These koans have been independently translated into Chinese (archived), thanks to Wanzhang Sheng, and into Spanish (archived), thanks to Daniel Campoverde Carrión. See also: The Dharma of Vi (archived), Emperor Sh and the Traveller Master Wq and the Windows developer … Continue reading
If you can, it’s a good idea to set up your .vimrc file using conditionals so that it’s compatible on all of the systems with which you need to work. Using one .vimrc file enables you to include it as … Continue reading
The default text editor in installations of Debian and its derivatives is Nano, largely because it’s a simple and small editor. If you’re a Vim user, you might find it a little jarring to be presented with a modeless editor … Continue reading
Entering search patterns and replacement strings in Vim can sometimes be a pain, particularly if the search or replacement text is already available in a register or under the cursor. There are a few ways to make working with search … Continue reading
If you work on many machines with varying operating systems (Windows, GNU/Linux, MacOS X, BSD) and in various upgrade states, particularly if some of the machines are a lot older or have more minimal or custom installations of Vim, you … Continue reading
While Vim’s core is very stable, problems can come about when extending the editor with plugins, particularly if there are a high number of them or if they’re buggy or not very well written. While Vim offers a number of … Continue reading
The benefits of getting to grips with Vim are immense in terms of editing speed and maintaining your “flow” when you’re on a roll, whether writing code, poetry, or prose, but because the learning curve is so steep for a … Continue reading
The command line in Vim for ex commands can be edited with a few of the GNU Readline key combinations that may be familiar to Bash or Emacs users, so it’s reasonably easy to edit it, for example to type … Continue reading
The autocompletion for filenames in Vim in command mode is very useful, but by default it’s a bit confusing for people accustomed to tab completion in Bash because it doesn’t quite work the same way. Pressing Tab will complete the … Continue reading
While Vim’s built-in feature set is pretty vast and its tools can be adapted to pretty much any editing task, there’s still considerable value in using plugins to add functionality to the editor. Plugins range from simple functions or changes … Continue reading