Put together a quick cheat-sheet from things I've copied and saved over the years. I come back to these notes from time to time and thought it time to finally share them.
File management
:e reload file :q quit :q! quit without saving changes :w write file :w {file} write new file :x write file and exit
Movement
k h l basic motion j w next start of word W next start of whitespace-delimited word e next end of word E next end of whitespace-delimited word b previous start of word B previous start of whitespace-delimited word 0 start of line $ end of line gg go to first line in file G go to end of file gk move down one displayed line gj move up one displayed line
Nvaigation
cw — change to next word cc — change entire line ce — change from cursor to end of word c$ — change to end of line ci” — change inside double quotes ca” — change around double quotes cfx — change until next found occurrence of x
Insertion
To exit from insert mode use Esc or Ctrl-C
Enter insertion mode and:
a append after the cursor A append at the end of the line i insert before the cursor I insert at the beginning of the line o create a new line under the cursor O create a new line above the cursor R enter insert mode but replace instead of inserting chars :r {file} insert from file
Editing
u undo yy yank (copy) a line y{motion} yank text that {motion} moves over p paste after cursor P paste before cursor <Del> or x delete a character dd delete a line d{motion} delete text that {motion} moves over
Search and replace with the :substitute (aka :s) command
:s/foo/bar/ replace the first match of 'foo' with 'bar' on the current line only :s/foo/bar/g replace all matches (`g` flag) of 'foo' with 'bar' on the current line only :%s/foo/bar/g replace all matches of 'foo' with 'bar' in the entire file (`:%s`) :%s/foo/bar/gc ask to manually confirm (`c` flag) each replacement
Preceding a motion or edition with a number repeats it 'n' times
Examples:
50k moves 50 lines up 2dw deletes 2 words 5yy copies 5 lines 42G go to line 42
Hope this cheat-sheet helps! If you want more, this cheat-sheet is amazing: Vim Cheat Sheet