60
votes
Accepted
Navigation in insert mode
There are many options you have. One option, and IMO the sanest and easiest is to just stop disabling the arrow keys. I understand why many hardcore vimmers say things like
You should never ever use ...
- 17.8k
35
votes
Accepted
Trying to move away from arrow keys in normal/insert/visual mode, but small text inserts are killing me!
I believe that the art of Vim has nothing to do with disallowing any tools available for you, but rather finding the best (i.e., most efficient) path to altering text. The truth is that sometimes the ...
- 716
24
votes
Navigation in insert mode
I like to use the Control key to turn the hjkl movement keys into "universal" movement keys. Here's the relevant bit of my .vimrc:
" In insert or command mode, move normally by using Ctrl
inoremap &...
- 649
13
votes
Accepted
move forward by a certain number of chars or bytes?
To go to the Nth byte in the file: use :go N, :Ngo, or Ngo (normal mode).
To move N bytes ahead, you could use something like this :exe 'go' line2byte(line("."))+col(".")-1+N
Unless you have ...
- 14.2k
12
votes
Accepted
Jump to Next Number
Ctrl+A and Ctrl+X will both jump the cursor to the next number on the line.
However, the former will increment the number and the latter will decrement it. You don't want to make any changes, so you ...
- 32.4k
11
votes
Jump to Next Number
To summarize the comments and make this a full answer:
The general search command is shortest: /\d<Enter>. You can then repeat the search with n / N, as usual. To skip to the next full number, ...
- 17.9k
11
votes
Accepted
How to navigate long lines like separate lines?
You can use the gj and gk commands to move the cursor to the character in the next or previous display lines, even when lines wrap.
See :help gj and :help gk for details.
If you would like to ...
- 13.8k
10
votes
Navigation in insert mode
If you just need to modify a small amount of text or a word, you can use <Ctrl-O>h/j/k/l.
<Ctrl-O> takes you back to Normal mode just for that command, and then drops you back into insert ...
- 911
10
votes
Accepted
Swap two shortcuts
Yes. You can change just about anything you want to change in Vim.
Just do
nnoremap <C-f> <C-b>
nnoremap <C-b> <C-f>
Add those two mappings in your vimrc file and you've ...
- 1,079
10
votes
Accepted
Show Outline of Code
This is possible with Tagbar plugin, which use ctags to generate the tags. Used in collaboration with Universal Ctags, it supports various langages.
- 413
9
votes
Accepted
Brace { } navigation without opening folds
Thanks to @romainl for this answer on super user. I couldn't have written this without their help!
You can use the foldopen option to determine which set of motions will or won't open a fold. From :h ...
- 17.8k
9
votes
Trying to move away from arrow keys in normal/insert/visual mode, but small text inserts are killing me!
My solution is to use everything vim offers me: HJKL, /, FftT, {n}w/b/e, ^, $, %, [], ][, [{, and also arrow keys, control arrow keys, home, end, Pg Up and Down, the mouse...
Arrow keys and hjkl are ...
- 17.7k
7
votes
Accepted
How to show the current location in a yaml hierarchy
The right way to do it would be to use an external program if the markup language presents a complex structure or particular edge cases, like the bunch of tools you can find for JSON.
Though YAML ...
- 1,636
7
votes
Accepted
Go forward to first alphabetic character
Based on DLMcMMayhem's hint, I found that following search will do what you need:
/\A*\zs\a
\A* searches for zero or more non-alphabetic characters (equivalent to [^A-Za-z])
\a searches for any ...
- 284
7
votes
Accepted
How do I jump to the next line with the same indent level?
I think that some plugins might do what you want: they create text objects based on the indentation and then let you navigate between these text objects.
But installing a plugin just for that is not ...
- 50.4k
7
votes
Navigation in insert mode
Hit esc then use hjkl and wWbB and any other navigations you would like to make. The whole point of hard mode is to get you to learn to navigate with more complex vim motions. Make small edits then ...
- 416
7
votes
List of buffers in view pane
You can use GVim on Windows so Vim is not really a valid reason for switching to Linux.
You can display a list of buffers with :ls.
For the last time: Read The Fantastic Manual.
- 41.8k
7
votes
How to jump to the previous location in the same file?
FYI I wrote this before the question was updated to make it clear that OP wants to jump to the previous location repeatedly. Given that this answer still addresses the question asked in the subject ...
- 20k
7
votes
Accepted
Moving up and down wrapped lines
You can move up and down between the "display lines" of a wrapped line with the gj and gk normal mode commands.
If you find this unintuitive, a fairly common mapping is to swap these with ...
- 32.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Improve `gf` such that it would jump to the exact line, if possible
What you want already exists: :help gF.
Note that gF behaves like gf in the absence of a line number so you can default to gF if you don't want to think too much about which command to use in which ...
- 41.8k
6
votes
List of buffers in view pane
I would also add that in gVim you can get a very close approximation to this feature. If you click on the buffers menu item and then click the "tear off" (--✂-----) button. It opens up a little window ...
- 7,776
6
votes
Accepted
moving through the doc, caret staying centered
You're looking for :h 'scrolloff':
'scrolloff' 'so' number (default 0)
global
Minimal number of screen lines to keep above and below the cursor.
So you can add something like ...
- 50.4k
6
votes
Why isn't this implemented by default in vim? (line by line Scroll)
*CTRL-D*
CTRL-D Scroll window Downwards in the buffer. The number of
lines comes from the 'scroll' option (default: half a
screen). <b>If [count] given, first ...
- 6,318
6
votes
Trying to move away from arrow keys in normal/insert/visual mode, but small text inserts are killing me!
In general I try to stay out of insert mode as much as is humanly possible. (A fact I alluded to in the comments.) Most of the time, for lots of small edits I make to nearby lines, I will endeavour to ...
- 32.4k
6
votes
How can I find the function name while navigating code?
The simplest solution is to find the first unindented line that starts with a letter (by the way, this is exactly what diff -p does).
I'm sure I borrowed this trick somewhere, but I can't remember the ...
- 21.3k
5
votes
Navigate to tag in a new tab if not already opened, like `tab drop`?
Put this in your vimrc:
map <C-]> :TabExpand 1<CR>
command -nargs=1 TabExpand call HandleTabTagExpand( <f-args> )
let s:commentchar = """
function HandleTabTagExpand(tagnumber)
...
- 436
5
votes
Accepted
How to jump to the previous location in the same file?
The built-in jump-motions do not differentiate betweeen buffer-local and "remote" jumps, they just move along the jumplist. You need a custom solution that parses and filters the jumplist.
My ...
- 17.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Fastest way to navigate various points in vim
I'd like to primarily challenge the premise of your question/challenge/race:
What would be the fastest that someone could get to those four locations in vim?
When you're editing text, you're not ...
- 29.6k
5
votes
Accepted
How can I make zz not center cursor when approaching end of file?
If you're willing to bring a function into the mix I whipped this up...
func! ModifiedZZ()
" modify to your liking
let l:max_pad_lines = 10
norm! zz
let l:to_scr_end = winheight(...
- 20k
5
votes
Accepted
Skip to next batch of search results (or find next non-match)?
I was trying to come up with something fairly short and found this novel approach (novel to me anyways...I'd never tried it before).
There is an inverse counterpart to :g (global command): :v. This ...
- 20k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible