Useful Vim commands for developers

I’m always on the look for new Vim tips and tricks, so here’s a new lot. Most of them are from this presentation but these are the ones I want to start using.

Marks

• m<letter> – bookmark named letter
• `<letter> – jumps to that bookmark
• '<letter> – jumps to line with the bookmark
• :marks – show current marks

Handy example:

ma #=> set a mark
c`a #=> change text from cursor to mark a
d`a #=> delete text from cursor to mark a
y`a #=> yank text from cursor to mark a
=`a #=> reformat lines from current to the one with mark a

• `` – moves you between the last two locations

Text objects

They are complicated things which I probably thought I will never need, so here’s a Vim help link: :help text-objects. One useful tip:

• ci{ – change text inside {} block
  Or, obviously, di{, yi{, ci( – you get the idea.

Undo – simple version

• u – undo
• CTRL + R – redo

Complex version: If you undo something and make a change, a new branch is created, so then you can do this:

• g-, g+ – go to newer/older text state (through branches)
• :earlier Ns,m,h – go to text state as it was N seconds/minutes/hours ago
• :later Ns,m,h
• :undolist – lists changes

Tabs

• gt, gT – move around tabs

Completion

There are many types of completion and you can read about them under :help completion, but this is probably most useful:

• CTRL + N – complete with keywords in the current file

You can also use omnicompletion, triggered by CTRL + X CTRL + O, but it doesn’t seem to be working for me.

Open file under cursor

gf, that’s easy. However, you can also do this: CTRL + W, CTRL + F and bang! split window open. This alone is the best tip in this post.