Vim

I'm a big fan of modal editing and specifically Vim.

Resources

Videos

• Derek Wyatt Vim Videos - The first

  time I came across their videos was on global commands - Globals, Command Line and Functions.

  This is a pretty good video to show some magic of Vim and it is very funny to boot! This would be my

  current video of choice to show someone the power of Vim at the hands of an advanced user.

• Greg Hurrell - Greg's channel is not exclusively about Vim,

  but his channel full of Vim tips and tricks.

Tips

• Map CapsLock to Esc

  • In Linux I've used xmodmap based method for mapping for this.

    ! Swap caps lock and escape
    remove Lock = Caps_Lock
    ! keysym Escape = Caps_Lock
    keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
    add Lock = Caps_Lock
    
    ! Press both Shift keys to get Caps_Lock
    keycode  50 = Shift_L Caps_Lock Shift_L Caps_Lock
    keycode  62 = Shift_R Caps_Lock Shift_R Caps_Lock

  • On macOS this could be done via settings -

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/127591/using-caps-lock-as-esc-in-mac-os-x.

• Appending result from an external command to the buffer - https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Append_output_of_an_external_command

  read !<external command>

  For example, to get CPU info into the current buffer, read !cat /proc/cpuinfo.

• Format JSON,

  • with python - :%!python -m json.tool

  • with jq tool - :%!jq '.'

• Change Tabs to Spaces - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/426963/replace-tabs-with-spaces-in-vim

  " settings for tabs
  :set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab
  " convert the existing buffer
  :retab

  Another option to would be to reindent the whole file with gg=G.

• Enabling mouse scroll support - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7225057/use-mouse-scroll-wheel-in-vim.

  set mouse=a

• Opening files based on a command line search. This is more of a command line tip, but I find this pattern to be quite useful. To open all Dockerfiles in a directory,

  vim $(fd Dockerfile ~/Code)

  Another adaptation of this pattern is to use a temporary vim buffer to put the search results and then open files based from buffer contents.

  fd Dockerfile ~/Code | vim -
  
  # Then open files one by one based on the contents (which could be empty if
  # the search results are empty). Opening buffers for file locations is a
  # pretty easy in Vim with Vim unimpared commands like `gf` in normal mode

• Write a file as superuser,

  :w !sudo tee %

  How this works - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2600783/how-does-the-vim-write-with-sudo-trick-work.

• Vim regex