tips.txt For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2009 Nov 07LINK

VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar

Tips and ideas for using Vim tipsLINK

These are just a few that we thought would be helpful for many users.

You can find many more tips on the wiki. The URL can be found on

http://www.vim.org

Don't forget to browse the user manual, it also contains lots of useful tips

usr_toc.txt.

Editing C programs C-editing

Finding where identifiers are used ident-search

Switching screens in an xterm xterm-screens

Scrolling in Insert mode scroll-insert

Smooth scrolling scroll-smooth

Correcting common typing mistakes type-mistakes

Counting words, lines, etc. count-items

Restoring the cursor position restore-position

Renaming files rename-files

Change a name in multiple files change-name

Speeding up external commands speed-up

Useful mappings useful-mappings

Compressing the help files gzip-helpfile

Executing shell commands in a window shell-window

Hex editing hex-editing

Using <> notation in autocommands autocmd-<>

Highlighting matching parens match-parens

==============================================================================

Editing C programs C-editingLINK

There are quite a few features in Vim to help you edit C program files. Here

is an overview with tags to jump to:

usr_29.txt Moving through programs chapter in the user manual.

usr_30.txt Editing programs chapter in the user manual.

C-indenting Automatically set the indent of a line while typing

text.

= Re-indent a few lines.

format-comments Format comments.

:checkpath Show all recursively included files.

[i Search for identifier under cursor in current and

included files.

[_CTRL-I Jump to match for "[i"

[I List all lines in current and included files where

identifier under the cursor matches.

[d Search for define under cursor in current and included

files.

CTRL-] Jump to tag under cursor (e.g., definition of a

function).

CTRL-T Jump back to before a CTRL-] command.

:tselect Select one tag out of a list of matching tags.

gd Go to Declaration of local variable under cursor.

gD Go to Declaration of global variable under cursor.

gf Go to file name under the cursor.

% Go to matching (), {}, [], /* */, #if, #else, #endif.

[/ Go to previous start of comment.

]/ Go to next end of comment.

[# Go back to unclosed #if, #ifdef, or #else.

]# Go forward to unclosed #else or #endif.

[( Go back to unclosed '('

]) Go forward to unclosed ')'

[{ Go back to unclosed '{'

]} Go forward to unclosed '}'

v_ab Select "a block" from "[(" to "])", including braces

v_ib Select "inner block" from "[(" to "])"

v_aB Select "a block" from "[{" to "]}", including brackets

v_iB Select "inner block" from "[{" to "]}"

==============================================================================

Finding where identifiers are used ident-searchLINK

You probably already know that tags can be used to jump to the place where a

function or variable is defined. But sometimes you wish you could jump to all

the places where a function or variable is being used. This is possible in

two ways:

1. Using the :grep command. This should work on most Unix systems,

but can be slow (it reads all files) and only searches in one directory.

2. Using ID utils. This is fast and works in multiple directories. It uses a

database to store locations. You will need some additional programs for

this to work. And you need to keep the database up to date.

Using the GNU id-tools:

What you need:

- The GNU id-tools installed (mkid is needed to create ID and lid is needed to

use the macros).

- An identifier database file called "ID" in the current directory. You can

create it with the shell command "mkid file1 file2 ..".

Put this in your .vimrc:

map _u :call ID_search()<Bar>execute "/\\<" . g:word . "\\>"<CR>

map _n :n<Bar>execute "/\\<" . g:word . "\\>"<CR>

function! ID_search()

let g:word = expand("<cword>")

let x = system("lid --key=none ". g:word)

let x = substitute(x, "\n", " ", "g")

execute "next " . x

endfun

To use it, place the cursor on a word, type "_u" and vim will load the file

that contains the word. Search for the next occurrence of the word in the

same file with "n". Go to the next file with "_n".

This has been tested with id-utils-3.2 (which is the name of the id-tools

archive file on your closest gnu-ftp-mirror).

[the idea for this comes from Andreas Kutschera]

==============================================================================

Switching screens in an xterm xterm-screens xterm-save-screenLINK

(From comp.editors, by Juergen Weigert, in reply to a question)

:> Another question is that after exiting vim, the screen is left as it

:> was, i.e. the contents of the file I was viewing (editing) was left on

:> the screen. The output from my previous like "ls" were lost,

:> ie. no longer in the scrolling buffer. I know that there is a way to

:> restore the screen after exiting vim or other vi like editors,

:> I just don't know how. Helps are appreciated. Thanks.

:

:I imagine someone else can answer this. I assume though that vim and vi do

:the same thing as each other for a given xterm setup.

They not necessarily do the same thing, as this may be a termcap vs.

terminfo problem. You should be aware that there are two databases for

describing attributes of a particular type of terminal: termcap and

terminfo. This can cause differences when the entries differ AND when of

the programs in question one uses terminfo and the other uses termcap

(also see +terminfo).

In your particular problem, you are looking for the control sequences

^[[?47h and ^[[?47l. These switch between xterms alternate and main screen

buffer. As a quick workaround a command sequence like

echo -n "^[[?47h"; vim ... ; echo -n "^[[?47l"

may do what you want. (My notation ^[ means the ESC character, further down

you'll see that the databases use \E instead).

On startup, vim echoes the value of the termcap variable ti (terminfo:

smcup) to the terminal. When exiting, it echoes te (terminfo: rmcup). Thus

these two variables are the correct place where the above mentioned control

sequences should go.

Compare your xterm termcap entry (found in /etc/termcap) with your xterm

terminfo entry (retrieved with "infocmp -C xterm"). Both should contain

entries similar to:

:te=\E[2J\E[?47l\E8:ti=\E7\E[?47h:

PS: If you find any difference, someone (your sysadmin?) should better check

the complete termcap and terminfo database for consistency.

NOTE 1: If you recompile Vim with FEAT_XTERM_SAVE defined in feature.h, the

builtin xterm will include the mentioned "te" and "ti" entries.

NOTE 2: If you want to disable the screen switching, and you don't want to

change your termcap, you can add these lines to your .vimrc:

:set t_ti= t_te=

==============================================================================

Scrolling in Insert mode scroll-insertLINK

If you are in insert mode and you want to see something that is just off the

screen, you can use CTRL-X CTRL-E and CTRL-X CTRL-Y to scroll the screen.

i_CTRL-X_CTRL-E

To make this easier, you could use these mappings:

:inoremap <C-E> <C-X><C-E>

:inoremap <C-Y> <C-X><C-Y>

(Type this literally, make sure the '<' flag is not in 'cpoptions').

You then lose the ability to copy text from the line above/below the cursor

i_CTRL-E.

Also consider setting 'scrolloff' to a larger value, so that you can always see

some context around the cursor. If 'scrolloff' is bigger than half the window

height, the cursor will always be in the middle and the text is scrolled when

the cursor is moved up/down.

==============================================================================

Smooth scrolling scroll-smoothLINK

If you like the scrolling to go a bit smoother, you can use these mappings:

:map <C-U> <C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y><C-Y>

:map <C-D> <C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E><C-E>

(Type this literally, make sure the '<' flag is not in 'cpoptions').

==============================================================================

Correcting common typing mistakes type-mistakesLINK

When there are a few words that you keep on typing in the wrong way, make

abbreviations that correct them. For example:

:ab teh the

:ab fro for

==============================================================================

Counting words, lines, etc. count-itemsLINK

To count how often any pattern occurs in the current buffer use the substitute

command and add the 'n' flag to avoid the substitution. The reported number

of substitutions is the number of items. Examples:

:%s/./&/gn characters

:%s/\i\+/&/gn words

:%s/^//n lines

:%s/the/&/gn "the" anywhere

:%s/\<the\>/&/gn "the" as a word

You might want to reset 'hlsearch' or do ":nohlsearch".

Add the 'e' flag if you don't want an error when there are no matches.

An alternative is using v_g_CTRL-G in Visual mode.

If you want to find matches in multiple files use :vimgrep.

count-bytesLINK

If you want to count bytes, you can use this:

Visually select the characters (block is also possible)

Use "y" to yank the characters

Use the strlen() function:

:echo strlen(@")

A line break is counted for one byte.

==============================================================================

Restoring the cursor position restore-positionLINK

Sometimes you want to write a mapping that makes a change somewhere in the

file and restores the cursor position, without scrolling the text. For

example, to change the date mark in a file:

:map <F2> msHmtgg/Last [cC]hange:\s*/e+1<CR>"_D"=strftime("%Y %b %d")<CR>p'tzt`s

Breaking up saving the position:

ms store cursor position in the 's' mark

H go to the first line in the window

mt store this position in the 't' mark

Breaking up restoring the position:

't go to the line previously at the top of the window

zt scroll to move this line to the top of the window

`s jump to the original position of the cursor

For something more advanced see winsaveview() and winrestview().

==============================================================================

Renaming files rename-filesLINK

Say I have a directory with the following files in them (directory picked at

random :-):

buffer.c

charset.c

digraph.c

...

and I want to rename *.c *.bla. I'd do it like this:

$ vim

:r !ls *.c

:%s/\(.*\).c/mv & \1.bla

:w !sh

:q!

==============================================================================

Change a name in multiple files change-nameLINK

Example for using a script file to change a name in several files:

Create a file "subs.vim" containing substitute commands and a :update

command:

:%s/Jones/Smith/g

:%s/Allen/Peter/g

:update

Execute Vim on all files you want to change, and source the script for

each argument:

vim *.let

argdo source subs.vim

See :argdo.

==============================================================================

Speeding up external commands speed-upLINK

In some situations, execution of an external command can be very slow. This

can also slow down wildcard expansion on Unix. Here are a few suggestions to

increase the speed.

If your .cshrc (or other file, depending on the shell used) is very long, you

should separate it into a section for interactive use and a section for

non-interactive use (often called secondary shells). When you execute a

command from Vim like ":!ls", you do not need the interactive things (for

example, setting the prompt). Put the stuff that is not needed after these

lines:

if ($?prompt == 0) then

exit 0

endif

Another way is to include the "-f" flag in the 'shell' option, e.g.:

:set shell=csh\ -f

(the backslash is needed to include the space in the option).

This will make csh completely skip the use of the .cshrc file. This may cause

some things to stop working though.

==============================================================================

Useful mappings useful-mappingsLINK

Here are a few mappings that some people like to use.

map-backtick LINK

:map ' `

Make the single quote work like a backtick. Puts the cursor on the column of

a mark, instead of going to the first non-blank character in the line.

emacs-keysLINK

For Emacs-style editing on the command-line:

" start of line

:cnoremap <C-A> <Home>

" back one character

:cnoremap <C-B> <Left>

" delete character under cursor

:cnoremap <C-D> <Del>

" end of line

:cnoremap <C-E> <End>

" forward one character

:cnoremap <C-F> <Right>

" recall newer command-line

:cnoremap <C-N> <Down>

" recall previous (older) command-line

:cnoremap <C-P> <Up>

" back one word

:cnoremap <Esc><C-B> <S-Left>

" forward one word

:cnoremap <Esc><C-F> <S-Right>

NOTE: This requires that the '<' flag is excluded from 'cpoptions'. <>

format-bullet-listLINK

This mapping will format any bullet list. It requires that there is an empty

line above and below each list entry. The expression commands are used to

be able to give comments to the parts of the mapping.

:let m = ":map _f :set ai<CR>" " need 'autoindent' set

:let m = m . "{O<Esc>" " add empty line above item

:let m = m . "}{)^W" " move to text after bullet

:let m = m . "i <CR> <Esc>" " add space for indent

:let m = m . "gq}" " format text after the bullet

:let m = m . "{dd" " remove the empty line

:let m = m . "5lDJ" " put text after bullet

:execute m |" define the mapping

(<> notation <>. Note that this is all typed literally. ^W is "^" "W", not

CTRL-W. You can copy/paste this into Vim if '<' is not included in

'cpoptions'.)

Note that the last comment starts with |", because the ":execute" command

doesn't accept a comment directly.

You also need to set 'textwidth' to a non-zero value, e.g.,

:set tw=70

A mapping that does about the same, but takes the indent for the list from the

first line (Note: this mapping is a single long line with a lot of spaces):

:map _f :set ai<CR>}{a <Esc>WWmmkD`mi<CR><Esc>kkddpJgq}'mJO<Esc>j

collapseLINK

These two mappings reduce a sequence of empty (;b) or blank (;n) lines into a

single line

:map ;b GoZ<Esc>:g/^$/.,/./-j<CR>Gdd

:map ;n GoZ<Esc>:g/^[ <Tab>]*$/.,/[^ <Tab>]/-j<CR>Gdd

==============================================================================

Compressing the help files gzip-helpfileLINK

For those of you who are really short on disk space, you can compress the help

files and still be able to view them with Vim. This makes accessing the help

files a bit slower and requires the "gzip" program.

(1) Compress all the help files: "gzip doc/*.txt".

(2) Edit "doc/tags" and change the ".txt" to ".txt.gz":

:%s=\(\t.*\.txt\)\t=\1.gz\t=

(3) Add this line to your vimrc:

set helpfile={dirname}/help.txt.gz

Where {dirname} is the directory where the help files are. The gzip plugin

will take care of decompressing the files.

You must make sure that $VIMRUNTIME is set to where the other Vim files are,

when they are not in the same location as the compressed "doc" directory. See

$VIMRUNTIME.

==============================================================================

Executing shell commands in a window shell-windowLINK

There have been questions for the possibility to execute a shell in a window

inside Vim. The answer: you can't! Including this would add a lot of code to

Vim, which is a good reason not to do this. After all, Vim is an editor, it

is not supposed to do non-editing tasks. However, to get something like this,

you might try splitting your terminal screen or display window with the

"splitvt" program. You can probably find it on some ftp server. The person

that knows more about this is Sam Lantinga <slouken@cs.ucdavis.edu>.

An alternative is the "window" command, found on BSD Unix systems, which

supports multiple overlapped windows. Or the "screen" program, found at

www.uni-erlangen.de, which supports a stack of windows.

==============================================================================

Hex editing hex-editing using-xxdLINK

See section 23.4 of the user manual.

If one has a particular extension that one uses for binary files (such as exe,

bin, etc), you may find it helpful to automate the process with the following

bit of autocmds for your <.vimrc>. Change that "*.bin" to whatever

comma-separated list of extension(s) you find yourself wanting to edit:

" vim -b : edit binary using xxd-format!

augroup Binary

au!

au BufReadPre *.bin let &bin=1

au BufReadPost *.bin if &bin | %!xxd

au BufReadPost *.bin set ft=xxd | endif

au BufWritePre *.bin if &bin | %!xxd -r

au BufWritePre *.bin endif

au BufWritePost *.bin if &bin | %!xxd

au BufWritePost *.bin set nomod | endif

augroup END

==============================================================================

Using <> notation in autocommands autocmd-<>LINK

The <> notation is not recognized in the argument of an :autocmd. To avoid

having to use special characters, you could use a self-destroying mapping to

get the <> notation and then call the mapping from the autocmd. Example:

map-self-destroy LINK

" This is for automatically adding the name of the file to the menu list.

" It uses a self-destroying mapping!

" 1. use a line in the buffer to convert the 'dots' in the file name to \.

" 2. store that in register '"'

" 3. add that name to the Buffers menu list

" WARNING: this does have some side effects, like overwriting the

" current register contents and removing any mapping for the "i" command.

"

autocmd BufNewFile,BufReadPre * nmap i :nunmap i<CR>O<C-R>%<Esc>:.g/\./s/\./\\./g<CR>0"9y$u:menu Buffers.<C-R>9 :buffer <C-R>%<C-V><CR><CR>

autocmd BufNewFile,BufReadPre * normal i

Another method, perhaps better, is to use the ":execute" command. In the

string you can use the <> notation by preceding it with a backslash. Don't

forget to double the number of existing backslashes and put a backslash before

'"'.

autocmd BufNewFile,BufReadPre * exe "normal O\<C-R>%\<Esc>:.g/\\./s/\\./\\\\./g\<CR>0\"9y$u:menu Buffers.\<C-R>9 :buffer \<C-R>%\<C-V>\<CR>\<CR>"

For a real buffer menu, user functions should be used (see :function), but

then the <> notation isn't used, which defeats using it as an example here.

==============================================================================

Highlighting matching parens match-parensLINK

This example shows the use of a few advanced tricks:

- using the CursorMoved autocommand event

- using searchpairpos() to find a matching paren

- using synID() to detect whether the cursor is in a string or comment

- using :match to highlight something

- using a pattern to match a specific position in the file.

This should be put in a Vim script file, since it uses script-local variables.

It skips matches in strings or comments, unless the cursor started in string

or comment. This requires syntax highlighting.

A slightly more advanced version is used in the matchparen plugin.

let s:paren_hl_on = 0

function s:Highlight_Matching_Paren()

if s:paren_hl_on

match none

let s:paren_hl_on = 0

endif

let c_lnum = line('.')

let c_col = col('.')

let c = getline(c_lnum)[c_col - 1]

let plist = split(&matchpairs, ':\|,')

let i = index(plist, c)

if i < 0

return

endif

if i % 2 == 0

let s_flags = 'nW'

let c2 = plist[i + 1]

else

let s_flags = 'nbW'

let c2 = c

let c = plist[i - 1]

endif

if c == '['

let c = '\['

let c2 = '\]'

endif

let s_skip ='synIDattr(synID(line("."), col("."), 0), "name") ' .

\ '=~? "string\\|comment"'

execute 'if' s_skip '| let s_skip = 0 | endif'

let [m_lnum, m_col] = searchpairpos(c, '', c2, s_flags, s_skip)

if m_lnum > 0 && m_lnum >= line('w0') && m_lnum <= line('w$')

exe 'match Search /\(\%' . c_lnum . 'l\%' . c_col .

\ 'c\)\|\(\%' . m_lnum . 'l\%' . m_col . 'c\)/'

let s:paren_hl_on = 1

endif

endfunction

autocmd CursorMoved,CursorMovedI * call s:Highlight_Matching_Paren()

autocmd InsertEnter * match none

vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: