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Because vim uses the keyboard as a primary means of navigation, you need to make sure the caps-lock key is not depressed. If you're trying to move around in vim and strange things are happening, check to make sure the caps-lock key is not depressed.

Before we move on to the next section I would like to pass on a couple quick tips.

If it is so irritating why would you want to learn how to use it? Good question. My primary motivation to learn vim was watching someone who was good with vim edit a configuration file. Without moving his hands from the keyboard he cut large blocks of text and moved them around quite rapidly. This simple textual explanation just doesn't do justice to what I witnessed that day. Vim offers you the ability to rapidly search, edit, copy, and "read in" files in far less time then your average editor. Vim can also do things you just can't do in other editors. Once you get good enough, vim saves you a lot of time over conventional editors.

No introduction to vim would be complete without a warning. Vim is not a difficult editor to learn but it won't be like any other editor you've used. In the beginning you'll find that the movement and editing commands can be quite irritating. However, with a bit of patience and perseverance you will become quite adept at using it.

Learning vim can be a bit of a trial but it is well worth it in the long run. The most important thing you can do is read the section Vim's built in help . Once you figure out how to use vim's built-in help effectively, you'll learn vim much more comfortably.

This document will cover the console version of vim from Debian stable. Although much of what is discussed here will also apply to gvim, it may or may not work with gvim.

The package vim contains the executable, and the vim-rt package contains all the files necessary to get syntax highlighting to work.

If you're looking for less terse explanations a good place to start is with the vim introduction. In addition to the introduction you can find more detailed help with this command:

Where subject is the information you are looking for. One thing to note about the above command is that it takes you to the subject reference. What this means is that this type of help is aimed at users who are already familiar with vim's help syntax. The vimtutor command in the Tutor me! section covers this in Lesson 2 of the vimtutor. You did do the vimtutor didn't you?

This command will take you to vim's help text. Throughout the help files you will see tags like this: |bars|. By positioning your cursor over these tags and hitting CTRL - ] you can jump directly to the subject. To get back to your original position simply type CTRL - t .

Simply follow along with the tutor. Below is the outline of what the tutor covers in case you are already familiar with vim. I recommend you continue using the tutor until you can complete it "out of sequence." In other words, you ought to be able to jump around throughout the tutor, doing sections at random, before continuing with the rest of this document.

Thanks to vim's hard working developers vim has a very extensive built-in help system. As part of their work they developed a tutor which will walk you through the basics.

Learning the way the help system system works in any application you use is always a good idea. In vim, it isn't just a good idea, it's essential. When I first started using vim I put it off for the longest time. I wish I wouldn't have done that!

Command line mode also has "tab-completion" much like the shell does. By typing the beginning of your command and then the TAB key the command line will complete the available commands for you.

Command line mode contains a "history" much like the shell does. By typing the beginning of your command and then using the arrow keys you can scroll through a list of the previous commands you entered.

Command line mode is entered from Normal mode. If you type the colon and can't seem to get into command line mode try tapping the escape key twice and then type the colon.

Command line mode is entered by typing : (the colon). Once typed the "status bar" along the bottom of the console shows the colon and whatever you type. All the previous :help commands you have typed are examples.

If you use these characters frequently you may wish to explore the langmap option as well. For more information type the command :help langmap.

These mappings seem to change between systems and versions of vim. Make sure you double check what your maps are so you get what you expect.

The columns are arranged so that the first character is typed followed by a backspace and then the second character is typed. For example, to get the ¡ (an upside down exclamation point) character I would simply type ~ - Backspace - ! .

Digraphs are used by typing a character, the Backspace key, and then another character. These combinations of characters are called maps. You can see which digraph maps are available to you by typing:

If you get an error after using this command your version of vim was not compiled with digraph support. The default version of vim in Debian has digraph support.

Insert mode is the mode in which the letters you type are input into the document. This mode resembles a regular editor. There are other options which will allow you to do additional things as well. For instance, if you use vim with languages which have accented characters that do not appear on your keyboard you can use the digraph option to type those characters.

As an example, open vim and create a new document, or simply use vimtutor and manipulate that file. Type several sentences on several different lines. Press V to enter "linewise" visual mode. Use your cursor/movement keys to select the first line and type: gU . This should change the entire selected text to all uppercase letters. Once the text is highlighted you can also use the (y) ank and (d) elete commands to "copy" or "cut" the text so you can paste it elsewhere with the (p) aste command. Experiment with it a little. You'll use these commands a lot.

This is just vim's notation for selecting that block of text. Don't backspace over it. It will be part of the command you enter.

Once you enter visual mode you can use the movement keys (h, k, j, l, w ...) to change which text is highlighted. You can then enter a sequence of Normal commands to manipulate the text. You can also enter Command line mode by typing the : (colon) and then entering a command.

Visual mode is a nice way to select large blocks of text so that you can perform other operations on them. You enter visual mode by pressing v (lowercase v), V (capital V), or CTRL - V . The v command highlights the block of text by character, the V command highlights text by the line, and the CTRL - V highlights the text by block.

Normal mode is where you use most of the built in commands and is primarily used to move the cursor around.

Normal mode is the mode vim normally starts in. Normal mode is also known as command mode. Be careful not to confuse this with Command line mode .

If you are not sure which mode you are in simply tap the Escape key twice and you will be put into Normal mode.

If you haven't noticed by now, vim is a modeful editor. Vim has 6 different basic modes of operation. The modes are Normal, Visual, Select, Insert, Command line, and Ex. Each mode is suited to a particular purpose. The following sections will cover the basics of each of these modes.

Do you have a simple editing option you use frequently? Please send it to us at newbiedoc-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net so we can add it to this document.

V selects the text by the line. Simply use j , k , or the paragraph motion commands ( { , } ) to select the block of text. Now type d to delete (cut) it, y to yank (copy) it, and p to paste it.

Delete backward until you find x (exclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to, but not including x , spanning multiple lines if necessary.

This is a combination of the (d)elete command and the (/) search forward motion command. You may also substitute other commands for the d elete portion of that command, such as v isual by character, V isual by line, or y ank.

x doesn't have to be one character. It's most likely to be a word or several characters. If you're editing your email, you could use this to delete all text up to your signature by executing d/-- .

Delete forward until you find x (exclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to, but not including x , spanning multiple lines if necessary.

Delete backward until you find x (exclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to, but not including x .

Delete forward until you find x (exclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to, but not including x .

Delete backward until you find x (inclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to and including x .

This is a combination of the (d)elete command and the (f)ind motion command. You may also substitute other commands for the d elete portion of that command, such as v isual by character, or y ank.

This one and its variations dFx , dtx , and dTx are very useful when editing mark-up languages like html and sgml. It is especially useful in deleting and changing quoted attributes within mark-up tags.

Delete forward until you find x (inclusive). If x is found, vim will delete everything from the current cursor position to and including x .

There are several options which allow you to enhance your searching. The hlsearch option highlights the text of the search. The incsearch option highlights and shows possible matches as you type the text. You can get more information on these options by typing :help hlsearch and :help incsearch. The vimrc files section explains how to make these adjustments permanent.

Find the (n) ext occurance of the previous search. It will use the same direction (i.e. forward vs. backwards) of the previous search as well.

This is a search command which will find the next occurance (forward) of the word the cursor is currently on.

Normally the search commands stop at the end or beginning of the file depending on which direction you are searching. You can force the search to "wrap around" the file using the wrapscan option. Type :help wrapscan for more information.

Search backward in the document for text . If found, vim will move the cursor to that position in the file. Once ? is typed, text will show up in the status bar as you type it.

Search forward in the document for text . If found, vim will move the cursor to that position in the file. Once / is typed, text will show up in the status bar as you type it.

Vim creates a "bookmark" each time you exit Vim. The last "bookmark" is '0 . So if you have a file you haven't edited in a long time and can't remember where you left off simply type this command and it will take you to the place you last edited. You can find out what marks are set by typing :marks .

Move forward a sentence. An easy way to distinguish between this and ( is to remember it points in the direction you wish to go

Move forward a paragraph. Useful for moving through documents which have blank lines separating paragraphs or blocks. An easy way to distinguish between this and { is to remember it points in the direction you wish to go.

Expose another line at the bottom. Useful for scrolling the screen without moving your cursor from its position.

Expose another line at the top. Useful for scrolling the screen without moving your cursor from its position.

If you don't like the way the scrolling works you can adjust it with the scroll, scrolloff, and scrolljump options. Type :help scroll for more information. The vimrc files section explains how to make these adjustments permanent.

The most common commands used in vim are covered in the Tutor me! section. You did the tutor right? The following sections contain some additional commands.

To find out which abbreviations you currently have defined, just type :ab and hit enter and the abbreviation definition will show up in the "status bar."

Unless you are only using the abbreviation on a small document, abbreviations are usually added to your personal .vimrc file. This is accomplished by adding the abbreviation like this:

What happens is when you type the abbreviation in vim, as soon as you hit the space bar it is expanded to the full text. The abbreviation dmv in the prior example would expand to "Department of Motor Vehicles." If you close vim these settings are lost unless you commit them to your .vimrc file.

Abbreviations are just shortcuts you type which expand to longer versions of themselves. You can create an abbreviation simply by typing:

Some colors may not be available. Reference :help xterm-colors and :help xiterm for more information.

In order for the color change to work the highlight command should come after the syntax on command in your .vimrc.

The second argument to that command is the group name. To make the setting permanent simply add it to your .vimrc.

You can change the default colors of a syntax highlight by using the highlight command. For example, to change all comments to the color green type:

If you installed the vim-rt package described in Installing vim , all you have to do to enable syntax highlighting is add syntax on to your .vimrc file. The highlighting syntax is chosen based on filename extension so it happens pretty much automatically.

Comments are created in vimrc files using the " (quote) character. As you can see I put a comment next to the autoindent option and also added a "commented out" option which disables the previous noautoindent option I had set. Most of the options follow this convention; if you wish to disable it, simply put no in front of the option.

Once you decide how you want an option to be set you can add it to your ~/.vimrc file. Using the autoindent example above, simply add this line to your vimrc file:

As you can see there are a lot of options to set/unset. To get more information on what an option does simply type :help name_of_option replacing name_of_option with the option you're interested in.

You can see a list of available options that can be set by typing the following command:

Before editing a vimrc file it's a good idea to back it up just in case you mess it up beyond repair.

The /etc/vimrc is the system wide configuration file and shouldn't really be edited unless you know what you are doing or you're the administrator for that machine. The ~/.vimrc file is located in your home directory (that's what the ~/ means, in case you were wondering) and is meant specifically for the purpose of customization.

This is the option to set autoindent which keeps the indentation level you are currently at when you hit the enter key. Rather than retype this command every time you want this option enabled, vim has a resource file it checks to see which options you would like set when vim starts. Technically, there are two such files, /etc/vimrc, and ~/.vimrc. Within these files you can set standard options which will automatically be set when you start vim.

Vim is a very customizable editor. Many of the options you can set require you to type in a command like this:

Mapping keys is one of the most useful and productive operations that vim performs. Mapping keys is just a method to map a complex command to a particular keystroke or sequence of keystrokes. If you find yourself routinely performing the same commands to edit a document there is a good possibility you could create a map to make your editing easier.

For instance, if you write html, xml, or sgml documents in a text editor you know it can become quite tedious typing out all those tags all the time. Markup language tags may also include attributes which you also have to type in or cut and paste from other locations. This can slow your work down quite a bit. There are gui programs which sort of solve this but many of them can't always give you the control you need and you end up resorting to hand editing the file anyway. The simple solution in vim is to create a map.

There are several different types of maps you can create but the two we will concentrate on are Normal mode and Insert mode maps. Normal mode maps begin with the command map and look something like this:

map keyboard_key command_to_execute

Insert mode maps begin with the command map! and look something like this:

map! keyboard_key command_to_execute

Avoid re-mapping the <F1> key as this is always mapped to vim's help.

The complexity of the map is pretty much limited to your imagination. Here is a simple map you might use to open a letter:

map <F2> iTo whom it may concern, <CR><CR><TAB>

This is a Normal mode map set to use the <F2> key. It won't work when you're in insert mode. When you press the <F2> key, vim executes the insert command (because it's still in Normal mode), it then types all the letters as it sees them (because now it's in Insert mode) until it hits <CR>. This is how you type a Carriage Return in maps. So vim executes a carriage return. It then executes the next carriage return and then indents that line with one tab. At this point the map is finished. If you would like to test this map go ahead and copy the map into vim by typing : and then pasting the map into the status bar. Press Return. Now try pressing the <F2> key and see what it does. One thing to notice is the map exits while in insert mode. This allows you to start typing immediately.

If you forgot what maps you have or just want to see what maps you have defined you can simply type: :map or :map! and hit enter. The defined maps will show up in the "status bar."

To make maps permanent add them to your .vimrc file.

Earlier I talked about how maps can make working with markup languages easier. Here are several example Insert mode maps which can be used to create headings in html:

map! ,h1 <H1></H1><ESC>2ba map! ,h2 <H2></H2><ESC>2ba map! ,h3 <H3></H3><ESC>2ba

We will focus on the first map. This map is executed while you are typing in insert mode. After you type ,h1 vim types <H1></H1> for you. It then sees the escape command which just like any other time you're in insert mode takes you back to Normal mode. Vim then sees the command to move back 2 words (2b) which puts the cursor on the ">" of the first <H1> tag. Vim then sees the a command so it moves one space to the right and enters insert mode. At this point the map is finished, your tags have been written, you are in insert mode and ready to type the heading. The beauty of maps like this is you never leave insert mode (at least from your perspective) and you type only 3 characters and get many more. Once you get used to your personal maps it's easy to forget about all the tags and concentrate more on your content.

If you would like to try these maps out simply copy and paste them into vim like the previous example.

There are several things you should notice about the previous examples. Insert mode maps are generally used to enter portions of text which are repetitive or time consuming. They work extremely well for inserting markup text and then positioning your cursor where you would logically type next. They take care of "closing" tags for you which can cut down on nesting errors and ill formed documents.

When creating maps, selection of your assigned keystrokes is pretty much up to you. I would recommend you avoid re-mapping standard commands as this makes it difficult for you to transition to someone else's machine unless you carry around a copy of your .vimrc on a floppy (which I've often thought about :) ). When you choose a sequence of commands for Insert mode choose a sequence which is unlikely to be typed. In the previous example I chose the "," because in almost every type of document it is always followed by a space. The reason for this is vim has to pause for a second whenever the first character of one of its maps is pressed. It does this to see if you are typing a map or just a sequence of characters that just happens to start with the mapped character. By choosing the comma, every time I type a comma and then the following space, vim knows almost immediately that I don't want a map.

For more complex map examples see the section Example maps and vimrc files.

For more information about mapping keys type: