VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33742 entries

Simple things we do all the time should be able to be done with very few keystrokes, but sometimes I find something I need to do makes me go, "There MUST be a better way." This challenge is just a simple movement and entering text at a certain place.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #1254 / 7447
Number of attempts: 8

Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #448 / 1274
Number of attempts: 3

One number per line - 18776 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #382 / 3875
Number of attempts: 10

V to the i - 4818 entries

Input is 99 V's. Output is 100 i's.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #543 / 1898
Number of attempts: 9

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2897 entries

Remove identical text at the beginning of several lines and the closing parenthesis.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #354 / 857
Number of attempts: 2

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3604 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #547 / 1169
Number of attempts: 3

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 799 entries

You're replying to an email with silly long lines. Clean them up.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 6
Position: #357 / 421
Number of attempts: 2

multiple cursor alternative - 1521 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #46 / 381
Number of attempts: 7

From argument to object - 1513 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #79 / 460
Number of attempts: 4

Every other line - 2916 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #220 / 705
Number of attempts: 4

Copy three lines - 2875 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #83 / 641
Number of attempts: 9

Extract argument from function - 2364 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #335 / 755
Number of attempts: 4

Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

Replace every instance of 'aaa' with 'xaaax'.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #820 / 1630
Number of attempts: 7

That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #79 / 701
Number of attempts: 3

Just the middle - 11495 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1052 / 4213
Number of attempts: 6

Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #104 / 589
Number of attempts: 3

Basic renumbering - 5683 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #284 / 1269
Number of attempts: 10

Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 869 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #183 / 293
Number of attempts: 4

Add to end of each line... kinda - 333 entries

Visual-block mode can be used to add something to the end of each line, even if they are of differing lengths. However, what if it's not quite at the end?

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #116 / 174
Number of attempts: 1

Vice versa - 7952 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #24 / 2139
Number of attempts: 6

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 662 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 15
Position: #89 / 208
Number of attempts: 2

Delete to the end of the current line - 831 entries

Delete to the end of the current line, but keep the character under the cursor.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #48 / 401
Number of attempts: 1

Put the months in order - 974 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 37
Position: #73 / 163
Number of attempts: 9

Array transposition - 2425 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 18
Position: #199 / 449
Number of attempts: 12

Mirror Symmetry - 822 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #31 / 269
Number of attempts: 5

Swap assigned value - 655 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #166 / 256
Number of attempts: 3

Change your calendar - 392 entries

Happy New Year!

Best score: 18
Best player score: 33
Position: #48 / 87
Number of attempts: 4

Collect List - 4308 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #349 / 1192
Number of attempts: 5

camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #36 / 281
Number of attempts: 4

Space out the alphabet - 1659 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #34 / 446
Number of attempts: 6

Fix the XML - 1039 entries

The challenge consists in having a valid xml from an incomplete source.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #81 / 290
Number of attempts: 9

I forgot quotes - 16038 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #238 / 4192
Number of attempts: 8

-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #114 / 1138
Number of attempts: 5

Count both ways - 1022 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #63 / 354
Number of attempts: 6

NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 253 entries

Just testing.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #81 / 116
Number of attempts: 1

Change name of a variable - 179 entries

Replace the name of the $variable with the fastest move possible. The challenge is having a command that allow you to easily change the variable name even if its indented.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #52 / 137
Number of attempts: 2

Lisp Condense - 460 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #105 / 158
Number of attempts: 1

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1158 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #92 / 300
Number of attempts: 11

Don't know what this is - 2024 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #162 / 586
Number of attempts: 6

Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #198 / 437
Number of attempts: 3

Mess in revision history - 1184 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #50 / 250
Number of attempts: 6

Split the words - 372 entries

Add the spaces manually if you must, but if you use Vim's spell checking feature wisely, I think you'll save a LARGE number of strokes.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 36
Position: #62 / 112
Number of attempts: 3

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10688 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #437 / 3691
Number of attempts: 14

attr_aligner - 3522 entries

Two attr keywords. Two separate indentations. Align the colons.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #206 / 703
Number of attempts: 13

Letter case trickery - 1630 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 11
Position: #287 / 518
Number of attempts: 3

quotes inside quotes - 3165 entries

taken from tip 85 of the very good book 'Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought' ! I'd be interested what people use :)

Best score: 14
Best player score: 15
Position: #455 / 1079
Number of attempts: 4

Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #1484 / 3969
Number of attempts: 4

Hole-in-one - 1024 entries

Lets take this golf thing literally.. Drive off the tee into the hole, and of course you don't strike the ball completely clean.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #108 / 305
Number of attempts: 7

Prefixes and suffixes - 635 entries

Generate all prefixes of "vimchallenge", then all suffixes.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 21
Position: #33 / 201
Number of attempts: 7

abcd > a b c d - 297 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #138 / 226
Number of attempts: 1

NATO phonetic alphabet - 529 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #93 / 196
Number of attempts: 4

A simple change - 468 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #106 / 193
Number of attempts: 3

SFD-ROC: The Quick Brown Fox - 200 entries

Someone has vandalized our text (again). Please fix to read: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #73 / 107
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1606 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

Best score: 8
Best player score: 9
Position: #208 / 446
Number of attempts: 5

Saving the hashes(#) - 2063 entries

The following file is copied from vimcasts.org(Its only for learning purpose,hope the site owner doesn't mind it), its probably the easiest of challenges.Our goal is to delete every line which doesn't contain a hash signs. The remaining hash signs with numbers are then sorted to get the final output.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 21
Position: #116 / 480
Number of attempts: 7

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1122 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #68 / 446
Number of attempts: 3

Vertical Limit - 2552 entries

transform a succession of one word lines to a an array of strings

Best score: 21
Best player score: 22
Position: #152 / 757
Number of attempts: 9

Make the circuit grid! - 101 entries

Copy this command for a circuit layout program to create 10 total smd commands. Increment the number in quotes to name each pad, and add 0.7 to each of the (X Y) coordinates at the end of each line.

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #23 / 50
Number of attempts: 4

replacing each line of a block selection - 3001 entries

replace each line's ../assets/js with /javascripts

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #171 / 778
Number of attempts: 10

Switch function arguments - 2147 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #102 / 666
Number of attempts: 6

Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #77 / 419
Number of attempts: 4

Reverse and double space - 500 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

Best score: 14
Best player score: 16
Position: #104 / 199
Number of attempts: 2

Remove semicolons after expressions - 654 entries

A follow-up for http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4fc9d767d3a0d4000100000e.

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #76 / 263
Number of attempts: 3

switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #369 / 1749
Number of attempts: 9

The meaning - 575 entries

Numbers are fun!

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #230 / 363
Number of attempts: 2

Sort the cardinal numbers - 315 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #126 / 149
Number of attempts: 2

Make it more readable - 2009 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #57 / 652
Number of attempts: 7

remove dupes from array - 1358 entries

given a random string that contains a ruby-esque array, make sure that there are no duplicate elements

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #60 / 336
Number of attempts: 15

PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 545 entries

I recently needed to send an e-mail to our marketing department listing allowed merge tags for our MailChimp campaigns. The allowed merge tags were determined from a PHP array in one of our PHP classes. I transformed the PHP class to MailChimp's syntax and sent the e-mail. It was, however, a long, laborious process. I'm still fairly new to Vim and would love to see how an expert Vim user would tackle one of my own, real-world problems. Thanks and have fun!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #20 / 150
Number of attempts: 13

imports alignment (python) - 700 entries

Align as one import per line.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 19
Position: #66 / 198
Number of attempts: 12

HTML to Haml - 881 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 27
Position: #38 / 205
Number of attempts: 13

Numbering a List - 1935 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #28 / 654
Number of attempts: 3

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1249 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #165 / 407
Number of attempts: 6

Shebangs for all - 2018 entries

We've all seen or used a shebang once or twice. Ditch the specific paths and leave just a dynamic Ruby and Python bath behind.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #138 / 519
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 1057 entries

Here is a very simple one - just to illustrate/introduce a vim feature that some people seem to miss...

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #386 / 667
Number of attempts: 1

Ruby 1.9 compat - 634 entries

Remember when Ruby supported `when <expr> :`? Well, it doesn't in 1.9, so let's make sure we use `then`, without ruining our lovely new hash syntax!

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #48 / 235
Number of attempts: 6

Reverse Simple Deletion - 854 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #22 / 460
Number of attempts: 2

Increment, increment, increment.... - 696 entries

Vim likes macros

Best score: 10
Best player score: 12
Position: #290 / 411
Number of attempts: 1

Context Insensitive completion 1 - 506 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #183 / 247
Number of attempts: 1

Make Fancy Header - 1063 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #189 / 346
Number of attempts: 5

Reformat some Python - 622 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 35
Position: #61 / 238
Number of attempts: 6

Reformat most common surnames - 743 entries

Reformat copy-pasted table into a list of the most common surnames

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #12 / 215
Number of attempts: 6

Change the content of a string - 1596 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #174 / 595
Number of attempts: 3

Sort and add attributes - 1477 entries

Sort the states and add the attribute country to each record.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 34
Position: #362 / 575
Number of attempts: 3

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3763 entries

Convert tabs to spaces, strip empty lines and trailing whitespace.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #127 / 807
Number of attempts: 12

Simple text editing with Vim - 13012 entries

Make the pairs of lines match up by making each second line same as first

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #366 / 3743
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7172 entries

A simple case of removing unneeded code and fixing broken indentation.

Best score: 28
Best player score: 33
Position: #251 / 1760
Number of attempts: 7

Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.