All Questions

It seems like any time I edit a file with gvim it creates a litany of files I don't want or seem to need. I understand the <filename>.~ files are backups of the file before I started editing and ...

I quite often use the :registers command to show the contents of all the registers (I forget what I put where, exactly what the role of "*, "., "%, etc. are). Especially because I set the " option in ...

After I've been working on a project for a while, I start to see large gaps between consecutive buffer numbers. This is because the buffers in between them were wiped out for various reasons. ...

When I need to reopen vim for some reason (vim updated, reboot, etc), I need to manually open a bunch of buffers when I start up. Is there some way I can save the current set of buffers open in some ...

When working on a feature branch in git, I frequently need to stash my changes to commit a bug fix to the main branch. When I'm done working on the changes, I git stash pop, which updates the ...

Vim has an Ex mode that can be entered by entering Q, and a command line mode that can be entered with q:. A common complaint amongst new vim users is that they enter these modes accidentally when ...

It's pretty common when programming or opening text files to encounter files with trailing whitespace at the end of a line. vim has a way to show this by setting the trail option in the listchars ...

Quite often I am working with files that are version controlled, so it is possible for changes to be made to them outside of Vim. What is a quick way to reload the file without having to close and ...

For example if I copy several lines of text and open a brand new file. If I paste with p, then I get an empty line above the pasted text, and if I paste with P, I get an empty line below the pasted ...

The standard J command for joining lines replaces the newline character(s) with a space. It's useful when editing 'literature' but can be troublesome if I, say, edit a hex dump by hand if I forget to ...

Occasionally, when I'm searching the help system for a particular topic, it will be shadowed by a different topic. For example, if I do :h display I get help for something involving "GUI Resources", ...

When I write an answer on this site, I often want to link to a part of Vim's :help pages; http://vimhelp.appspot.com/ has an online version of that. However, I'm too lazy to manually lookup the page ...

If I do: $ less file And press q to exit less, I stil see the same text as I had on the screen when less was still running. However, if I do $ vim file And :q, my terminal is blanked... ...

Sometimes I have selected a visual selection with, for example, Vjjjjj, only to realize later that I should have started the selection one line higher. However, pressing k simply decreases the lower ...

When I work on files in python, I sometimes mistake tabs for spaces and vice versa. Is there a way I can get Vim to display a character for a tab instead of a tab?

For some reason or another I often divide the code into subsections separated by headers like these: ################################################################################ ##################...

Vim is so infinitely configurable. However, devising a vimrc is a daunting task for novices and intermediate users. Basically, you're expected to develop one from a blank slate by reading the ...

I've sometimes tried invoking Vim using xargs, like this: find . -name '*.java' | xargs vim … which kind of works: As Vim launches, I see the following warning flash briefly: Vim: Warning: Input ...

I'm trying to retrain my fingers to refrain from using Escape so often. Can I disable Escape when I'm in insert mode, leaving just Control+[ and Control+C as the only ways to return to normal mode? ...

Because of Vim's modes, there is not a lot of holding down the Ctrl key while pressing another key. However ,in insert (or replace) mode, Ctrl+R will let you paste a register, and Ctrl+V lets you ...

Various plain-text markup languages: reStructuredText, Markdown, asciidoc (others too), use an underline to denote titles. Chapter 1 Title =============== Section 1.1 Title ----------------- ...

I love vim, I love python, and I dislike vimscript. So I would like to know how to write plugins (or throwaway scripts) for vim in python. Of course, the first reference should be :h python, but I ...

So a while ago I had decided to learn more about how vim's syntax files work, by creating my own. My goal was to create a simple syntax file that would split the file into 3 parts based on delimiters,...

The vimwiki plugin offers a great feature of converting whole Wiki to HTML: :VimwikiAll2HTML. But it bothers me that there are no back links to the main page, and the only way to navigate back to the ...

I have been looking at the different package managers for vim and the one I decided to use vim-plug but I have seen others like pathogen and vundle and I honestly don't know what the difference is. ...

Pressing Ctrl-w in Insert mode will delete the previous word. It is equivalent to Ctrl-Backspace in Windows, and Opt-Delete in OS X, and really speeds up typing. Vim has the separate concepts of word ...

After almost every time I type something in caps, I forget to turn off capslock when returning to normal mode. I then try to move the cursor and end up joining a bunch of lines and a lot of other ...

Sometimes I use :s with a complicated regexp which may or may not be correct, or aren't sure if I want to replace all matches. Is there any way I can tell Vim to confirm every match it finds before ...

If I encrypt a file with :set cryptmethod=blowfish or :set cryptmethod=blowfish2, and open the file in Vim, it asks for my password on startup. I type in the correct password and continue happily. ...

I am looking for a possible solution for applying two different background colors inside a single vim buffer depending on context like in this sublime text example. One use case of that is to color ...

I know using :set cryptmethod=zip is not secure, but how secure is using :set cryptmethod=blowfish? On wikipedia I read that the blowfish cipher, as such, should be secure, but this says nothing ...

Here is (part of) a table I use in some documentation: +---------------+------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | TASK NAME | WHEN | DESCRIPTION ...

Vim keeps a history of ex commands (accessible via :↑ and q:), and that history persists after quitting. If I run multiple instances of Vim (same user, same home directory), how does Vim arbitrate ...

I know I can browse Vim help with :help, but this opens a split. Sometimes, I just like to study documentation. How read documentation in a "full screen" mode?

When coding in different languages, I tend to need to restrict my lines to a specific length (usually 79 or 80 characters). I've seen this done in other editors through the use of a ruler (solid line ...

For example, if I have some JavaScript code like this: var widget = library() .chainCall1() .chainCall2() .chainCall3(); If I use the = command to auto indent it, it comes out looking this ...

Is there a way to edit binary files in some kind of hexadecimal mode? For example if I have some binary data shown by xxd or hexdump -C like this: $ hexdump -C a.bin | head -n 5 00000000 cf fa ed ...

Is it possible to edit a file under different settings at the same time? More precisely, I'd like to have multiple buffers in the same instance of Vim which have the same content (changing one buffer ...

On some unixes sometime I found a command named nvi. It was a vi-like editor, without much of its functionality. Maybe it was a fork of the old vi? Anyways, which vi versions are a fork of the others,...

I just noticed that my trackpad scroll works in Vim, inertia and all. I'd like to change this to work horizontally - so I can scroll up and down to make the cursor move left-and-right instead of ...

I've heard rumours about Vim having some hidden "easter eggs" and jokes. Is this true? What are they?

If I'm using a build of Vim with the xterm_clipboard feature then the system clipboard content is available through the + register. If the build I'm using doesn't have this feature, can I make the "+ ...

In various editors one can mark a block of code and with a shortcut, comment it right away. Is there a possible way to do it in Vim without an extra plugin? If not, which plugin or script would you ...

I want to have a quick way of setting the Vim 'paste' option, inserting some text, and reverting to the previous value of 'paste'. A typical use case insert the OS clipboard content literally, ...

Many answers make reference to a "paste buffer" or a "search buffer". Can someone provide a quick primer on what types of buffer there are? Are they interchangeable? Or is it something different?

What are some of the ways to construct autocommand groups in the .vimrc? What is the benefit of grouping autocommands? Can you provide some materials on proper use of autocommand groups? Any help here ...

Something I've found useful in other editors is the ability to: take the selected text run an external command and pass the selection to its stdin take the external commands stdout and replace the ...

Some applications have the notion of a "session", where you can run a command to load a file in an existing instance of an application. For example, when I type: $ firefox http://vi.stackexchange....

When I open vim with multiple files (vim f1 f2 ...), how can I make it open them in tabs directly, without using -p? I'm looking to separate out shell behaviour from vim behaviour, removing vim-based ...

I'm trying to create a script for performing fuzzy search inside a buffer. The main idea is to take some input, and insert .\{-} between every pair of characters, e.g. foo becomes f.\{-}o.\{-}o. This ...