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I'm kinda new to vim, and I wanted to play with macros.

I wrote a bunch to fit with my previous muscle memory, including this one:

 imap <C-i> <ESC>m`$a<CR><ESC>==k``i

The intended behavior was to create a line below the cursor, but keep editing the line. First it never really worked, and second, I could isolate this line of being responsible of something strange:

As soon as I add it, the Tab button is having exactly the same behavior as the CTRL+i button in edition mode. I may miss something obvious, would anyone have any idea?

THanks

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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First you might want to read :h o and :h O which are built-in command to add new lines in normal mode.

In insert mode these mappings are what you are trying to do (see :h i_CTRL-O):

inoremap <c-k> <c-o>O
inoremap <c-j> <c-o>o

Now about why your tab key stops working: it is because your terminal sends the same keycode for <c-i> and tab. You can see it in insert mode by pressing ctrl+vctrl+i and ctrl+vtab. (See :h i_CTRL-V).

I made this answer some time ago to help people debug this kind of problems.

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  • Huh wait I expressed myself wrong. What I want to do is to insert a line above/below without moving the cursor (it should stay in the same place in the line) nor quitting the insert mode.
    – Loic Coenen
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 21:02
  • @LoicCoenen, the best way to insert blank lines without moving the cursor (and without any side effect) is with i_CTRL+O + append(). See this answer: vi.stackexchange.com/a/10892/626
    – Luc Hermitte
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 15:06

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