Vim Cheat Sheet, The Complete Beginners Guide for Vim

Vim is a popular and powerful text editor that has been around for several decades. It’s a command-line-based editor, which means it runs in a terminal or console window rather than having a graphical user interface like most modern text editors. Vim offers a range of features that make it a favorite among many programmers, writers, and power users.

Ben Turner
2 min readJun 13, 2023

MOVEMENT


h or ← #===> Move cursor left.

j or ↓ #===> Move cursor down.

k or ↑ #===> Move cursor up.

l or → #===> Move cursor right.

w #===> Move to the beginning of the next word.

b #===> Move to the beginning of the previous word.

e #===> Move to the end of the current word.

0 #===> Move to the beginning of the current line.

$ #===> Move to the end of the current line.

gg #===> Move to the first line of the document.

G #===> Move to the last line of the document.

Ctrl + F #===> Move forward one page.

Ctrl + B #===> Move backward one page.

EDITING

i        #===> Insert text before the cursor.

a #===> Append text after the cursor.

o #===> Insert a new line below the current line.

O #===> Insert a new line above the current line.

x #===> Delete the character under the cursor.

dd #===> Delete the current line.

yy #===> Copy the current line.

p #===> Paste the copied or deleted text below the current line.

P #===> Paste the copied or deleted text above the current line.

u #===> Undo the last change.

Ctrl + R #===> Redo the last change.

. #===> Repeat the last command.

SEARCH AND REPLACE

/pattern.     #===> Search forward for the specified pattern

?pattern. #===> Search backward for the specified pattern

n #===> Jump to the next occurrence of the search pattern

N #===> Jump to the previous occurrence of the search pattern

:%s/old/new/g #===> Replace occurrences of "old" with "new" in the entire file

:s/old/new/g #===> Replace occurrences of "old" with "new" in the current line

:s/old/new/gc #===> Replace occurrences of "old" with "new" in the current line with confirmation

SAVING AND QUITTING

:w         #===> Save the file

:q #===> Quit Vim

:wq or :x #===> Save and quit Vim

:q! #===> Quit Vim without saving changes

VISUAL MODE

v         #===> Enter character-wise visual mode

V #===> Enter line-wise visual mode

Ctrl + V #===> Enter block-wise visual mode

# Use movement commands to select text, then perform operations like deletion or copy/paste

THE STORY IS CONTINUOUSLY BEING UPDATED…

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Ben Turner
Ben Turner

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