The Vim Way

1. Dot Command

• The . command repeats the last change
• Changes can operate on characters, lines and even the whole file.
• For example to delete a comment like // at the start of a line you might enter 3dl. Moving to the next line and pressing . will remove the comment characters from that line also.

2. Reduce Extraneous Movement

• Vim has operations which are effectively compounds operations e.g. move the cursor to somewhere and start editing, e.g. A can be thought of as $a.
• Should favour these as it helps with the dot command - we don't need to position the cursor ourselves.
• Other examples
  • C - c$
  • s - cl
  • S - ^C
  • I - ^i
  • A - $a
  • o - A<CR>
  • O - ko

3. Use Idiomatic VIM commands for editing

• For complex editing we want a sequence of commands that (optionally delete current text and ) enter insert mode, insert changed text and exit insert mode.
• This can be repeated using the . command.
• If we do a search to find occurences of where to perform the operation then we can repeatedly make the change using ; to repeat the search and . to make the change.

4. Act, Repeat, Reverse

• When facing a repetitive task try to make the motion and the change repeatable.
• . repeats the last change
• @: repeats the last Ex command (i.e. : commands)
• ; repeats the last f

• n searches againt for a pattern specified using /

• u undoes the last change or substitution

• , undoes the last find command (f)
• N undoes the last / search

5. Find and Replace by Hand

• Idea is to make the first replacement by hand and then use the . command to repeat the next changes. Can be useful if you need to manually verify each change e.g. search/replace some instances of a text snippet.
• Can use * to seach for the word under the cursor at the moment and n to find the next match.
• Combining these we get the following workflow
  • Find the first instance of the text you are searching for
  • Press * to find the first instance that we wish to change (if not at it already)
  • make the change e.g. using cw to change a word. Drop into insert mode only once so that VIM records all the changes as a single edit.
  • now press n until you find the next instance you wish to change and . to make the change.

6. Dot Formula

• Ideally for repeated edits we would use the formula of one keystroke to move and another keystroke to edit e.g. n. as above.