Some Useful vim Commands – My vim Cheatsheet

Artem Russakovskii — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:07:24 +0000

[WORK IN PROGRESS] Here is a list of commands that I use every day with vim, in no particular order. Out of a billion possible key combinations, I found these to be irreplaceable and simple enough to remember.

*	search for the word under cursor (to the end of the file)
#	search for the word under cursor (to the top of the file)
ctrl-p,ctrl-n	suggest (p)revious or (n)ext autocomplete from the list of existing keywords in the file or included files (!).
:go NNN	go to byte NNN
.	redo last command
/SEARCH TERM	search document for SEARCH TERM
:%s/FOO/BAR/gci	replace FOO with BAR (g)lobally, case (i)insensitively, and asking for (c)onfirmation
n (N)	next (previous) search result
%	find and jump to a matching brace or parenthesis
u	undo
ctrl-r	redo
r CHAR	replace character under curson with CHAR
i	start editing before current character
I	start editing in the beginning of current line
a	start editing after current character
A	start editing at the end of current line
o	start editing on the next line
O	start editing on the previous line
:wq or ZZ	write file and exit
ctrl-v	visual block select (rectangular)
shift-v	visual line select
ctrl(or shift)-v y or d	copy or delete selected text
yy	yank (copy) current line
yNNN arrow up/down	yank NNN lines above or below
p	paste the yanked buffer
cw	change word (delete word under cursor and go into edit mode)
cNw	change N words
e!	reload the file (revert)

How To Add A File Extension To vim Syntax Highlighting

Artem Russakovskii — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:10:53 +0000

Today I was asked a question about defining custom extensions for vim syntax highlighting such that, for example, vim would know that example.lmx is actually of type xml and apply xml syntax highlighting to it. I know vim already automatically does it not just based on extension but by looking for certain strings inside the text, like but what if my file doesn't have such strings?

After digging around I found the solution. Add the following to ~/.vimrc (the vim configuration file):

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syntax on
filetype on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.lmx set filetype=xml

After applying it, my .lmx file is highlighted:

Same principle works, for instance, for mysql dumps that I have to do from time to time. If they don't have a .sql extension, you'll get something like:

After

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syntax on
filetype on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.dump set filetype=sql

everything is fine:

But why and how does it work, you ask?

:help au	:au[tocmd] [group] {event} {pat} [nested] {cmd} Add {cmd} to the list of commands that Vim will execute automatically on {event} for a file matching {pat}.
:help BufNewFile	When starting to edit a file that doesn't exist.
:help BufRead	When starting to edit a new buffer, after reading the file into the buffer.
:help filetype	will actually tell this whole story in part B.

And that's how you do it, folks.

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Some Useful vim Commands – My vim Cheatsheet

How To Add A File Extension To vim Syntax Highlighting