Basic Vim Cheat Sheet

vim_cheatsheet

VIM Cheatsheet

Text Entry

a Append text following current cursor position
A Append text to the end of current line
i Insert text before the current cursor position
I Insert text at the beginning of the cursor line
o Open up a new line following the current line and add text there
O Open up a new line in front of the current line and add text there

Cursor Movement Commands

h Moves the cursor one character to the left
l Moves the cursor one character to the right
k Moves the cursor up one line
j Moves the cursor down one line

:n Cursor goes to the specified (n) line
^F (CTRL F) Forward screen
^B Backward screen
^f One page forward
^b One page backward
^U Up half screen
^D Down half screenful
$ Move cursor to the end of current line
0 (zero) Move cursor to the beginning of current line
w Forward one word
b Backward one word

Exit Commands
:wq Write file to disk and quit the editor
:q! Quit (no warning)
:q Quit (a warning is printed if a modified file has not been saved)
 

Text Deletion Commands
x Delete character
dw Delete word from cursor on
db Delete word backward
dd Delete line
d$ Delete to end of line
d^ (d caret, not CTRL d) Delete to beginning of line

Yank (has most of the options of delete)-- VI's copy command

yy yank current line
y$ yank to end of current line from cursor
yw yank from cursor to end of current word
5yy yank, for example, 5 lines

Paste (used after delete or yank to recover lines.)

p paste below cursor
P paste above cursor
"2p paste from buffer 2 (there are 9)
u Undo last change
U Restore line
J Join next line down to the end of the current line
File Manipulation Commands
:w Write workspace to original file
:w file Write workspace to named file
:e file Start editing a new file
:r file Read contents of a file to the workspace
 
 
Other Useful Commands
Most commands can be repeated n times by typing a number, n, before the command. For example 10dd means delete 10 lines.
. Repeat last command
cw Change current word to a new word
r Replace one character at the cursor position
R Begin overstrike or replace mode – use ESC key to exit

Search & Replace

:/ pattern Search forward for the pattern
:? pattern Search backward for the pattern
n (used after either of the 2 search commands above to
continue to find next occurrence of the pattern.
:g/pat1/s//pat2/g replace every occurrence of pattern1 (pat1) with pat2
:g/a/s// /g replace the letter a, by blank
:g/a/s///g replace a by nothing
note: Even this command be undone by u