Ubuntu/Linux Mint comes with a stripped down version of Vim. If you want to use Vim for serious work, you want the full version. I am using Vim 8.0 under Linux Mint 19.03 (upgrade to 21.1 as of 5/18/23). Some settings discussed in this article may not apply to your system, so keep that in mind.
The default version is started via command vi. The vi --version command shows
the version information. Note the Line 5 below shows “Small version without GUI”.
The output also contains the list of setting files Vim will load during startup.
VIM - Vi IMproved 8.0 (2016 Sep 12, compiled Apr 10 2018 21:31:58)
......
Small version without GUI. Features included (+) or not (-):
......
system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
......
If you type command vim in bash, it will tell you that “command vim not found”.
Those three commands remove the existing vim-tiny and install the full version without GUI
vim in Ubuntu/Linux Mint.
sudo apt remove vim-tiny
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vim
You can then check the vim version by command vim --version.
Vim automatically loads ~/.vimrc file during startup. Some default settings of vim
do not make sense. Below are some basic vim settings. I am using those settings under
Linux Mint. Other OS settings may differ slightly.
" ~/.vimrc file, keep it short and neat
set nocompatible " required
filetype plugin on
syntax enable
"path and find, fuzzy file finder
set path+=** " search subdir recursively, find ...
set wildmenu
set wildignore+=**/node_modules/**
set wildignore+=**/venv/**
set number
" Set ignore case, highlight, and incremental searches
set ignorecase
set hlsearch
set incsearch
set lines=38
set columns=140
" Ctrl + s to save file
noremap <silent> <C-S> :update<CR>
vnoremap <silent> <C-S> :<C-C>:update<CR>
inoremap <silent> <C-S> <C-O>:update<CR>
"shortcut ^l to mute highlighting
nnoremap <silent> <C-l> :<C-u>nohlsearch<CR><C-l>
autocmd BufEnter * let &titlestring = ' ' . expand("%:p")
set title
" show tab char as >---
set list
set listchars=tab:>-
" create command :Showspace for double spaces before line end
command Showspace highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red |
\ match ExtraWhitespace /\s\s$/
command Shownospace match none
" spell check command type :Spellcheck to turn on, :set nospell to turn off
command Spellcheck setlocal spell spelllang=en_us
I try to keep the .vimrc file simple so people can easily understand the script and
modify it. Some contents are removed (such as mapping Esc key to CapsLock) if they
are not used in an extended period of time.
Vim loads ~/.vimrc by default, and you can change the behavior by using -u option on
command line.
$vim -u ~/.simple.vimrc filename
$vim -u NONE # do not load any config file
On Linux Mint terminal, you can use set lines=50 columns=100 to set initial console size.
I have those lines in my ~/.vimrc file. Those numbers seem to work well in Linux Mint.
set lines=38
set columns=140
Source: an article on fandom.com.
The following two settings help the :find command to do file fuzzy finding.
set path+=**
set wildmenu
:find *cache # Press Tab key to find file name with cache
To exclude a directory from the search, use this setting.
set wildignore+=**/node_modules/**
set wildignore+=**/venv/**
Source: a video talk on youtube, Source #2: Stackexchange Q&A.
Vim itself has auto complete function built in. In the insert mode, you can type a
few letters such as ‘Com’, and then press ^n to bring up auto complete menu. It
is very handy when you are programming because you often need to type variable and
class names multiple times on a file.
Command ^g shows the name of the current file. Or you can type the following vim
commands.
:echo @%
:!ls %:p # will show absolute path of file
The two lines of code below show the file path and name as the title of Gnome Terminal window (under Linux Mint). Source is this online Q&A post.
autocmd BufEnter * let &titlestring = ' ' . expand("%:p")
set title
Keys h j k l are the basic navigation commands in normal mode. Commands w b e
jump cursor to next word, begin of word, or end of word. Other common navigation
commands are listed below.
<n><n>G( { or [Vim is in a different league comparing to other text editors. It does not have some common shortcuts other editors have. But some of those shortcuts are so common, it is better to customize vim to support them.
The settings below add Ctrl+s shortcut for saving file. Command :update is
like :write, but only write when buffer has been modified.
noremap <silent> <C-S> :update<CR>
vnoremap <silent> <C-S> :<C-C>:update<CR>
inoremap <silent> <C-S> <C-O>:update<CR>
This shortcut also needs a setting in .bashrc file to work.
stty -ixon # stop tele-typewriter,
# -ixon enable xon/xoff flow control -i
By default command ^s freezes vim in Ubuntu Linux, and ^q un-freeze it.
This stackoverflow Q&A
explains it very well.
Ctrl + sis a common command to terminals to stop updating, it was a way to slow the output so you could read it on terminals that did not have a scrollback buffer.Ctrl + qcommand gets terminal going again. Put this line in .bashrc to disable flow control for terminal entirely.
This is one of those things that turn people off, especially new Vim users.
Vim has a built in spell checker. You use set spell to turn it on
and set nospell to turn it off. Here are some other commands on how to
use it.
[sThe spelllang settings is to specify the language, and the default is en.
You can set it to en_us to specify American English. You can also use
spellfile setting to specify a personal dictionary file for zg command.
English is my second language, and I often rely on the spell checker. It is one of those Vim features that some people do not need but other people use it all the time.
Source: an article on linux.com & a blog post by Jake Harding.
The Linux Mint comes with Gnome Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t to launch). You can open additional
tabs by pressing
shortcut Ctrl + Shift + t, and move to next tab by pressing Ctrl + PageDown.
This does not necessarily relate to Vim, but I often use them so they are listed here.
Another useful terminal shortcut is Ctrl + z which puts current application Vim
in the background and suspended. After running some bash commands, you can type fg
command to bring Vim back to foreground. Or you can use :! followed by a bash
command to execute the command inside Vim.
Copying texts to and from Vim using the Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v does not work.
The command ^c is to generate a signal which tells the current process to
terminate, and command ^v invokes “verbatim insert” in bash (see an online
article) .
You could use Gnome terminal shortcuts Ctrl + Shift + c and Ctrl + Shift +
v, but sometimes it does not work very well.
I often use the clipboard register ("+) to copy and paste texts in and out of Vim. Here
are the steps to copy texts into Vim,
Alt + Tab switch focus to Vim."+p to paste the texts.Here are the steps to copy texts out of Vim to another program.
v command to visually select texts in Vim."+y to copy the texts to clipboard.^v to paste the texts. There is an
online Q&A
on how to map ^c and ^v to copy and paste behavior, but I have not
set it up in my .vimrc file.
When you have 10 or more text files open in Vim and need to reboot your computer, you can use session commands to save the Vim work status and load them later.
Text files opened in Vim are called buffers. You can open multiple files with bash
command like this vim *.py, and all python files in current directory will open
in Vim as buffers. The command :ls shows all buffers in current vim session. Note
that command :!ls will execute a single bash command ls.
On the list generated by the :ls command, % represents current buffer and #
represents alternate buffer. You can switch between the current buffer and
alternate buffer. The + symbol on the list represents the file has been
modified but not saved. The commands listed below are for navigating between buffers.
When writing Python programs in Vim, you can run the command :!python3 %
to run the current file.
When writting articles in Vim, I often need to reflow texts after some editing. To
reflow texts, the first step is to set the textwidth and the second step is
to select texts and reflow with command gq.
You can set the textwidth to 80 (:set textwidth=80 or :set tw=80), then use
gg to move cursor to the start of the file and type gqG to reflow
the whole article. The command gq also works with visual selection. You
can use command vipgq to select the paragraph first and then reflow. Or you
can use gqap to reflow current paragraph, and gq} reflow texts from current
cursor to end of the paragraph. Note you can select a paragraph by typing vip or
vap
Command gw is similar to gq. Here is the quote from help page.
gw: Format the lines that {motion} moves over. Similar to gq but puts the cursor back at the same position in the text.
Source: an stackoverflow Q&A
If you want to run a normal mode command on a range of lines, you can use the
normal command. For example if you want to comment out line 4 to 6 of
.bashrc file, you can use V to select those lines and apply command
:'<,'>normal i# to insert a character (#) in font of each line.
# Load pyenv automatically by adding
# the following to ~/.bashrc:
export PATH="/home/george/.pyenv/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"
Source: Practical Vim Second Edition by Drew Neil Page 63, Tip 30
Here is an online post about how to save read only files in vim.
This is the command to save a readonly file in Vim.
w !sudo tee % >/dev/null
The bash command tee is itself somewhat magical, and I do not fully understand how
the above command works.
The >> command is to indent a line in normal mode. The operator > is for an
object or visual selection. When indenting or un-indenting, lines are shifted
one shiftwidth to the right or left (e.g., :set shiftwidth=4).
The == command is auto indent, and 4== command will auto indent 4 lines.
If you want to convert tabs to spaces for copied text, the simple answer is to use those two commands.
:set tabstop=4
:retab
If the expandtab option is set, vim will insert space when the tab
key is pressed (:set expandtab). The option tabstop controls the
number of spaces that will be inserted when the tab key is pressed
(:set tabstop=4). The shiftwidth option is for indent command >>.
Yes, those option names are confusing.
Source: fandom.com article
To show tabs as visible characters in Vim, use those two settings.
set list
set listchars=tab:>-
The second line will set tabs as something like this >---.
To highlight two trailing spaces before the line end, use those two commands.
:highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red
:match ExtraWhitespace /\s\s$/
Or add this line to the .vimrc file. This is mainly for markdown (.md) files.
Enter command :Showspace to display double spaces before line end, and :Shownospace
to clear the highlight.
command Showspace highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=red |
\ match ExtraWhitespace /\s\s$/
command Shownospace match none
Source: Stackexchange.com Q&A, SO Q&A for Trailing Space
The command to scan line for a character is f{char}, and F{char} reverse the order
and scan backward. Press ; for repeat and , for reverse. The command t{char} stops
the cursor before the character. Command f is for find and t is for til.
The command /pattern<CR> is to search a word pattern. Press n for next and N for
reverse search. Command * is to search the word that is under the cursor.
Substitution command is :s/target/replacement. Press & for repeat. Command :%s/...
is to search all lines. Add an option /g to the end :s/tar/rep/g to replace multiple
matches on a line.
Source: Page 9 of Drew Neil’s Practical Vim Book
The command U is to change visually selected text to uppercase, and u to lowercase.
Tilde ~ command is to swap cases in a visual selection.
Without using a visual selection, gU is the command to make characters uppercase, and
gu for lowercase.
Source: Stackoverflow Q&A
I often use tree command to list files in a directory (need apt install in Linux Mint).
If you want to exclude a sub directory such as venv, the command looks like this.
$tree -I venv
$tree -I 'venv|__pycache__' # note the quote(') around two sub dirs
$tree -L 2 # -L is for levels down
$tree -I venv -v # sort by name, or --sort=name
This is not necessary a Vim tip, but I can’t find a good place to put it.
Source: zaiste.net blog post
Vim Cheat Sheet is a nice single web page which includes common vim commands.
This article Here Is Why Vim Uses hjkl Keys as Arrow Keys is an interesting read. This wiki page has more information on ADM-3A visual display terminal.