Vim Series (Day 01): Movement

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. In this series we will be covering the infamous text editor, Vim. For those that don’t know, Vi IMproved or Vim is a modal text editor that is made for command line use. This means that Vim works by using “Modes” to accomplish certain tasks. There are a total of 5 different modes that Vim has. They are:

• Normal Mode - allows for movement from keybindings, (Default Mode).
• Insert Mode - allows user to insert text into the document.
• Visual Mode - allows user to highlight text. This has multiple use-cases.
• Command Mode - allows user to execute regex commands, terminal commands and more.
• Replace Mode - allows user to replace text, paragraphs, etc.

This first part of the series will cover basics in every mode than a beginners needs to know. All you need to follow along is to install vim on your computer, and open a text file by running vim filename.txt or by running :vimtutor when you open vim in your terminal.

It is important to know Vim as you more than likely will be working with servers in a business environment. You might not have a choice as to what editor you can use. Vim or is predecessor Vi are usually installed by default on most Unix-like boxes and offer many advantages like creating macros or the use of regex in Command Mode to help make editing text quick and efficient. Also, if you enjoy this series you might want to checkout Neovim as an editor of choice as it offers the ability to write configuration files as well as use plugins written in the Lua programmming language.

Basics of Vim

First off, lets start by moving a cursor around the screen. If you ever played a video game that used the ASWD keys, then this should be slightly familiar. However, instead of those keys, movement of the cursor is done like so:

Cursor Movement (Normal Mode)

Try this in your file of choice.

Basic Editing (Normal Mode)

Now that you are able to move around in your file, lets try to edit it in Normal Mode. Use these commands on your file.

Basic Visual Mode

Visual Mode is used to highlight text in the file. This has many use cases, like indenting curtain lines of text, copying & deleting text, and a few other things. To start with, use one of the commands below in conjunction with y or d.

Basic Insert Mode

Next, lets enter some text in the file. Use the commands below to work with Insert Mode.

Basic Replace Mode

There are 2 different ways of working with Replace Mode. As you can see below, you can either replace a single character or enter Replace Mode for a larger replacement of text. While in Replace Mode you can replace text just by typing over it. To leave Replace Mode, you can use the same commands to leave Insert Mode.

Try out Replace Mode by entering the sentence below, and replace the name with your own:

Hello, my name is Mark.

Basic Command Mode

To work with Command Mode, it is pretty easy. Make sure you are in Normal Mode to start, then enter a colon : and ta-da! You are in Command Mode. You will need to engage with Command Mode to save your documents as well as to do other things, like working with regex commands. Try out the commands below on your file.

Wrapping it up

You have just completed this post of the Vim series! Hopefully this information was helpful with getting started with vim. If you like this post then look out for the next post on increasing editing speed in vim.

Change Log

• Updated Wrapping it up to link to editing post (08-29-2022)