8/6/2023 0 Comments Vim store![]() There’s so much to say on this topic that it’s the classic off-topic question at StackOverflow. Instead of typing “y” and “n” to change or not change each match, you just hit until you get where you want to be, and then type. becomes the same as a search and replace, only both the search and replace parts are (nearly) arbitrary editing actions. ![]() And the search, being a movement, is repeatable with. Why? Because /foo searches for “foo” and caw will then change the word under the cursor. Of course there’s a “normal” search and replace functionality in Vim, but most of the time you don’t actually need it. That doesn’t sound useful, but think about how many times you refactor code by changing all functions named “foo()” to “getFooInstantanceMethod()”. Think about how much more efficiently Jack Nicholson could have appeared crazy in “The Shining” if he had Vim and the. and w will change every word in your document to “Hackaday”. Tossing a movement command into the mix, w will move the cursor to the start of the next word. So if you just changed a word to “Hackaday” and returned to normal mode, cawHackaday, and you have the cursor over another word, typing. ![]() Period repeats the last editing action as a whole unit. In this sense, it’s easy to learn.Ĭute trick. If you want to change the next five words, c5w does what you want. ( ca) deletes the entire thing, parentheses and all.) Numbers fit in as well. Want to change all arguments of a C function inside parentheses? ci) “changes inside parentheses”. If you want to change a whole sentence, cas deletes it and you’re typing anew. But if you type caw (“change a word”), the word under your cursor gets deleted and Vim enters insert mode, waiting for you to type the word’s replacement and hit Escape to go back to normal mode. By itself it does nothing - it needs an object. Let’s take c, the command that “changes” some text. Your job is to figure out how to express your text editing desires in terms of these, mostly single character, commands. It’s got verbs, adjectives, and nouns (or functions, modifiers, and objects). The real secret of Vim is that normal-mode usage is a language somewhere between a human language and a programming language. In short, you’ll be editing like a monkey you would in Emacs. You will know how to move the cursor around, cut and paste, and enter and edit text. Do not go around saying that you “know how to use Vim” at this point. It’s not going to make you a master, but you’re going to learn the basics. You should go do that - that’s what it’s there for. When you start up Vim, it tells you to type :help and work through a tutorial telling you how to move the cursor around. This distinction between typing and editing is central to Vim’s philosophy, and they’re fundamentally different activities. When editing in Vim, most of your time is spent in “normal mode” where your keystrokes are like commands, moving the cursor around, cutting, pasting, finding, replacing, crafting macros, changing one HTML tag to another, and generally editing. In a normal editor, you’re always in insert mode. There’s “insert mode” where you type text. If you approach your text editing chores like factoring code into functions, you’re starting to understand Vi.Īs Al pointed out, vi and Vim (henceforth Vim, because it’s got some neat extras that I really miss in plain-old vi) use the concept of modes. If you try to use it like a normal text editor, you will suffer. It’s a programming language for editing text that’s disguised as an editor. If you’re comfortable using Pico or Nano or Joe or Notepad++ or Gedit or Kate, or anything else for that matter, you can be comfortable using Emacs in a month or so. Vi and Vim are so strange, so different from any other editor you might use, that it makes Emacs look simply boring in comparison: it’s just a normal editor with decent extensibility (if you can stand Lisp), horrible key combinations that may or may not cause carpal tunnel syndrome, and code bloat that rivals Microsoft Word. You see, vi-versus-Emacs is a red herring. That idea is silly anyway, and was probably invented by Emacs folks to steal some of vi’s limelight. The reason I’m writing this is not to perpetuate the vi-versus-Emacs war. Heck, I don’t consider myself a Vim master, but I’m going to write this overwrought essay praising it (using Vim, naturally). And unless you’ve spent the last few years alone in a cave high in the Himalayas, with only food, drink, a laptop, and Vim Golf, you probably don’t either. Seven sentences! Steam is pouring out of my ears like Yosemite Sam.Īl, like a lot of you out there, thinks that he “knows how to use vi”. While attempting to be “impartial” he gave a seven-sentence summary of Vim, the Ultimate Editor. Rarely on these pages have I read such a fluff piece! Al Williams’ coverage of Emacs versus Vim was an affront to the type of in-depth coverage our Hackaday readers deserve.
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