tdtdt/pages/vimavim.md

title : VIM basics author: zvevqx published: 2025-11-22 cat: linux desc: ws

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👾 MOST OF THIS PAGE IS DIRECT OUTPUT OF CHATGPT 3.5

Vim Editor

Vim is a powerful and popular text editor that runs in the command-line interface. It is known for its efficient and customizable editing features that allow users to edit text with speed and precision.

Main Vim Operations

Operation	Shortcut	Description
Navigation
Move left	h	Move the cursor left.
Move down	j	Move the cursor down.
Move up	k	Move the cursor up.
Move right	l	Move the cursor right.
Move forward one word	w	Move forward one word.
Move backward one word	b	Move backward one word.
Move to end of line	$	Move to the end of the current line.
Move to beginning	0	Move to the beginning of the current line.
Move to end of file	G	Move to the end of the file.
Move to beginning of file	gg	Move to the beginning of the file.
Move to specific line	<line_number>G	Move to a specific line number.
Move to matching bracket	%	Move to the matching parenthesis, bracket, or brace.
Move to paragraph start	{	Move to the beginning of the current paragraph.
Move to paragraph end	}	Move to the end of the current paragraph.
Move half a page up	Ctrl+u	Move half a page up.
Move half a page down	Ctrl+d	Move half a page down.
Editing
Insert before cursor	i	Insert text before the cursor.
Insert at line start	I	Insert text at the beginning of the current line.
Append after cursor	a	Append text after the cursor.
Append at line end	A	Append text at the end of the current line.
Open line below cursor	o	Open a new line below the current line and enter insert mode.
Open line above cursor	O	Open a new line above the current line and enter insert mode.
Delete character	x	Delete the character under the cursor.
Delete current line	dd	Delete the current line.
Yank (copy) current line	yy	Yank (copy) the current line.
Paste after cursor	p	Paste the yanked text after the cursor.
Paste before cursor	P	Paste the yanked text before the cursor.
Undo	u	Undo the last change.
Redo	Ctrl+r	Redo the last change.
Search and Replace
Search forward	/search_term	Search forward for "search_term."
Search backward	?search_term	Search backward for "search_term."
Move to next search result	n	Move to the next search result.
Move to previous search result	N	Move to the previous search result.
Replace on current line	:s/search_term/replacement	Replace "search_term" with "replacement" on the current line.
Global replace	:%s/search_term/replacement/g	Replace "search_term" with "replacement" globally in the file.
Turn off search highlighting	:noh	Turn off search result highlighting.
Saving and Quitting
Save	:w	Save the current file.
Save as	:w filename	Save the current file as "filename."
Quit	:q	Quit Vim.
Quit without saving	:q!	Quit Vim without saving changes.
Save and quit	:wq	Save changes and quit Vim.
Visual Mode
Enter visual mode	v	Enter visual mode to select text.
Enter visual line mode	V	Enter visual line mode to select lines.
Enter visual block mode	Ctrl+v	Enter visual block mode to select rectangular blocks of text.

some more advance mouvments

Page and Line Movement Shortcuts in Vim

Vim provides a rich set of keyboard shortcuts for efficient page and line movement within a text document. Below is a table of these shortcuts:

Shortcut	Description
Page Movement
Page down	Ctrl+f or Space
Page up	Ctrl+b or Ctrl+u
Half a page down	Ctrl+d
Half a page up	Ctrl+u
Go to next page	Ctrl+d or Ctrl+f
Go to previous page	Ctrl+u or Ctrl+b
Line Movement
Move to beginning of line	0 or ^
Move to end of line	$
Move to next line	j or ↓
Move to previous line	k or ↑
Move down by n lines	n + j or n + ↓
Move up by n lines	n + k or n + ↑
Move to specific line	:<line_number> or G + g + :<line_number>
Scrolling
Scroll the screen up	Ctrl+y
Scroll the screen down	Ctrl+e
Center the screen	Ctrl+l
Move to the top	H
Move to the middle	M
Move to the bottom	L
Jumping
Jump to beginning of file	gg
Jump to end of file	G
Jump to line in the middle	M + G
Jump to last edit	' + .