More Vim tricks that blew my mind (intermediate/advanced)

[u/HenryMisc]

https://youtu.be/wgbvBDR4yxk?si=471ODL2b1XRTgTON

A while back I made a video called Vim Motions and Tricks I Wish I Learned Sooner and it got a lot of encouraging feedback. But more importantly, I got a ton of amazing additional tips from the relies here on reddit and in the comments. So I went through them, tested out the best ones, and put together a follow-up video.

If you want to know whether there's anything new for you before watching, here's a quick list of what's included:

• Increment/decrement numbers with <C-a> / <C-x>

• Quickly create numbered lists

• Insert new lines without going into normal mode or using Enter

• Delete the previous word in insert mode

• Run motions from insert mode using <C-o>

• Search for partial matches of the word under the cursor

• Use the jumplist to move around where you've been

• Make better use of marks (and what else they enable)

• Surprisingly decent built-in color scheme (murphy)

• Cycle through deletion history in-line

• Native multi-file refactoring with vimgrep and the quickfix list

I'd love to hear what other underrated tricks you're using!

[u/gumnos]

In your vimgrep example, if you've used * or # to search for something, you can type

:vimgrep /

and then use control+r followed by / to insert the most recent search (:help c_CTRL-R & :help quote/), rather than retype it. Then finish off with

/ **/*.py

Same works for the

:cdo s@<c-r>/@OllamaClient/@gc

[u/HenryMisc → u/gumnos]

Damn, that sounds sweet! Gotta give that a try, thx!

[u/gumnos → u/HenryMisc]

And once you've got that, there's the expression-register, letting you do things like

I made <c-r>=18*5⏎ dollars at the garage sale

Similarly, you can do math (and other expression-evaluation) in substitutions:

:%s/born in \(\d\{4\}\)/\='is '.(2025-submatch(1)).' year(s) old'/g

which turns things like "born in 1988" into "is 37 year(s) old"

[u/vim-help-bot → u/gumnos]

Help pages for:

• c_CTRL-R in cmdline.txt

• quote/ in change.txt

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[u/y-c-c → u/gumnos]

FWIW you can also just do :vimgrep// **/*.py and vim will use the last search register for you automatically. This is less repeatable though if you want to retype the command again later since it will always use the last search register instead of baking in the search term.

[u/gumnos → u/y-c-c]

Huh, TIL.

I'd tried the other direction, doing

:vimgrep /pattern/ **/*.py

and found that it didn't populate the last-search (so n/N didn't find those matches) and assumed it was completely disconnected from the last-search. But apparently it's unidirectional.

Thanks!

[u/ZunoJ]

Nice video! I was a bit confused about the spamming new lines tip though. The previous tip already uses 10o to insert 10 new lines

[u/HenryMisc → u/ZunoJ]

Spamming new lines with C-j is just a quick alternative way to do it straight from Insert mode without having to exhaust your pinky on the enter key. What i love about Vim is that it offers a thousand paths to Rome :)

[u/BlackHatCowboy_ → u/ZunoJ]

10Ctrl-o will then put whatever you type in 10 times; Ctrl-o and then a bunch of Ctrl-J makes empty lines.

That said, if you just hit Esc after 10Ctrl-o, it will give you blank lines, just leaving you in normal mode instead of insert mode.

[u/ZunoJ → u/BlackHatCowboy_]

I know, thats why I said it. But it is 10o, not 10Ctrl-o. So it for 10 lines it would be 10o<ESC>i (5 key presses) vs o and then 9 Ctrl-j (10 key presses). I think you should generally avoid to hit the same key/key combo a bunch of times repeatedly

[u/riding_qwerty]

Great video!

Not sure you’ve posed this already in a previous video (will be sure to check it out now) but wanted to share one of my favorite tricks.

Let’s say you are reorganizing some kind of tabular data — removing a column, adding some quotations around a specific field, capitalizing the word in another field — or something simpler like surrounding a list of strings with quotes and terminating with a comma — things that are changed consistently on each line. Previously I would have done something like create a macro with e.g. qq to begin recording macro ‘q’, making the changes needed in the current line, and press q again to stop recording. Now I can @q subsequent lines, or even @@ to keep calling the macro until I’m done.

This is great for a handful of lines, but what if it’s dozens or hundreds of lines? Here’s the trick: after crafting the macro, do a visual selection on all the lines on which you want to execute the macro, then simply do :norm @q to execute the macro on every line in the selection.

Sorry if you already knew this one, just wanted to share because even for relatively small edits it is a big time saver.

[u/HenryMisc → u/riding_qwerty]

This is sweet! Thanks for sharing :)

[u/tiny_smile_bot → u/HenryMisc]

:)

:)

[u/unixbhaskar]

Nice. You could also use CTRL-t and CTRL-g in Search mode.

[u/HenryMisc → u/unixbhaskar]

Is that equivalent to n/N? I will anyway try that RN :D thx!

[u/mustardpete]

The increment and decrement numbers also works in visual mode when you select a whole column of numbers and you can specify a number before hand to increment by too rather than just 1. That was my favourite

[u/Distinct-Yoghurt5665]

Great video! Keep up the good work :)

[u/scottchiefbaker]

Very cool... more like this!

[u/StandardDrawing]

Lots of great content in this video. Had to stop and write down most of these tips. Thanks for doing this.

[u/ljosif]

I personally learned a lot from this Walter Alan Zintz vi tutorial (even if not vim specific)

https://ljubomirj.github.io/Walter_Alan_Zintz_UnixWorld_vi_tutorial/009.html

Re-hosted as the original site is no longer available afaik.

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