Vim Editor Commands

Vim is a very powerful tool for editing text. It is widely used by programmers for source code editing and browsing. It is an improved version of the vi editor, hence stands for Vi IMproved.. It is freely distributed with most of the linux and unix systems. It can be downloaded from below link.

http://www.vim.org/download.php

Graphical version of Vim is also available which is known as gVim, and it supports all of the Vim commands. It is also available for Windows.

Once you get used to Vim, you will definitely say like every programmer, "Vim is a life saviour".

Below are some of the widely used vim commands, every programmer/vim user must know:

Editing
r	replace a single character (does not use insert mode)
J	join line below to the current one
cc	change (replace) an entire line
cw	change (replace) to the end of word
c$	change (replace) to the end of line
s	delete character at cursor and subsitute text
S	delete line at cursor and substitute text (same as cc)
xp	transpose two letters (delete and paste, technically)
u	undo
.	repeat last command

Marking Text (visual mode)
v	start visual mode, mark lines, then do command (such as y-yank)
V	start Linewise visual mode
O	move to other end of marked area
Ctrl+v	start visual block mode
O	move to Other corner of block
Aw	mark a word
Ab	a () block (with braces)
aB	a {} block (with brackets)
Ib	inner () block
Ib	inner {} block
Esc	exit visual mode

Visual Commands
>	shift right
<	shift left
Y	yank (copy) marked text
D	delete marked text
~	switch alphabet’s case (lower to upper or upper to lower)

Cut and Paste
yy	yank (copy) a line
2yy	yank 2 lines
yw	yank word
y$	yank to end of line
P	put (paste) the clipboard after cursor
P	put (paste) before cursor
dd	delete (cut) a line
dw	delete (cut) the current word
X	delete (cut) current character

Exiting
:w	write (save) the file, but don't exit
:wq	write (save) and quit
:q	quit (fails if anything has changed)
:q!	quit and throw away changes

Search / Replace
/pattern	search for pattern
?pattern	search backward for pattern
n	repeat search in same direction
N	repeat search in opposite direction
:%s/old/new/g	replace all old with new throughout file
:%s/old/new/gc	replace all old with new throughout file with confirmations

Working with multiple files
:e filename	edit a file in a new buffer
:bnext (or :bn)	go to next buffer
:bprev (or :bp)	go to prev buffer
:bd	deletes the buffer currently active
:sp filename	open a file in a new buffer and split window
ctrl + ws	split windows
ctrl + ww	switch between windows
ctrl + wq	quit a window
ctrl + wv	split windows vertically