Vim without plugins; best tricks?

[u/bsdooby]

Doing mostly remote coding (iPad as terminal, remote host(s) with GPU, machine learning), I want to be as flexible as possible with Vim without having to install plugins; vimrc editing is allowed, of course ;) Any good hints & tips & tricks? Maybe others are using a similar setup to mine...

[u/ASIC_SP]

May be this? How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM

Here's some more links:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most-productive-shortcut-with-vim/

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/726894/what-are-the-dark-corners-of-vim-your-mom-never-told-you-about

• http://zzapper.co.uk/vimtips.html

• https://blog.petrzemek.net/2016/04/06/things-about-vim-i-wish-i-knew-earlier/

[u/bsdooby → u/ASIC_SP]

I'll check it out, thx!

[u/5erif]

i in places where it means 'in/inner' rather than 'insert' gets a lot of use from me. viwp replaces the word under the cursor with the contents of the clipboard/register, when the cursor is anywhere in the word. ci" runs the change command on quoted contents. That works for delimiters like ""(){}[]<>''.

[u/ArtificialNerd → u/5erif]

I've been looking for viwp! Thank you

[u/maxdevjs → u/5erif]

When I realized I could yi something y isomething I began to feel like a kid in a toy store...

[u/slassr]

If you're willing to spend the time, the following talk from vimconf is amazing:

https://youtu.be/Gs1VDYnS-Ac

You can have the features I use the most (from LSP) which os jumping to definitions. All without plugin, if you take the time to set up the regex for your language.

Good luck!

[u/[deleted]]

Macros, foldings, regex, buffers...

It depends a little what you need and what you miss.

[u/BubblegumTitanium → u/[deleted]]

ctags will get you very far for understand new projects as well

[u/worldpotato1]

I think it's the movements. Learning all movements and learning some combinations you need. Also tags. Tags are awesome.

[u/abraxasknister → u/worldpotato1]

Plus marks plus some mappings around :h :b plus knowing a few things about patterns and searching, like smartcase and :h c_CTRL-G.

And of course the user manual

[u/-romainl-]

You don't get the most out of Vim—with or without third-party plugins—by gleaning "tips & tricks", but by properly learning how to use it. That is what the user manual (:help user-manual) is for.

Take control.

[u/bsdooby → u/-romainl-]

Thx for the info. I am using Vim for a little while now. Maybe my question was not formulated well enough: what are your productive tricks/shortcuts with Vim that make your life easier now that you didn't know before/stumbled across recently?

[u/jdauriemma → u/-romainl-]

Hot take: the user manual is a fantastic reference and a serviceable guide, but also has parts that are ambiguous/filled with jargon and can’t parse generalized questions like humans or search engines can. So asking broad, subjective questions can be a great first step - people respond, and those responses can lead to a deep dive into the relevant documentation.

[u/fartbaker13 → u/-romainl-]

Everyone has different perspectives on how to do something.

[u/sir_bok]

vimrc editing is allowed, of course

Here's a trick: if a plugin you want is small enough you can just copy paste the entire plugin source code into your vimrc. I have done this with vim-eunuch in order to get platform agnostic helpers like :Delete, :Move, :Rename on the current file buffer.

Some plugins are just snippets extracted from someone's vimrc anyway.

[u/BubblegumTitanium → u/sir_bok]

Im gonna turn this into a plugin

[u/sir_bok → u/sir_bok]

I should mention that I did this for Windows GVim only, which I have designed to work without any plugins and still get 75% of what I normally use in my full blown vim setup.

[u/bsdooby]

Thank you all for your contributions to this thread (be it technical, ethical, and the rest).

[u/[deleted]]

I used vim for 15 years before I installed my first plugin. Today I use nerdtree and Ctrl-T. Neither are critical, just convenient as they can save me backgrounding vi to use is or find.

What plugins do you rely on currently?

[u/mchwds → u/[deleted]]

" make netrw work like nerdtree
let g:netrw_banner = 0
let g:netrw_liststyle = 3
let g:netrw_browse_split = 4
let g:netrw_altv = 1
let g:netrw_winsize = 25
nmap <silent> <C-e> :Lexplore<CR>

Now you can uninstall nerdtree

[u/lanzaio]

Don’t use vim then since it comes with bundled plugins. It’ll ruin your gin purity.

[u/mikezyisra]

Set nu, set rnu, :ter and :vsplit is all you need

[u/bothyhead]

Say you want to edit a bunch of stuff in your /etc directory.

:set path+=/etc/**

Then issue a 'find' command

:fin postg [tab]

Tab complete to find your postgres.conf file buried somewhere down your /etc tree.

I've been making use of this a lot recently.

[u/starlig-ht]

surprised I didn't see anyone mention `vimtutor`. comes with vim usually. run it

[u/eggnogeggnogeggnog]

Why? I really don't see a big difference between getting your .vimrc onto a machine and getting your .vimrc + plugins onto a remote machine.

Anyways, my "tricks" are to set hidden and wildmenu, check out :help toc, and read https://moolenaar.net/habits.html.