This cheat sheet provides essential Vim commands to enhance your text editing productivity. Learn shortcuts for common tasks like copying, deleting, replacing, and commenting lines efficiently.

External Resources:

• Vim Devhints
• Vim Wiki
• Official Vim Documentation

Copying Lines

To duplicate a line you are currently on:

yyp

To copy a block of text:

1. Enter visual mode by pressing v.
2. Use direction arrows to highlight the desired text.
3. Press y to copy the highlighted selection.
4. Move to the desired insertion point.
5. Press p to paste.

Deleting Text

To delete the current line:

dd

To delete all text from the cursor to the end of the file:

dG

To delete all text from the cursor to the beginning of the file:

dH

To delete a specified number of lines below the cursor (e.g., 10 lines):

10dd

To delete the first N characters of every line (e.g., first 4 characters):

:%s/^.\{0,4\}//

Example:

>>> class HashTable:
...     def __init__(self):
...         self.size = 256
...         self.slots = [None for i in range(self.size)]
...         self.count = 0

After applying the command:

class HashTable:
    def __init__(self):
        self.size = 256
        self.slots = [None for i in range(self.size)]
        self.count = 0

Replacing Characters and Text

Normal Mode Function: Find and Replace

Consider the following dataset:

123. 123
233. 123

To replace the period (.) with a comma (,) on each line:

:%norm f.C,

Result:

123, 123
233, 123

Commenting Lines

1. Enter visual line mode by pressing Shift + v.
2. Move down using arrow keys to select the lines you want to comment.
3. Press Shift + I to enter insert mode at the beginning of each selected line.
4. Type the comment character (e.g., #).
5. Press Esc to exit insert mode and apply the comment to all selected lines.

Search and Replace (e.g., replace 'true' with 'false')

:%s/true/false/g

Press Enter to execute the replacement globally on all lines.