My favorite Vim oneliners for text manipulation

It's funny you mention that. Just today, I had this moment where I realized that if someone asked me which key letters are used to move up/down/left/right, I'd have to pause and think about it.

I've been using Vim for years. Like, my index finger rests on the down key, so J is down. I think? And so on... My middle finger rests on the up key, so K goes up? Do I actually have to move my index finger to go left? What is my pinky doing most of the time?

It's just funny how all this stuff is burned into my brain but I wouldn't even be able to tell someone the basics without a keyboard in front of me.

To know what modal editing is and understand that first is going to help - but then your learning session is over like that without teaching any "tricks".

Lunch is !work for me.

Also, in the GUI version of vim you have scrollbars, toolbar, and the standard keyboard shortcuts work, too. So you can use it like any other editor.

You can add it to your statusline (or tabline, ruler) with the wordcount() function:

  :let &statusline ..= ' words: %{wordcount().words}'

Aside: that "one-liner" doesn't "count the words in the file" at all? It just replaces all words with "1" and echos the last line number. I'm confused because this seems so wrong that I may be missing something? Unless the "67 substitutions on 5 lines" message is intended as the "word count", in which case I submit that 1) this is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and 2) the author of this article doesn't know Vim all that well (there are so many better/easier ways to do this).

Insanity described in that post.

  :%!wc

Text editing is powerful but it is definitely not a seamless interface to my brain when I have to think of how to map what I want to do (eg delete a function) to how I can do it given the specific layout of the text (delete the indentation level with daI but the signature was over several lines so I need a few extra dd).

hjkl are still a pretty good choice for a modal editor. If you’ve learnt standard touch typing, your right hand will be resting on jkl;, so it’s extremely convenient.

The Vi(m) philosophy is to reduce how much you have to move your hands about, so everything is put as close to the “home row” (asdf + jkl;) as possible.

This is why Vim-spinoffs like Helix and Kakoune, while turning the whole keybinding system on its head, are both keeping hjkl. Not for historical legacy, but because it’s actually a good choice.

So in that sense calling python is very much a "vim one liner".

Would this be better?

s/^$/printf("@%d\\n", __LINE__);@

Which I think is a good habit to have anyway. Some people use comments without preceding empty lines (oh why) to delineate code, so they'd have to change the regex a bit to make this work.

also, a nit pick, if you use Magic mode (\v), that pattern gets way better:

:g/\v(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}/y A

    :h 'wrap'

Edit to be more helpful:

^ is the start of a line

\s is a space character

* means "zero or more of the previous character"

$ is the end of a line

For more fun, activate vim-surround. E.g. to replace surrounding quotes with parentheses: cs"(

E.g.

    y2a(

You can use any navigation command as the target, I find myself often using

  >}

RIP Bram.

https://www.rosipov.com/blog/vim-movement-cheatsheet/

Ever now, after decades of use, I try to incorporate the most efficient methods of moving around the document and around the screen. Sometimes, when I've just held down movement keys (such as 'hjkl') to get to a specific location, I'll go back to where I was and, for example, use the find character command instead as practice.

  vipJ

  command! StripTrailingWhitespace %s/\s\+$//

    augroup trailing_whitespace_show
        autocmd!
        " Make trailing whitespace red.
        autocmd ColorScheme * highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red
        autocmd BufWinEnter,InsertEnter,InsertLeave * match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+$/
        " Can slow things down, but show trailing whitespace as red while typing.
        autocmd InsertCharPre * match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+$/
    augroup END

    augroup trailing_whitespace_kill
        autocmd!
        " Delete all trailing whitespace on-save.
        autocmd FileWritePre,FileAppendPre,FilterWritePre,BufWritePre *
            \ let w:wv = winsaveview() |
            \ :%s/\s\+$//e             |
            \ call winrestview(w:wv)
    augroup END

  :%!column -t

    %! python

It's not as much about memorizing strings as it's learning a new language.

Using a mapping will save you time if you use the same regex often but you can end up having to remember a lot of shortcuts. I find I forget rarely used mappings.

If you learn the Vim command line and regex well it can be quicker to just type what you want on demand and then use one of the methods repeating it. Then forget about it till the next time you need it.

It's also helpful if you have to use configured Vim occasionally.

Annoyingly, "+" matches literal "+" by default.

You need

  \s\+$

  \v\s+$

.

  /(?=^|[^A-Fa-f0-9:]|[^\w\:])((0{0,3}1):(|(:0{1,4}){1,5}|(0{1,4}:){1,5}|(0{1,4}:){5}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){1}:(0{1,4}:){3}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){2}:(0{1,4}:){2}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){3}:(0{1,4}:){1}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){4}:(0{1,4}:){0}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){1}:(0{1,4}:){2}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){2}:(0{1,4}:){1}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){3}:(0{1,4}:){0}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){1}:(0{1,4}:){1}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){2}:(0{1,4}:){0}0{1,4}|(0{1,4}:){1}:(0{1,4}:){0}0{1,4}):(0{0,3}2))(?=[^\w\:]|[^A-Fa-f0-9:]|$)/i

Speaking for myself, my reason for using vim is to keep my hands on the keyboard and reduce mouse usage. The other benefit is that I can stay in the terminal instead of having to switch to a GUI editor.

If those benefits don't sound enticing, then I could how it might seem unappealing.