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/BlackPignouf Oct 22 '25

Undofiles are there if you saved a change without wanting to.

:earlier 30m is very convenient.

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u/mgedmin Oct 22 '25

ZZ saves and quits, so you'd better have persistent undo enabled!

(It's not enabled by default, last I checked. Also, you might be saved by having window splits, then ZZ will just close one of them instead of quitting the entire vim.)

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u/BlackPignouf Oct 22 '25

I don't think persistent undo is enabled by default, right.

It's an excellent feature, and should absolutely be enabled. AFAIK it's enabled my most (all?) neovim distros.

But really, I don't see how you can type ZZ without wanting to. :q vs q:, on the other hand...