AllGoodBits.org

Display

gj,gk

These move up/down screenlines, that is not lines in the file, which is very useful if you have long, wrapped lines. Consider mapping these to up/down arrow keys.

zz,zt,zb

These move the cursor to the middle, top or bottom of the screen/window.

Buffers

If you have more than a single file open for editing in a single vim session, you'll likely want to move between them. They are referred to as buffers.

:bn,:bp

next,previous buffer

:bd

buffer destroy (aka "close file"). I often use this as :3,5bd to delete multiple buffers at once. Alternatively: :bd fooCtrl+A to delete all buffers with names starting with 'foo'.

:buffers, :ls

list buffers

^^ (Ctrl+6 or Ctrl+^)

switch back to the most recently used buffer, switch between 2 buffers using repeated ^6

Windows

Your terminal (or window if you're in a windowed environment aka GUI) can be split so that you can see more than a single buffer at once. Commands to manipulate windows or to move between them are prefaced with ^w:

^wn

new window

^ww

next window

^wv

split vertically for side-by-side view

^wc

close window

Movement

^

1st non-whitespace

(,)

beginning,end of sentence

{,}

beginning,end of paragraph

More than ordinary cursor movement

^b,^f

move backwards/forwards by a page at a time.

^u,^d

move backwards/forwards by half a page at a time "up"/"down".

m[a-zA-Z],`[a-zA-Z]

name a mark, move to a named mark.

``

move to the previous mark.

Completion

^n, ^p

Next and Previous completions.

Modify text inside delimiters

If you have a delimited string which uses ", ', <>, or similar, you might often want to change the contents. You can use a command of the form "ci>", where "c" is for change, "i" is for 'inner' and '>' specifies the delimiter.

The 'i' is a text-object motion, which is vim specific, and must appear after one of c/y/d. Also, look at 'a'.

Registers

Use registers in normal mode with "<registername><operator> such as "cy2y to yank 2 lines into register "c". In normal mode, you can paste from a register by using ^R<registername>

"a,"z

named registers. Append to registers (instead of overwriting) by capitalising the register name.

"*,"+

clipboard

"1,"9

Most Recently Used

"%,"#

current/alternate filenames

:registers

display contents of all named registers

Plugins

I'm using vim-pathogen to manage plugins. tpope has made lots of them, but of course there are many others.

There are about a zillion to explore, but here are some that I use:

• surround: helps with quoting, parens, etc.
• vst, for ReStructuredText, markdown support is builtin these days.
• gnupg: vim 7.2+
• `nerdtree`_: A filesystem explorer
• `syntastic`_: run your file through syntax checkers. Don't forget various checkers/linters: flake8, pylint, mdl, yamllint, etc.
• template, to read a template file when you open certain files: vim 7.3+
• abolish: I like the case-coercion features: crs => snake_case, crm => MixedCase, crc => camelCase.
• commentary: gc toggles comments. I use gcap to comment paragraphs a lot.
• sleuth: automatically improves indenting.
• speeddating: C-a, C-x to increment/decrement date strings.
• repeat: adds support for . command to repeat to various other functionality.
• vim-pandoc and vim-pandoc-syntax

<strike>* vim-flake8: Flake8 is a wrapper around PyFlakes (static syntax checker), PEP8 (style checker) and Ned's MacCabe script (complexity checker).</strike>

And some that I mean to check out:

minibufexplorer fugitive rhubarb unimpaired rsi obsession eunuch ragtag <https://github.com/mattn/gist-vim>