VIM Cheat Sheet

When I first started learning about Linux and working with the command line, nano was my go-to, in-terminal text editor. It wasn’t complicated to use, which was nice, and it allowed me to focus more on what I was learning without needing to Google a bunch of stuff just to use VIM.

Over time, though, I’ve been converted. There are a lot of helpful cheat sheets out there, but I wanted to create my own that I could keep updated as I learn more useful key-strokes and commands.

If you’d like to learn VIM by doing, I’d recommend going through vimtutor in your terminal. Just type vimtutor in your terminal and it’ll walk you through seven lessons, learning by doing. It claims you can complete it in thirty minutes, though it definitely took me longer because I was taking notes. (Using VIM.)

VIM Cheat Sheet

Text movement

w - Move forward to the beginning of the next word

b - Move backward to the beginning of a word

$ - Go to end of line

0 - Go to beginning of line

gg - Go to first line of document

G - Go to last line of document

#G - Go to line number #

CTRL-G - Show line location in file, and filestatus

CTRL-B- Move back one full screen

CTRL-F - Move forward one full screen

CTRL-D - Move forward 1/2 screen

CTRL-U - Move back (up) 1/2 screen

% - Moves cursor to matching paranthesis or bracket. (Cursor must be in front of cursor/bracket.)

Text editing

i - Enter insert mode at current cursor location

a - Append (insert) after character under cursor

c - (c number motion)

ce - Change until end of a word

cc - Change until end of a line

rx - Replace character at the cursor with ‘x’

p - Put previously deleted text after the cursor

d - Delete (d number motion)

dd - Delete a whole line

x - Delete character under cursor

o - Open a line below the cursor in Insert mode

a - Insert text after the cursor

R - To replace more than one character. Like Insert mode, except every typed character deletes an existing character.

:s/old/new - replaces first occurrence of ‘old’ with ‘new’ in line

:#,#s/old/new/g - #,# are the line numbers of the range of lines where the substitution is to be done.

:%s/old/new/g - change every occurrence in the whole file.

:%s/old/new/gc - find every occurrence in the whole file, with a prompt whether to substitute or not.

Undo & redo

u - Undo last action

U - Undo all changes on a line

CTRL-R - Undo the undo’s

Text searching

/ - To search for a phrase

:set ic - Ignore case when searching

NOTE: If you want to ignore case for just one search command, use \c in the phrase: /<search_term>\c <ENTER>

:set hls inc - To highlight matches

:set noic - Disable ignoring case

:nohlsearch - To remove highlighting of searches

n - Search phrase again

N - Search in opposite direction

? - To search phrase in opposite direction

CTRL-O - Go back to where you came from. repeat to go bck further. CTRL-I goes forward.

* - Search forward for the word nearest the cursor

# - Search backward for the word nearest the cursor

Executing shell commands & saving files

:! - to execute external shell command

:w FILENAME - save current file with given FILENAME

v - visual selection mode

v motion :w FILENAME - saves selected text to FILENAME

:r FILENAME - Pastes (or reads) output of FILENAME above cursor. This can also read output of an external command.

Getting help

:help <ENTER>

or

:help <COMMAND> <ENTER>

CTRL-W CTRL-W - Switch between help menu and file I’m editing

Auto completion (useful for finding commands in :help)

  1. Make sure Vim is not in compatible mode: set nocp
  2. Type the start of a command
  3. Press CTRL-D and VIM will show a list of commands that start with the letter or text you’re typing
  4. Tab will auto-complete the command if it exists