run this command you’ll get a confirmation where you can hit yes or no for each instance or simply hit a to replace all instances.

15 Move Line Up/Down

Vim provides a move command for moving lines around.

:move+1
:move-2

16 Delete a Line

If you want to delete the whole line, you can do dd.

17 Add Cursor Multiple Lines

• Move the cursor to the position on first line.
• Enter visual block mode (ctrlv).
• Press j three times (or 3j).
• Press I (Uppercase i).
• Type in whatever.
  Press esc.

Seems like a lot but once you get used it is quick.

18 EasyMotion in Vim

EasyMotion is a cool plugin that helps with traversing through text really quick, it also works within vscode if you are interested in trying vim in vscode, though the shortcomings of using vim in vscode is that you can’t bring in any plugins other than the ones provided by the vscodevim plugin.

Make sure to check out easymotion for full description of the plugin.

VSCodeVim

19 NerdTree

Another cool plugin for looking in directories is NerdTree.

For more plugins visit https://vimawesome.com/

20 Bookmarking aka Marks

I am not sure if vscode has this feature, but nevertheless is pretty cool in vim. You just put your cursor in a line, and hit m and a letter or number.

If you do ma then your mark will be a

To see your current marks, you can do (Marks to use with fzf plugin):

:marks
:Marks

You can also delete marks:

:delmarks a

Delete all lowercase marks:

:delmarks!

If you ever got too many marks you can delete ~/.viminfo which contains history and marks.

Conclusion

Lots of cool stuff you can do with Vim, I particularly wish I could do vim with all the plugins but in a vscode environment, and I think that’s what Oni is trying to accomplish. Let me know what you think or what cool tricks or plugins you use in vim. Hasta la vimsta baby!

If you’re interested in checking out my vimrc file check here

In this guide, we have presented all basic commands that you will need to use VIM editor for doing all tasks efficiently. You will learn how to search for a word, how to replace the word, select, copy, paste, using various special features of VIM and much more. Vim is an editor to create or edit a text file. There are two modes in vim:

1. Command mode
2. Insert mode

• In the command mode, user can move around the file, delete text, etc.
• In the insert mode, user can insert text.

To create a new file named «opengenus.txt», use the following command:

vim opengenus.txt

This will create the file and open the file in VIM editor where you can add text.
If there is an existing file with the same name, the existing file will be opened in the VIM editor.

Changing mode from one to another

From command mode to insert mode, press anyone of the following keys: a/A/i/I/o/O ( see details below)

From insert mode to command mode, press Esc (escape key)

Some useful commands for VIM

a Append text following current cursor position

A Append text to the end of current line

i Insert text before the current cursor position

I Insert text at the beginning of the cursor line

o Open up a new line following the current line and add text there

O Open up a new line in front of the current line and add text there

The following commands are used only in the commands mode.

h Moves the cursor one character to the left

l Moves the cursor one character to the right

k Moves the cursor up one line

j Moves the cursor down one line

^F (CTRl F) Forward screenful

^B Backward screenful

^f One page forward

^b One page backward

^U Up half screenful

^D Down half screenful

$ Move cursor to the end of current line

0 (zero) Move cursor to the beginning of current line

w Forward one word

b Backward one word

Exit Commands

To exit from VIM editor, use the following commands after entering the ESCAPE mode:

:wq Write file to disk and quit the editor

:q! Quit (no warning)

:q Quit (a warning is printed if a modified file has not been saved)

ZZ Save workspace and quit the editor (same as :wq)

Text Deletion Commands

Use these commands in ESCAPE mode:
To use these commands, you need to press the keys (for example for command dw, first press d key, then press w key):

x Delete character

dw Delete word from cursor on

db Delete word backward

dd Delete line

d$ Delete to end of line

d^ (d caret, not CTRL d) Delete to beginning of line

File Manipulation Commands

:w Write workspace to original file

:e file Start editing a new file

:r file Read contents of a file to the workspace

Go to end of the file

Esc + Ctrl + End – Jump end of file
Esc + Ctrl + Home : Jump start of file
Press Esc + gg : Go to top the file
Esc + G : Go to bottom of the file
Esc + G + A : Go to bottom of the file and in append text mode.

Searching Methods

To search forward, use the command:

/word

1. Press Esc to make sure Vim/Vi is in normal mode.
2. Type the command:

/OpenGenus

Searching Backward For a Word

?word

1. Press Esc to make sure Vim/Vi is in normal mode.

2. Type the command:

/Foundation

search and replace

:s/Search_Word/Replace_Word/g

Find each occurrence of ‘Search_Word’ (in the current line only), and replace it with ‘Replace_Word’.

:%s/Search_Word/Replace_Word/g
Find each occurrence of ‘Search_Word’ (in all lines), and replace it with ‘Replace_Word’.

:%s/Search_Word/Replace_Word/gc
Change each ‘Search_Word’ to ‘Replace_Word’, but ask for confirmation first.

select text, copy and paste

—> Position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to cut/copy.
—> Press v to begin character-based visual selection, or V to select whole lines, or Ctrl-v or Ctrl-q to select a block.
—> Move the cursor to the end of the text to be cut/copied. While selecting text, you can perform searches and other advanced movement.
—> Press d (delete) to cut, or y (yank) to copy.
—> Move the cursor to the desired paste location.
—> Press p to paste after the cursor, or P to paste before.

Difference b/w Vi and Vim

——> Editor Interface VIM vs VI
Both the editors are similar in their appearance.

——> Modes in VIM vs VI
Both the editors are mode based, that is you need to enter INSERT mode to edit and COMMAND mode to perform actions like saving and undo.

The three modes are as follows:

Normal (Default): For navigation
Insert: For inserting and modifying text
Command: For Operations like saving, exiting, etc.

Insert mode allows you to make changes to your content.

The command mode is for specifying commands to exit, save your work, and perform other operations.

To enter command-line mode hit the “Escape” key and then type in the colon ‘:’. To enter insert mode, hit the “Escape” key and type in ‘i’. To enter Normal mode press Escape.

Navigating within the editor interfaces

Searching for text
Both the editors provide the option to search for text in the file.

To search in the file you must be in command line mode. So start by pressing colon (:).

To search for a word use forward slash followed by the word to search followed by enter.

/{word-to-be-searched} [enter]

Improvements in Vim – The differences between VIM vs VI
Vim editor differs from Vi editor since it provides a lot of improvements over the latter. The command to display the points of difference within the Vim editor is:

:help vi_diff
Difference
You can scroll through the list to go over the differences.

Multiple Undo in VIm
Vi editor only offers the option to perform one undo. This can be very limiting in the case of a large text file.

Vim editor on the other hand offers the ability to perform multiple undo.

With this, you must have the complete idea of using VIM editor. Enjoy.