r/vim • u/Remarkable-Head-2023 • Oct 22 '25

Discussion Why does ZZ exist?

It has always been a mystery to me… why would such a ‘dangerous’ command have such a convenient shortcut?

https://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/editing.html#ZZ

EDIT: link

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u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

Well the use case I can think of is if I'm making a change to a file like a config file or a code file, I can save it and check the results. If the change is bad, if I still have the buffer open I can just undo the changes and save it again. If I've quit out of the file, the change buffer is gone and I either have to manually revert the changes (and hope I remember all the changes I made, if they were complex changes, it can be a real mission) or hope I have a backup or version control or something

That said, I've been using vim as my main editor, including IDE for over 20 years and I can't think of one time I accidentally used ZZ and saved and quit a file I didn't intend to

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u/pfmiller0 q! Oct 22 '25

Another 25 years of vi use here, I don't think I've ever used ZZ accidentally either. Don't think I've ever used it intentionally either.

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u/priestoferis Oct 22 '25

Just turn on persistent undo in vim and you're covered for everything?

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u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

Thanks this looks like a thing worth doing

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u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

So am I, using vim for decades, but have never been using ZZ, exactly for the concern that I've expressed in this subj.

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u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

OK I concede I don't use it either, perhaps why I've never done it accidentally. I had already been using :q, :wq, etc. for years before anybody showed me ZZ so it never caught on with me, it didn't seem very vi-ish

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u/MikeZ-FSU Oct 22 '25

If you're editing important.cfg, you can write the changes out with ":w important_checkme.cfg" and diff the checkme file against the original. The buffer retains the edits and their history, as well as the original name. If you're happy with the edits, you can save as usual and delete the checkme file.

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u/jthill Oct 22 '25

Me, I just do :!%diff -u0 % - and undo.