Vim Cheat Sheet and Syntax Highlighting

Vim Cheat Sheet

Saving and Exiting Vim

• :wq save changes and exit
• :q! quit changes and exit
• :q quit and exit provide no changes
• :x save changes and exit

Moving around lines

• Use arrow keys to move around
• For laptop users use hjkl:
• h left
• l right
• k up
• j down

• <ctrl>+F page up
• <ctrl>+B page down
• e end of the word (forward)
• b begin of the word (backward)
• w beging of the word (forward)
• 0 begin of the line
• $ end of the line
• H first line of screen
• L last line of screen
• :n goto line number

Text Editing

• i inset before cursor
• a append after cursor
• A append to the end of current line
• o open an new line below cursor and inset
• C change the rest of current line
• r replace current character e.g. rd replace current character to d

Deletion

• x delete cha under cursor
• dw delete word
• dd delete current line
• d$ delete the rest of the line form cursor

Copy and Paste

• yy copy current line
• dd delete current line or cut current line
• p paste

Copy and Paste in Visual Mode

• v enter visual mode, highlight the text
• y copy highlighted
• x delete highlight
• p paste

Undo and Redo (normal mode)

• u undo
• U undo all the changes for the current line
• <ctrl>+r redo

Syntax Highlighting

Enable Syntax Highlighting

• :syntax on

To enable autoindent

• :set autoindent

To enable line number

• :set number

To see the default file type

• :set filetype

To set filetype manually:

• :set filetype=perl
• :set filetype=php
• :set filetype=python

To configure syntax highlighting permanently, go to the configuration file under vim ~/.vimrc

Add the following:
syntax on
set number
set autoindent

Note: The previous tips should worked on Linux, Max OS X and Unix. If it doesn't work please refer to the man page or check the documentation of vim for the particular OS.

*****