What is the difference between j, CTRL-J, <NL> and CTRL-N in normal mode?

Question

I saw somewhere on the web someone using Ctrl-J and as I didn't know this mapping I looked up in the relevant doc and found the following:

j           or
<Down>      or
CTRL-J      or
<NL>        or
CTRL-N          [count] lines downward linewise.

Which leads me to several questions:

• What is <NL>: I would see it as an equivalent of <CR> since pressing Enter will go down one line in normal mode by default but why is it <NL> here and not <CR>?
• What is the difference between these mappings: Do all of these 5 options go one line down in the same way? According to my tests I would answer yes but that would lead to my next question.
• Why are there 5 mappings to do the exact same thing: I can understand that j and <down> are kept for users who are not used to vim mappings, but why do the other mappings exist?
• When is it more interesting to use one more than the other: That is a continuation of the previous question: if there is so many possibilities I guess that they have different advantages or are better to use in specific use cases. What are those use cases?

I find the redundancy of these commands even more strange when I look at :h k: there are only 3 ways to go up: k, <UP> and ctrl-p. So the bonus question is: Why are there 5 ways to go down and only 3 to go up?

Answer 1

Interesting that you mentioned <CR>. <CR> or carriage return, technically used to mean go to the start of the line. <NL>, or newline aka line feed (usually called LF), was used to mean go to the next line. Over time, the distinction was lost in most applications.¹ Pressing Enter actually yields a carriage return, usually (try pressing CtrlVEnter - you should see ^M in Unix terminals). <NL>'s control code is CtrlJ.

CtrlN surprised me. According to man ascii², it is a shift out character:

Oct   Dec   Hex   Char                        Oct   Dec   Hex   Char
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
016   14    0E    SO  (shift out)             116   78    4E    N

The shift in and shift out characters, according to Wikipedia:

... provided a way to shift, hence the nomenclature, a coloured ribbon, split longitudinally usually with red and black, up and down to the other colour in an electro-mechanical typewriter or teleprinter ...

How it ended up meaning go down is a mystery to me.

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Why are there 5 ways to go down and only 3 to go up?

Well, the three ways to go up all have corresponding ways to go down. (CtrlP presumably is the complement of CtrlN, implying that the shift in/out is not relevant here). The extra two ways down (<NL> or CtrlJ) are actually two representations of the same way. <NL> is an inheritance from the typewriter days - and in those days, I don't think there was a key to go up - only to go down.

See also:

• What are carriage return, linefeed, and form feed?

^{1 It still matters in some cases (printing \r (carriage return) and \n (line feed) using most formatted printing functions/tools still retain the old meaning.).}

^{2 This table is arranged in such a manner that the alphabet corresponds to the control code of the character on the same line.}

Answer 2

See :help key-notation.

1. <NL> means "linefeed" and <CR> means "carriage return".

   Those are two different ways to break the current line. They are historically bound to different control characters (ctrl-j and ctrl-m) but are usually inserted with the same key, <CR>. I agree that using <NL> in this context seems counterintuitive.

2. All those "mappings" (they are not actually mappings) behave exactly the same way.

3. History, mostly, also cross-platform constraints.

   There were no dedicated motion keys Bill Joy's terminal but the arrows decals were on the hjkl keys. Since modal editors were rare at the time, pressing those keys only inserted the associated character in whatever you were doing. You had to press <C-h>, <C-j>, <C-k> and <C-l> to move the cursor on the screen.

   As you can see, there's quite an overlap between j, <C-j>, <NL> and <Down>. <C-n> generally meaning "next" in Vim, it's easy to see how it got lumped together with its comrades.

4. Since they are all synonymous, you are free to use the one that works best for you.

   <CR>, for example, is an interesting key to use for your own mappings.