Table of Contents

vim is a double edged sword. Use it properly and you’ll see the benefits, don’t use it properly and it’s just going to cause more pain and sorrow.

Handy vim cheatsheet: https://vim.rtorr.com

How to add text at the end of each line #

Use-case: assume you just copied a whole column of text and just want to append a comma at the end

:%s/$/,/

:'<,'>s/$/,/

'<,'> assumes you selected text aka visual select

:'<,'>norm A,

Remove lines that (do not) contain a specific word #

Use-case: you created a Kubernetes Secret via kubectl create secret and want to remove all lines containing creationTimestamp: null

:g /word/d

The reverse of this (meaning, remove lines that don’t contain specific word) would look like this

:g!/word/d

delete all blank lines #

:g/^$/d

copy file contents to clipboard #

:%w !pbcopy

replace text matching X with Y #

with confirmation

:%s/replacethis/withthis/gc

without confirmation

:%s/replacethis/withthis/g

move existing window to existing tab #

As a window is just a viewport into a loaded buffer, you have to:

Note the buffer number displayed in the current window.
:close! the window.
Switch to the existing target tab page.
:sbuffer the buffer number to re-open it.

save and restore multiple different sessions #

Use-case: assume you just upgraded vim or Terminal app and just want to restart them

:mksession ~/mysession.vim

source session to restore everything back

:source ~/mysession.vim

open vim with the session

$ vim -S ~/mysession.vim

open filename under cursor like `gf`, but in a new tab #

gf - Edit existing file under cursor in same window
C-W f - Edit existing file under cursor in split window
C-W C-F - Edit existing file under cursor in split window
C-W gf - Edit existing file under cursor in new tabpage

make a new directory or file in `netrw`, vim’s file explorer #

If you are in the file explorer mode, you can use:

d for creating a directory
% for creating a new file

You can get into the explorer mode with issuing a command :Sexplore or :Vexplore

There is no need to call external commands with !

find and replace all instances of specific string in multiple files in vim #

The general workflow is:

Search for your pattern across the project.
Operate on each match (safer, slower) or on each file with matches (riskier, faster).
Write your changes.

The first step can be done with any command that populates the quickfix list: :help :vimgrep, :help :grep, something from a third-party plugin, etc.

Taking :grep as an example:

:grep foo **/*.js

will populate the quickfix list with an entry for every foo found in *.js files in the current directory and subcategories. You can see the list with :cwindow.

The second step involves :help :cdo or :help :cfdo:

:cdo s/foo/bar/gc

which will substitute every foo with bar on each line in the quickfix list and ask for confirmation. With :cfdo it would look like that:

:cfdo %s/foo/bar/gc

If you are super confident, you can drop the c at the end. See :help :s_flags.

The third step involves :help :update:

:cfdo update

which will write every file in the quickfix list to disk if they have been changed.

In short:

:gr foo **/*.js
:cdo s/foo/bar/gc
:cfdo up

Remove all unwanted whitespaces #

Ever had those pesky trailing whitespaces? How about those on a newline? Well, this trick should do it

:%s/\s\+$//e

In a search,\s finds whitespace (a space or a tab), and \+ finds one or more occurrences. The following command deletes any trailing whitespace at the end of each line. If no trailing whitespace is found no change occurs, and the e flag means no error is displayed