MacVim Vim - the text editor - for macOS Download MacVim Release Notes (r166) GitHub: MacVim GitHub page; Releases: Binary releases and release notes; FAQ: Answers to some frequently asked questions; Troubleshooting: How to track down the source of common problems; Debugging: How to generate a debug log; MacVim is maintained by macvim-dev. This page was generated by GitHub. Vim vim is a vi-compatible text editor.It has many powerful enhancements for moving around, searching, and editing documents. Basic editing is simple to learn, and there’s additional functionality to explore.
:q Quit (a warning is printed if a modified file has not been saved)
ZZ Save workspace and quit the editor (same as :wq)
: 10,25 w temp
write lines 10 through 25 into file named temp. Of course, other line
numbers can be used. (Use :f to find out the line numbers you want.
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 commmand
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
To create a page break, while in the insert mode, press the CTRL key
And l. ^L will appear in your text and will cause the printer to start
A new page.
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
:/ 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
Vim Editor Mac Commands
pat2
Example :g/tIO/s//Ada.Text_IO/g
This will find and replace tIO by Ada.text_IO everywhere in the file.
: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
Examples
Opening a New File
Step 1 typevim filename(create a file named filename)
Step 2 typei ( switch to insert mode)
Step 3 enter text (enter your Ada program)
Step 4 hitEsc key(switch back to command mode)
Step 5 type:wq (write file and exit vim)
Editing the Existing File
Step 1 typevim filename(edit the existing file named filename)
Step 2 move around the file using h/j/k/l key or any appropriate command
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
nG or :n Cursor goes to the specified (n) line
(ex. 10G goes to line 10)
Step 3 edit required text (replace or delete or insert)
Step 4 hit Esc key (exit from insert mode if you insert or replace text)
Step 5 type:wq
Vim is an open source command line text editor. It is very powerful and customizable. In this article, I will show you how to configure Vim with vimrc file. So, let’s get started.
Vim can be configured system wide (globally) via the /etc/vim/vimrc.local file on Ubuntu/Debian based operating systems. On CentOS 7 and RHEL 7, the system wide configuration file for Vim is in /etc/vimrc.
You can open the system wide configuration file of Vim as follows:
Ubuntu/Debian:
CentOS 7 and RHEL 7:
You can also do user specific configuration of Vim. All you have to do is to create a .vimrc file in the HOME directory of the user than you want to configure Vim for and add the required Vim configuration options there.
You can create a .vimrc file for your login user with the following command:
Then, open .vimrc file with vim with the following command:
For simplicity, I will refer to both system wide Vim configuration file and user specific Vim configuration file as vimrc file. You can use either the system wide Vim configuration file or the user specific Vim configuration file to configure Vim depending on what you want to do.
Showing Line Numbers:
By default, Vim does not show line numbers. Line number is very important for programming.
To show line numbers, open Vim configuration file (global or user specific depending on your choice) and type in the following Vim command:
Now, type in :wq! and press <Enter> to save the configuration file.
Now, Vim should show line numbers.
Enable Syntax Highlighting:
Vim may not have syntax highlighting enabled by default. But you can easily enable syntax highlighting though the vimrc file by adding the following line of Vim command to the file.
Changing Syntax Highlighting Color scheme:
Vim has many syntax highlighting color schemes by default. You can change between them if you don’t like the color scheme that is currently set.
To change the color scheme, type in the following vim command to the vimrc file.
Vim Download Mac
Now, replace COLOR_SCHEME_NAME to one of the following keywords:
The syntax highlighting color scheme should be changed. I set it to industry as you can see in the screenshot below.
Setting Tab Size:
You can also configure the tab size in Vim though the vimrc file. If you think the default tab size is too big for you or is not enough, then this is a good news for you.
For me the tab size of 4 is enough. Python developers often use the tab size of 2.
To set the tab size to 4 (let’s say), open your vimrc file and type in the following vim command:
For tab size 2, you would type in the following Vim command in your vimrc file.
Enabling Automatic Indentation:
You can enable automatic indentation to automatically insert tabs or spaces when you write codes with Vim.
To enable automatic indentation in Vim, type in the following Vim command to the vimrc file.
Replacing Tabs with White Spaces:
When you insert tabs into your codes and save it and send it to someone else, he/she must use the same tab size as you did. Otherwise, the code would look very ugly. In Vim, there is a solution. Vim can automatically replace tabs to spaces. For example, let’s say, your tab size is set to 4. So, when you insert tab into your code, Vim will automatically replace it with 4 white spaces. So, when you send the code to your friend, it will be the same nevertheless of the tab size in his/her editor.
To replace tabs with white spaces, type in the following Vim command in your vimrc file.
Removing Multiple Spaces on Single Backspace:
If you’re using expandtab to replace tabs to white spaces automatically on Vim, then you may have noticed that pressing <Backspace> once removes only a single white space. That means, if you’ve set tabstop to 4, then you have to press <Backspace> 4 times to remove all 4 white spaces.
Luckily, Vim has remedies for that. You can type in the following line on your vimrc file to remove the number of white spaces that was replaced by for the tab by pressing <Backspace> just once.
NOTE: As I set tabstop to 4, I also set softtabstop to 4. So, 4 white spaces for each tab will be removed all together with a single press of the <Backspace> key.
Highlight the Current Line:
You can highlight the line you’re currently on in Vim. To do that, open your vimrc file and type in the following Vim command:
Other vimrc Commands:
Vim Text Editor For Mac
You can add Vim functions and other commands on the vimrc file to configure Vim. You may take a look at the Vim official documentation at http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/ to learn more about it.
You may also read the article A Good Vimrc at https://dougblack.io/words/a-good-vimrc.html to find the most common Vim commands that you can use.
So, that’s how you configure Vim text editor with vimrc file. Thanks for reading this article.