When my peers see me writing code they think I'm possessed by some kind of dark forze which drives me to use a series of strange shortcuts for them. The reality is that, with practice, I have gained a great ability to put the mouse aside.
But, to be honest, the path was hard. The vas majority Vim's gurus uses such a great amount of shortcuts, macros, and patterns that shocked me out.
The Basics
That's the entry point of this post, bring you a series of most common shortcurts that I use in my day to day as a web dev. Furthermore, there are also great shortcuts for VS Code that will take you to the next level.
Modes
-
i
-> For normal mode. In this mode you can insert text before the cursor. -
esc
-> Exit insert mode. A fat cursor appears and you will able to move throught the document. -
Ctrl+v
-> Start visual mode (lines). -
Ctrl+V
-> Start visual mode (blocks).
Movement
-
h
-> Left -
j
-> Down -
k
-> Up -
l
-> Right -
0
-> Jump to the start of the line -
$
-> Jump to the end of the line -
G
-> Go to the last line of the document -
zz
-> Go to the first line of the document
Exiting
-
:q!
-> Quit and throw away unsaved changes. -
:wq
-> Write (save) and quit.
Most used shortcuts (for me)
Insert text
-
I
-> Insert at the beginning of the line. -
A
-> Insert (append) at the end of the line. -
o
-> Append (open) a new line below the current line. -
O
-> Append (open) a new line above the current line. -
gd
-> Go to a definition (variable, function...). -
gf
-> Go to a specifil file.
Editing
-
r
-> Replace a single character. -
x
-> Delete characters. -
u
-> Undo -
Ctrl+r
-> Redo -
ciw
-> Replace the entire word. -
cc
-> Replace the entire line
Cut and paste
-
yy
-> Copy a line. -
2yy
-> Copy two lines. -
p
-> Paste after cursor. -
P
-> Paste before cursor. -
dd
-> Delete a line -
d$
-> Delete to the end of the line. -
dw
-> Delete the characters of the word from the cursor position to the start of the next word.
Pro commands
-
line-number + G
-> Go to this line. -
/search-term
-> Search inside the code. Move witchn
. -
%
-> Move to matching character ({}, []). -
:/s/text-to-change/new-text/gc
-> Replaces the indicated text with the new one throughout the document.
VS Code
-
Ctrl+n
-> Move forward through options in a drop-down panel. -
Ctrl+p
-> Move backwards through options in a drop-down panel. -
Alt+arrow keys
-> Move the current line up or down. -
Alt+Shift+arrow keys
-> Copy the current line up or down.
I hope you will find it useful for your projects. Honestly in my case I have notably improved the way I write code 😉
Cover photo by NihoNorway graphy on Unsplash
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