Composable Vim Elements

Or, how to grok vi.

The depth and breadth of functionality in Vim (or evil-mode in Emacs) can be daunting at first glance, but breaking normal mode edit commands down into orthogonal, composable elements (movements, operators, text objects, and counts) reveals a simple and intuitive syntax structure. ex functionality in command-line mode (i.e. : commands) represents a whole other world that isn't covered here.

Orthogonal elements

These lists are by no means exhaustive, but when taken together they can provide very efficient (if not the most efficient) means of achieving frequently-required functionality.

Movements

Move to:

  • Beginning of document - gg

  • End of document - G

  • __T__op of screen - T
  • __M__iddle of screen - M

  • Bottom (__L__ow) of screen - L

  • The mark named 'a' - `a

  • The beginning of the line containing the mark named 'a' - 'a

Relative to the cursor, move to:

  • First character on the line - 0
  • Previous character on the line - h
  • Next character on the line - l

  • Last character on the line - $

  • Previous line - k

  • Next line - j

  • Next beginning of word - w

...word ...sentence ...paragraph
Previous beginning of... b ( {
Next end of... e ) }
  • Previous in-line search hit for character 's' - Fs

  • Next in-line search hit for character 's' - Fs

  • Character after previous in-line search hit for character 's' - Ts

  • Character before next in-line search hit for character 's' - Ts

  • Previous in-document search hit for "searchterm" - ?searchterm

  • Next in-document search hit for "searchterm" - \searchterm

Operators

Most operators need something to operate on: either the space between the cursor and the destination of a movement (see above), or a text object (see below).

Action Operator symbol
Change (delete + insert something new) c
Delete (cut to register) d
Yank (copy to register) y
Put (paste from register) p
Indent >
Reverse Indent <

Text objects

A text object represents the innermost meaningful grouping of document text that contains the cursor, pre-qualified with either a ("a...", "all the...") or i ("__i__nside"):

select a... select __i__nside a...
__w__ord aw iw
__s__entence as is
__p__aragraph ap ip
HTML/XML __t__ag at it
(...) a(, a) i(, i)
[...] a[, a] i[, i]
{...} a{, a} i{, i}
<...> a<, a> i<, i>
"..." a" i"
'...' a' i'
`...` a` i`

Counts

Operators, text objects, and many movements can be prefixed by integers to indicate that the operation/movement should occur a certain number of times, or the n-th smallest surrounding text object should be selected.

Composing orthogonal elements

Operator + movement

Apply an operator between the cursor and a movement destination: {operator}{movement}

For example:

  • Delete this line and the previous: dk
  • Change text from the cursor to the end of the word: ce (cw does this as a special case too)
  • Yank from here to the next letter 'q': yfq
  • Delete the next 3 characters: d3l

Operator + text object

Apply an operator to a text object: {operator}{textobject}

For example:

  • Delete the current word: daw
  • Yank the current sentence: yas
  • Indent the current paragraph: >ap
  • Yank the contents of the third-innermost set of brackets surrounding the cursor: y3i(