Vim Tips I Wish I Knew Earlier

[@dexedrine404]

Timestamps: 0:24 - Relative line numbers 2:26 - Mapping Esc to Caps Lock 3:22 - :norm 4:41 - C-v (similar to :norm A & I) 6:04 - in(de)crement numbers with C-a / C-x 8:36 - using o to change visual select direction 9:24 - % for jump to matching pair: ({[ 11:04 - i / a (inside / outisde) 13:55 - W vs w 15:51 - Invoking external scripts/binaries 19:08 - Creating (dynamic) snippets 20:25 - Using netrw/fzf/search

[@pypypy4228]

do the timestamps in the description to the vid and your video would be nicely divided into navigable chapters

[@andreasplata]

@@pypypy4228 The man needs watch-time... ;)

[@GOTHICforLIFE1]

highly recommend placing some segments and timestamps on these videos, as you rarely have everything being new for Vim users. That way we can easily click to those points that might apply.

[@pldvs]

Has to be the most underrated piece of software ever. I'll never go back.

[@flflflflflfl]

You think vim is underrated???

[@excel9566]

i'm sorry

[@pldvs]

@@flflflflflfl By people who prefer nano.

[@flflflflflfl]

@@pldvs ok but that's that's like, 7 people

[@pldvs]

@@flflflflflfl I think you'd be surprised.

[@דניאלאביב-ו6ת]

One very helpful keybinding in vim, is Ctrl+R in insert mode, when pressing it you are able to paste directly from some register. I was finding my self a lot of the times, just pressing escape to go into normal mode, and press p (to paste) and i again to move to insert mode. It is very helpful...

[@yash1152]

thanks if it works. will try it next time i get my hands on nvim.

[@adammontgomery7980]

Nice, I like ctrl-o to go back to the last place you jumped from. It's a lot easier than moving from buffer to buffer or setting marks.

[@BarraIhsan]

thank you!

[@michaelroditis1952]

u is undo ctr+r is redo, "+p pastes from the clipboard

[@polic72andDrD3ath]

Something else really cool you can do in this vein is Ctrl + o while in insert mode. It will take you to normal mode for a single command then jump you right back to insert mode. I use "Ctrl + o, p" all the time.

[@andrewiglinski148]

Dude I've been using vim for almost 2 years and you're the first person that's actually taught me something new past the first month of this endeavor.

[@nahblue]

I've been using vim for 15 years and I learned something new from the video

[@LeviNotik]

Great video, nicely done. Didn't know about o for adjusting the visual selection. I've always cancelled and started from scratch when I screwed up. No longer!

[@Yeet_the_code]

Set environment variable "EDITOR=vim" or whatever you like Write some command in your bash terminal and press (CTRL + X & CTRL + E) This allows you to modify the command you want to write by opening up the command in your "$EDITOR" Especially useful when writing commands that you want to split over multiple lines, but still be executed as if it was all in one command. Or just want to get some syntax highlighting in your favorite text editor. Most people might already know this... but if you don't, you're welcome.

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Yes, been using that in my zsh/vi-mode setup, very helpful!

[@ivanheffner2587]

Got a typo in your previous command (or just want to edit it and run the new command)? Try `fc` to “fix command” using your $FCEDIT editor.

[@teohz]

One of my favourites has to be a way to "encase" text in quotes/braces/etc: replace the text either after selecting in visual or with motions, i.e. cw {" " "} --- the " after ctrl+r pastes the text you just cut from the " register.

[@ElPikacupacabra]

...noice 😮

[@SlothWindGod]

Couldn't you just use "p" to paste the text instead as by default it pasted from the " register?

[@ElPikacupacabra]

@@SlothWindGod You can, but you have to exit insert mode and navigate back two characters before pressing "p". About the same.

[@SlothWindGod]

@@ElPikacupacabra ctrl + o to perform a command from insert mode means you don't have to navigate out of it

[@ElPikacupacabra]

@@SlothWindGod You're not in the correct position I think 🤔. But many ways to skin a cat

[@Snollygoster-]

Vertical visual mode with the multi cursor was the only thing I saw an emacs user have that I wanted, and vim turns out to have it too. It's such a nice experience using that. Absolute chad developers.

[@yash1152]

how multiple cursor?

[@levonschaftin3676]

@@yash1152 how english?

[@yash1152]

@@levonschaftin3676 not matters for me. u do u. ppl dont respect my-lang, i won't respect theirs. simple-that. > _"how english?"_

[@radicalchange9403]

how mad?

[@NguyenHoang-uf1kt]

I’ve been using Vim for the past few weeks, and you’ve saved me months or even years of learning. Thank you, Sebastian!

[@catfan5618]

2:59 Mapping escape to caps lock is pretty easy on every major operating system. Under MacOS its under Settings/Keyboard/Modifier Keys and under Windows you can install PowerToys by Microsoft and do it under Keyboard manager/Remap a key. I highly recommend doing this.

[@EmielvanGoor]

What the...! I absolutely love that :norm command! I didn't knew it was that easy! Thanks a lot Sebastian.

[@pldcanfly]

Yep! Gamechanger!... And here I was q-macro record such things and then @q all the lines or do some fancy recursive things. This makes things so much more easy!

[@EmielvanGoor]

@@pldcanfly I did exactly the same!

[@vutranang8053]

true, that :norm blow my mind

[@SethMilliken]

Another nice one with some of the text-objects (i.e. va", vi

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Oh nice, thanks!

[@zyriab5797]

You can use i/a with a lot of stuff: f = function p = paragraph t = HTML tag And probably a ton I don't know about

[@nahblue]

f requires treesitter and neovim- I think?

[@vikingthedude]

@@nahblueyes

[@sutirk]

Function, class, conditional and other programming specific objects require treesitter or something similar. But you can get away with { or B, and ( or b in vim. Quite helpful. See :help objects

[@nahblue]

I like automatic session saving, that's the big one I've learned recently. Didn't get into it until it was automatic in some neovim config I was using. It always saves your session on exit, and when starting vim there's an *option* to resume the session by pressing a keybinding - and it knows which session based on which directory you are in.

[@sambrown7691]

Im watching this by myself in my car and you had me yelling "WHAT?!" and dropping my jaw like half a dozen times. Fantastic stuff absolutely taking some notes on this

[@QuinlanShanley]

Long time vim user and I learned a couple new tricks. Great video. Subbed. Look forward to seeing more of your videos.

[@DanAlmenar]

sessions and copy-paste to/from clipboard (I don't have clipboard support) has been my newest tools for vim

[@aksh1618]

Nice tips, subscribed! One suggestion for such videos: you need to code in the memory of these things otherwise anyone will forget them 5 minutes after watching! The way I remember these is how the creators of vim motions intended it: by looking at the meaning of the letters, such [o] for [O]ther end of highlighted text, and [a] for [A]round.

[@julian-fricker]

Been using vi/vim/neovim since 1992 and still learn new things from this kind of video, o especially. What are you using for the markdown headings to be shown at the top of your screen as you scroll down? This was in the section about relative line numbers.

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

That's the 'wellle/context.vim' plugin

[@jimcarroll9738]

@@SebastianDaschnerIT for whatever reason I was able to install 'wellle/context.vim' (Lazy) but couldn't get it working with an example Markdown file (such as you demonstrated). Stumbled across 'nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter-context' and installed that instead. All sorted now.

[@creativenull]

I've know almost all of them for a while, but these are some great tips! For me, I had to turn off relative numbers because it was not great for pair programming with a colleague when they had to point out at what line should a change go, etc, but overall is a nice feature that I like One thing I learned from this was the `o` in visual mode, that's actually pretty neat I think I might start using that instead of thinking about where to start the highlighting from and to, everyday you learn something new in vim 😅

[@inertia_dagger]

you can execute your line number in ex mode, for example :141 would go to line 141

[@zyriab5797]

You can also type `141G` :)

[@creativenull]

@@inertia_dagger That I know but not what I meant. For example, when I'm pair programming with someone and they want to suggest a change at a particular line. With relativenumber enabled, they won't be able to tell me which line in the code to go to and might get confused by the numbering (that I would understand). It was just easier to keep relativenumber disabled for the session or entirely so that my colleagues can better direct me 😅

[@inertia_dagger]

@@creativenull hmm, you could disable relative line numbers in pair programming with :set nornu

[@creativenull]

@@inertia_dagger yup exactly!

[@VinitNeogi]

Didn't know about o for switching direction of selection

[@CNich90]

Really cool tips and some I haven’t seen before but also very practical for common use, thanks!

[@iusearchbtw69]

That *W* is a replacement of my *t* Tysm mate, gotta use it more often

[@r4s3]

I've been using vim for years and knew I knew about invoking with ! from command mode but the fact that you can replace the contents in place with the output blew my mind.

[@piotrekgebala2524]

I didn't know about increments. Great tip, thank you!

[@name1355_0ne]

Very nice advanced level tips. Thanks a lot for sharing!

[@mainframe9374]

Interesting. Actually I use "w" and "W" constantly, it's basically one of my most used navigation ways

[@MrPolyphonicpoi]

Windows users - reading the friendly manual: "Since CTRL-V is used to paste, you can't use it to start a blockwise Visual selection. You can use CTRL-Q instead."

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Oh man... isn't Windows fun 🤦‍♂️ Thanks for pointing that out!

[@polic72andDrD3ath]

I use WSL2 and disable CTRL-V pasting in the terminal window for that exact reason. If you can get in the habit of setting paste to CTRL-SHIFT-V, then I can highly recommend it.

[@somnvm37]

the thing that I use in vim is that, in KDE you can download certain keyboard layouts that have 3rd and 4th layer, and then in keyboard settings select "use caps lock for the third layer" now if I press caps l I get ľ, caps j gives ± and so on this allows for a lot of new potential keybindings, ď for emmet ľ for esc ± and ł for scrolling by line [C-Y and C-E] so now i can move cursor with j k and move screen with caps j k (every press moves the screen by 1 line) also š for :w i only have these right now, but I can add more in the future [oh and also, in kde settings you can make caps mode go on from both shifts being tapped at the same time]

[@heroe1486]

Nice video, for fuzzy finding I personally use fzf-lua and Telescope, I have a script that spawns fzf-lua if I'm in my home directory (since way faster) and Telescope otherwise (with the smart-open extension that gives you a mix of old opened files, ones from the current directory etc, all of that weighted). But I recently discovered that you can have a whole "real" (like ranger or vifm) file manager inside of neovim, I'm thus now also using the yazi file manager inside of neovim, you can do everything from within it, cd, use zoxide, fzf, searching, and ofc copy/paste/cut/rename etc, it can even preview images. But I'm using neovim as an "IDE", so it's pretty much essential to have convenient navigation.

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Nice setup. Yes, that's also what I found, when you use Vim as an IDE, you're well-advised to use Neovim with such plugins, esp. good navigation. For me, my (simpler) Vim setup works well

[@TechJolt3d]

Interesting, I'm just using netrw as my file manager in vim.

[@007arek]

There is a plugin `fm-nvim` that allows to spawn any predefined program inside a new buffer - lazygit, broot or ranger

[@devfagundes]

Nice video! I recently learned about the ctrl+f trick in command mode, its usefull

[@lasombra_br]

Fantastic video, Sebastian! Really interesting with some great tips!

[@secondculs]

norm is a pretty new to me, this is really great to put in to my arsenal

[@pv3201]

Had no idea about o or using ex mode with . on a visual selection.

[@exegeteio]

w/W is great, but don’t sleep on b/B for going the other way. o will be a game changer for me. Thank you!

[@fplove]

After 25 years of use there are still vim tricks and commands I still don't know.

[@sharperguy]

I really like having it set so that relative line numbers turns off in insert mode, and back on in edit mode.

[@phaberest_]

Loved this! Thank you Sebastian, awesome content

[@rodelias9378]

Nice vídeo. However, I think the dynamic snippets section should have better explanation.. I mean: how to really do it the way you just show us?

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Oh ok, what part of it wasn't clear? You use a snippet plugins (I use honza/vim-snippets) and you expand them (per default I think it's )

[@andrewmagerman2574]

@@SebastianDaschnerITneeding a plugin was not clear.

[@MarioDanielCarugno]

What plugin do you use for the 'sticky scroll' feature ?

[@roryhendrickson]

I needed these tips, thanks for sharing!

[@odanabunaga2505]

Would you consider making an overview of vim plugins that you find most useful in your everyday work? Or have I missed it ?

[@justcorsin]

17:16 neovim already comes with a ":sort' command, in case you didn't already know.

[@kamalchan9756]

also a nice tip about relative number configure you vimrc so when you are in insert mode it switches to relative number and when you are in normal mode switch to numbers this will help

[@SlyPearTree]

How do you lock lines at the top and have their line number stay relative to bottom window?. If I use split then both windows' line number stay relative to their windows.

[@jacedenny7160]

Ctrl-f in command mode allows re-use and editing of previous commands.

[@Vic-ky3cc]

This was very insightful, thanks

[@NormTurtle]

did i knew it already : YES did i watched it again : YES

[@AlekseyKzn]

all is cool thank you but sometime it is hard to see what you pressed. it would be great if pressed combination scrolled up and stay on screen at least 5 last command.

[@1234minecraft5678]

You can use W in ciw as well it does the same thing as cW when youre at the beginning of

[@chai01724]

Thank you for this video! Espanso is a great text expander to check out too!

[@buildervision7082]

Great content, learnt something new

[@mvargasmoran]

I have relative and absolute numbers, so when I share my screen my team mates can point to the line they want me to go naturally (or in a way they are familiar with).

[@eavdmeer]

Any line numbers look absolutely ghastly to me. The relative ones even more so. I just have 'set ruler' on so the line/column number is shown only once at the bottom. Having said that, as a user of vi/ex from about 1993,there were surprisingly many good tips in here (albeit more vim features). The increment and selection direction swap especially

[@josephbolton8092]

I learned a lot, thanks!

[@cristobaljvp]

I'm definitely gonna use that `o` visual mode trick

[@briansepolen4917]

Control Left Bracket is key 27. I use that instead of Escape.

[@lenickramone]

a good tip is also have the intent of the comands: i - inside a - around o - other and so on...

[@vanvothe4817]

Use control-[ instead ecs or remap caplocks

[@zyriab5797]

Tap caps lock = esc Hold = ctrl Really nice ergo imho

[@odb7393]

Sweet video dude!

[@devshmsec]

Could you please move the keylogger to above you? I think it will be better there.

[@whym1here]

What font are you using? it looks nice.

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

That's JetBrains Mono

[@joechea_]

to select inside html tag vat 😁

[@titanandrews]

Good stuff!

[@EluLawlielt]

Hi Sebastian, thanks for the tips! What is the colorscheme that you are using (is it maybe default vim? I am an nvim user after all...)

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Not sure about the name; in oh-my-zsh I'm using the ZSH_THEME="afowler" (but I think with some modifications). I think Vim mainly adopts these. You can check out my Dotfiles, it's all there: github.com/sdaschner/dotfiles

[@kaihwangche9975]

Great! i'm more and more closer to know how to exit vim.

[@1234minecraft5678]

Well you could also use plugins and further enhance everything you do

[@miguelborges7913]

a in selections stands for "around'.

[@Fullflexno]

super cool!

[@kendlemintjed7571]

this is a great video, but you keystrokes are way to fast they need to linger a bit bc i can't keep up with them XD

[@semanser]

Is this some sort of plugin? I have relative line numbers enabled but don't can't get these sections/subsections stuff to work (2:04)

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Yes, it's the 'wellle/context.vim' plugin

[@markleakos3737]

How do you lock lines at the top and have the relative line number refer to the bottom window?

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Have a look here: github.com/sdaschner/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc

[@zodoturtle]

I strongly recommend against remapping of Caps Lock to Escape. When you do eventually switch computers, maybe trying to repair someone elses. Any keyboard remapping is going to make life difficult.

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

That's right, but thinking in this limitation will sadly prevent you from a lot of optimizations that you can do on your system (starting with the keyboard mapping, over shortcuts, to shell setup). But yes, if portability is important to you, fair enough

[@zodoturtle]

@@SebastianDaschnerIT My reality is that I eventually had to physically remove my Caps Lock key after removing the remap in order to stop trying to use it as an Escape key.

[@zodoturtle]

I just use Ctrl+[ instead.

[@chizuru1999]

i have been using vim for a while but is there any simpler alternative to vscode's "ctrl shift L" command and "ctrl d"? Basically multicursor

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

There is, there's multiline select (Ctrl+V), but in Vim, I'd rather go for movements plus re-do (dot . ) or macros

[@LukasSmith827]

Luke Smith would be proud, by far the best vim video I've seen

[@ptys7777]

Awesome!

[@Codigger-br2rt]

How do I set up gvim to automatically load files that were opened when the editor was last closed each time I started it?

[@markhunt6499]

Hello, Sebastian. Can you tell please which OS do you use?

[@heroe1486]

Arch + i3wm

[@ishaankapoor933]

Which screen key software are you using?

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

It's called key-mon

[@soufianemssd]

Can you please tell me, what plugin are you using for creating snippets

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

It's called vim-snippets: github.com/honza/vim-snippets (though I think I forked it)

[@jaadus]

was kinda hoping you'd show how to create the snippets

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Have a look at github.com/honza/vim-snippets , it's quite straightforward

[@Awwe12675]

I still I don’t know how to use (hi syntax) and change the (cursor) and color of (cursor) I don’t like plugin

[@CyperN077]

I map the left arrow key to ESC in insert mode and down to write the file in all modes,

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Oh ok, that's an interesting one

[@kamalchan9756]

how you did 1:47 the line after 103 # hello this is new to me

[@gjermundification]

0:28 `set nu rnu`

[@AryanBuildingSoftware]

selection with o goated.

[@rendivs]

super coollllllll

[@odanabunaga2505]

how did you make this split happen at 1:48?

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

You mean the lines inbetween the example titles that I created to show the contexts? That was just a high number (I think 100 or so), and o for creating a lot of newlines. Or do you mean this context-aware plugin in general? That'd be wellle/vim-context

[@odanabunaga2505]

@@SebastianDaschnerIT Yes it's the plugin I was curious about! Cheers! Thanks for the tutorials, they are awesome!

[@adjbutler]

that is all well and good... but how do you exit VIM? can someone just tell me!!!

[@pldcanfly]

Pull the plug out of the wall. If on a laptop, wait for 2-12 hrs afterwards. (Please don't just power off your computer, bad things can happen...)

[@anasouardini]

7:23 I feel like I'm flying!! thank you.

[@sub-harmonik]

I like "jk" =

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

That's what I had in the beginning as well, but I like having a reachable Esc on my system anyway (hence on Caps Lock)

[@yash1152]

== i didnt know yet: * o: switch selection direction * snippets * fzf/explorer inside vim == i already know & use daily/prominently * relativenumber * :exe & :norm * C-v box visual mode * i/a: in/around * w/W * scripts, is it talking about :! ? == i know but disagree with: * Mapping Esc to Caps lock * %: jump to matching: finnicky & unpredictable

[@yash1152]

still missing things: * multi-cursor * change case of word/letter * how to specify case insensitive search (with / or ?) * paste as replace mode * :z to scroll current line to top is not working at times * sending neovim to background to run some command etc (no, i dont want to use ! exclamation) * move past the last character i.e. at the line end newline char (this often helps with `db`)

[@gjermundification]

17:20 vim has its own sort, no?

[@SebastianDaschnerIT]

Oh yes, that's right. I'm just used to the Unix commands, I guess :)

[@gjermundification]

@@SebastianDaschnerIT The moment you bring a pipe to the equation shell is the way to go.

[@TawaraboshiGenba]

Of course I know how to exit vim... It's sudo killall vim

[@gmatht]

Please don't do that. pkill is more portable than killall. On Solaris killall really kills ALL processes, not just vim. :P

[@mvargasmoran]

How do I exit vim? 🤣

[@pustunt]

I wish I had no need to deal with VIM

[@NostraDavid2]

Just use Nano. It's fine if that works for you.

[@pustunt]

@@NostraDavid2 both are usless, look aroud it's 2024 already

[@philpeko1796]

Use Notepad! 🤣🤣

[@andreasproteus1465]

Lose the talking head.

[@jake115577]

It's hard to see what you are typing man. Good content tho.

[@onetwothree123-]

About math, you don't need to increase/decrease number by one using or actually if you need for ex. increase number by 10, it will looks like this 10