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Vim

Cancel edit​

u - Undo last change.

. - Redo last change.

Copy & paste​

Command Y or yy copies (yanks) one or more lines. The following variants are available:

yw  # Copy from cursor to the end of word.
y$  # Copy from cursor to the end of the line.
Y   # Copy one line.
2Y  # Copy two lines.
10Y # Copy ten lines.
yG  # Copy all lines to the end of the file.

Paste the text contained in the buffer.

P # Paste line above or characters before cursor.
p # Paste line below or characters after cursor.

Delete operations​

D  # Delete from cursor to the end of the line.
dG # Delete to the end of file.
dd # Delete line where the cursor is.
x  # Delete one character.

List loaded plugins​

:scriptnames

Load output of terminal command​

head -5 file | vim -
tip

It can then be modified and saved to a new file using :w /path/to/newFile.

Move cursor to another window (cycle)​

Ctrl+W Ctrl+W

Open terminal without closing Vim​

:sh
  • Ctrl+D or exit can be used to return to the editor.

Quit​

Shift+ZZ or :wq - Saving changes.

Shift+ZQ or :q! - Without saving.

Replace all instances of regex with string​

:%s/regEx/string/g
tip
  • Append i to the command for a case insensitive match.
  • c to confirm each substitution.
  • Remove % to replace only on the current line and g to replace only the first occurrence.
  • Without a preceding \\ some regular expression special characters like {} and + are taken literally (basic regular expressions).

/regEx - Forward search.

?regEx - Backward search.

tip

Press n to go to the next occurrence, N to the previous one.

Select text using the mouse​

Hold Ctrl+Alt.

Split window​

:split file - Split window horizontally and load another file.

:vsplit file - Vertical division.

Switch modes​

Insert/i - From Command mode to Edit mode.

Esc - From Edit mode to Command mode.