Vim Cheat Sheet

Vim is hard. Vim is scary. So was Git the first time I used it. If you stick with it, you’ll never want to use another text editor. Also see my vimrc if you’re into that kind of thing.

General

• :edit reloads the current file
• ctrl-e open/close NERDTree sidebar

Selecting

• vip visually select the current paragraph

Line breaking

• gqq breaks lines so they don’t exceed 80 characters, AWESOME!
• gqip break lines for the current paragraph
• :set textwidth=80 super handy for auto line breaking, use with gqq too

Sorting

• :sort sort all lines by string, works over visual selects too
• :sort n sort by number
• :sort /*.\~/ sort by anything after the first instance of ~

Folding

• :set foldmethod=indent turn on folding by indentation
• zM fold everything
• zR unfold everything

Searching

• :set smartcase case sensitive if you use caps, otherwise not recommended
• :set ignorecase makes searching case insensitive by default
• :set number shows line numbers
• :noh clears you last / search

Indentation

• :set expandtab=false use real tabs
• :set expandtab=true use spaces instead of tabs
• :set tabstop=2 my personal favorites
• :set shiftwidth=2 my personal favorites
• :retab change existing tab characters to spaces depending on expandtab

Copy / paste

• "ay yanks your selection into register a
• "ap pastes the contents of register a
• :reg displays the contents of named registers

Key binding

• imap ii <esc> bind the key combo ii to the escape key

Screen movement

• zz center the screen on your cursor
• zb make the bottom of your screen flush with your cursor
• zt make the top of your screen flush with your cursor

Etcetera

Add autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.jade set filetype=jade to .vimrc to ensure .jade files have their type set correctly. Works for other stuff too.