Personal Notes on 'Practical Vim' (2nd Edition)

15 Jun, 2020

I went through “Practical Vim - Second Edition” by Drew Neil and wrote down the parts I keep coming back to. Mostly for my own reference, but maybe useful to someone else.

H, M, L: jump to the top, middle, and bottom of the screen.

Buffers

:ls lists open buffers. % marks the active one.
:bnext, :bprevious, :bfirst, :blast move between them.

Mappings I use (from Tim Pope’s unimpaired.vim):

nnoremap <silent> [b :bprevious<CR>
nnoremap <silent> ]b :bnext<CR>
nnoremap <silent> [B :bfirst<CR>
nnoremap <silent> ]B :blast<CR>

Windows and tabs

:sp[lit] / :vsp[lit] split the current window. :split {file} and :vsplit {file} open a file in a new split.
Ctrl-w w/h/j/k/l switches between windows.
:clo[se] closes a window, :on[ly] closes all but the current one. Ctrl-w =/_/| resizes.
:tabe {file} opens a file in a new tab. Navigate with :tabn, :tabp, gt, gT.
:tabmove n reorders tabs.

I think of tabs as workspaces (one per task or context) and windows as views within a workspace.

Jumps and marks

:jumps shows your jump history. Control-o goes back, Control-i goes forward.
m{a-z} sets a mark, \{a-z}` jumps to it. Useful for bouncing between two spots in a file.

Macros

q{a-z} records a macro, @{a-z} plays it back. @@ repeats the last one.
You can run a macro on a range of lines: :5,10normal @a.
Combine with :let i += 1 for numbered sequences.

Macros are one of those Vim features that feel clunky until they save you 20 minutes on a mechanical edit.

Search and replace

/\c makes a search case insensitive. \v turns on “very magic” mode (closer to normal regex).
\V does a literal search, no regex interpretation.
Leaving the search pattern empty in :s//replacement/ reuses the last search, which is handy for iterating.

.vimrc

A few things I added to mine:

Leader key: let mapleader = ","
Autosave on leaving insert mode: autocmd InsertLeave,TextChanged * silent write
Auto-indent on save: autocmd BufWritePre * :normal gg=G

TLDR

“Practical Vim” covers a lot that’s easy to miss. These are the parts I actually use.

#Vim #Personal