Vim keystrokes cheatsheet

The time has come for me to list few of the commands and keystrokes that I use (and the ones that I don't but would like to start) in Vim.

I am actually running a Vim plugin for Visual Studio Code (this and the previous blogs are actually written with this plugin ON) at this very moment.

Bear 🐻 in mind: this blog is aboout keystrokes only, it is not about plugins or configuration I use - I shall cover that one day.

Things I know by heart

  • h, j, k, l for slow but precise character-wise movement
  • w, b for faster forward (and, correspondingly) backward word-by-word movement
  • $ and ^ to go to the last and first word character of the line
  • gg and G to go to the beginning and the end of the file
  • O (capital o) to create a blank line and go to INSERT mode above and below (lower-case o) the cursor
  • f, F and t and T for single character lookup within the current line
  • / and ? to search forwards and backwards
  • c (followed by the object) to change the object; this expands to the following few commands:
    • cw to change the current word under cursor
    • cit to change the text within the current XML tag
    • ca' to change the text surrounded by single quote
    • ci< to change the text surrounded with < and >
    • ci{symbol} to change the text surrounded by symbol, which could be ', ", &#96;; you can also use b( for block of text, surrounded by braces, B{ for block of text surrounded by curly braces or p for paragraph, all instead of symbol
  • v to enter the VISUAL mode, followed by the command:
    • v{select}c immediately change the selection
    • v{select}d cut the selected text
  • y and p copy and paste the selected text (lower-case p pastes above the current line, capital-case P pastes below; capital-case Y copies the entire line, so the duplicate line command in Vim is Y, P)
  • {number}{command} repeat the command number times
  • . (the period or dot symbol) repeats the last command
  • x to remove the character under cursor
  • r{char} to replace the character under cursor with char
  • A to go to the end of the line and enter INSERT mode ("append")
  • u and Ctrl+r to undo and redo actions
  • &gt; and &lt; adds or removes the indentation

Things that I am still getting used to

  • {number}{motion} instead of h, j, k, l
  • a instead of i to enter INSERT mode after the cursor (as opposed to i which enters INSERT mode before the cursor)
  • H, M and L to go to the top, middle and the bottom of the screen (High, Mid and Low)
  • * and # to search for the word under cursor forwards and backwards
  • {count}/{query}⏎ to go to the count-th occurrence of query; it is same as searching with / and then hitting n count times
  • gd navigates to a definition of an entity under the cursor
  • gf navigates to the path under cursor
  • % moves the cursor to the matching brace, bracket or curly brace
  • g~ toggle the case
  • = format the selection
  • gU makes the selection uppercase