Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

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

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$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

xrandr outputs and dashes - 704 entries

uh oh, different video drivers identify display outputs with more dashes. Quick, need to change this xrandr script!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #46 / 221
  • Number of attempts: 2
From a Thunderlink to a Markdown link - 764 entries

ThunderLinks are durable hyperlinks to specific email messages generated from Thunderbird in HTML format. Leverage the power of vim to make them suitable for a markdown-formatted file.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #21 / 169
  • Number of attempts: 12
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33616 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: #919 / 7420
  • Number of attempts: 13
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6308 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #214 / 1537
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18727 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #847 / 3864
  • Number of attempts: 9
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2880 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #240 / 851
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add semicolons - 10852 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #570 / 3063
  • Number of attempts: 4
Split line with dots - 2144 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 45
  • Position: #622 / 634
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3586 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #780 / 1162
  • Number of attempts: 3
Box it - 7905 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #757 / 1876
  • Number of attempts: 7
Cool or not? - 829 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #118 / 230
  • Number of attempts: 4
multiple cursor alternative - 1519 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: 20
  • Position: #189 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 9
From argument to object - 1508 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: #135 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2910 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #365 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 8
Copy three lines - 2872 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #64 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 18
Extract argument from function - 2357 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #250 / 753
  • Number of attempts: 5
Search and Replace 0 - 4989 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #652 / 1624
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #276 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 7
comment and uncomment code inline - 1122 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #141 / 322
  • Number of attempts: 8
Just the middle - 11454 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #899 / 4197
  • Number of attempts: 6
Make HTML List - 1050 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 46
  • Position: #141 / 273
  • Number of attempts: 4
Basic renumbering - 5648 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #68 / 1264
  • Number of attempts: 18
Adam's challenge - 984 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #127 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vice versa - 7907 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #281 / 2128
  • Number of attempts: 5
Order and join - 983 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #70 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 6
comments galore - 1045 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #284 / 424
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment each number - 1023 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #144 / 248
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 48
  • Position: #121 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 3
convert yml into java pojo field - 857 entries

How fast vim can create fields for java pojo i.e class declaration referring to a (simple) yml file

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #84 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap assigned value - 647 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #96 / 254
  • Number of attempts: 6
Collect List - 4298 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #485 / 1190
  • Number of attempts: 7
Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #101 / 444
  • Number of attempts: 11
-a-b-c- - 3213 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #286 / 1137
  • Number of attempts: 5
Don't know what this is - 2022 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: #236 / 585
  • Number of attempts: 5
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10663 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1130 / 3683
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 9
  • Position: #29 / 518
  • Number of attempts: 11
Words in parens - 12935 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1105 / 3963
  • Number of attempts: 3
The name of the game - 665 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #255 / 360
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #124 / 480
  • Number of attempts: 13
Vertical Limit - 2538 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #59 / 754
  • Number of attempts: 12
replacing each line of a block selection - 2999 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #219 / 777
  • Number of attempts: 11
Switch function arguments - 2139 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #172 / 663
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #617 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 3
Make it more readable - 2005 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #100 / 650
  • Number of attempts: 4
expand a list comprehension (python) - 333 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

  • Best score: 42
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #15 / 109
  • Number of attempts: 14
Numbering a List - 1931 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #51 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reverse Simple Deletion - 847 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #354 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 4
Increment, increment, increment.... - 688 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #35 / 408
  • Number of attempts: 2
Context insensitive completion 0 - 577 entries

Buried in the lines you're not supposed to add is the line "Add this line!" Add that line to the top of the file.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #108 / 246
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple text editing with Vim - 12811 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #478 / 3694
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6982 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #759 / 1706
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ming Dai
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entered into 51 challenges

contributed 0 challenges