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

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33600 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: #974 / 7412
  • Number of attempts: 7
One number per line - 18711 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #1713 / 3858
  • Number of attempts: 2
Separate the lines - 182 entries

Every other line is mixed up. Separate them into their original texts.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #9 / 92
  • Number of attempts: 3
V to the i - 4798 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1250 / 1891
  • Number of attempts: 1
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 753 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #350 / 406
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #99 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 5
From argument to object - 1504 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: 18
  • Position: #200 / 456
  • Number of attempts: 2
Every other line - 2910 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #479 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 16
  • Position: #262 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 1
Start coding format - 155 entries

I used to start coding with following format: int main(){ -(cursor here) }

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #57 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 4978 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #859 / 1621
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #165 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 3
comment and uncomment code inline - 1118 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: 10
  • Position: #178 / 321
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11429 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #927 / 4188
  • Number of attempts: 2
Un"finnish"ed Work - 116 entries

Replace å by a, ä by a and ö by o.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #27 / 60
  • Number of attempts: 1
Todo list specification - 399 entries

The every item on the todo list must be done today. Modify the list to reflect that.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #110 / 179
  • Number of attempts: 3
Text to HTML Table - 180 entries

Turn the plain text table to an HTML table.

  • Best score: 52
  • Best player score: 56
  • Position: #30 / 53
  • Number of attempts: 2
Stairstep digits - 392 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #25 / 144
  • Number of attempts: 2
Missing Library and a Typo - 887 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #124 / 213
  • Number of attempts: 3
Basic renumbering - 5645 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #75 / 1263
  • Number of attempts: 6
Simple addition - 324 entries

The right side of the equation is already there. We just need the left one now.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #17 / 121
  • Number of attempts: 2
Hidden Message - 93 entries

Find the hidden message and replace all other characters with spaces.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #19 / 30
  • Number of attempts: 4
Interactive git rebase changing commands - 172 entries

How to change the action of some commits in git rebase dialog.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #10 / 79
  • Number of attempts: 1
create arrows in a list - 112 entries

Add arrow at same distance

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #39 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 1
Adam's challenge - 978 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: 23
  • Position: #213 / 268
  • Number of attempts: 1
Create Leading Zeros - 239 entries

Create leading zeros only for id columns. Please use generic approach!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #53 / 81
  • Number of attempts: 3
Create a table - 332 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #51 / 105
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 863 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: 17
  • Position: #214 / 290
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7903 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #921 / 2125
  • Number of attempts: 3
7th Birthday - 202 entries

We have a bunch of numbers written from 0 to 9 in the order present in the text input file. The task is to create 7 by replacing the numbers with dashes.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #33 / 75
  • Number of attempts: 4
Free hyphen! - 169 entries

Just like "Inner hyphens", but I'm giving you a free hyphen to play with. Will your solution be any different?

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #15 / 89
  • Number of attempts: 3
Sort files from hosts - 188 entries

Resume files by host. I hope you enjoy with this challenge

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #17 / 76
  • Number of attempts: 2
Scrambled numbers - 807 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #99 / 184
  • Number of attempts: 3
Hello ${world} - 324 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #2 / 96
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add Go XML to structure tags - 170 entries

The Go programming language can directly map XML to structure fields. Add the correct XML tag after each field.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 50
  • Position: #67 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array transposition - 2416 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #233 / 447
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mirror Symmetry - 822 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #165 / 269
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 4298 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #968 / 1190
  • Number of attempts: 1
camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #140 / 281
  • Number of attempts: 3
Winning streak - 135 entries

Make the number on each line equal the consecutive L's or W's.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #31 / 51
  • Number of attempts: 2
increment by column in XML - 152 entries

modify an arbitrary "column" in an xml table by incrementing a an arbitrary placeholder string

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #46 / 55
  • Number of attempts: 1
Happy TvvO - 426 entries

Don’t forget the past, learn from it. Happy New Year.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #124 / 205
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15974 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #1324 / 4175
  • Number of attempts: 3
Shift down - 209 entries

Number words are back.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #48 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 1
Lisp Condense - 460 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #101 / 158
  • Number of attempts: 2
Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #191 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 3157 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: 17
  • Position: #903 / 1076
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 12928 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1595 / 3960
  • Number of attempts: 4
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 416 entries

Someone has vandalized this text file and replaced the beginning character of one word in each line with a Big "X." Please remove the big X's, and fix each line to read "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog."

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #84 / 191
  • Number of attempts: 1
Saving the hashes(#) - 2053 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: 29
  • Position: #351 / 479
  • Number of attempts: 2
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1518 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 2
Generate English Alphabets - 487 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #140 / 206
  • Number of attempts: 2
Numbering a List - 1931 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #146 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 3
The Cake is a Lie - 1334 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #235 / 524
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add fold markers to a .c file - 608 entries

Fold markers can make it easier to navigate source code. Add them to this .c file.

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #143 / 181
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 12717 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #2479 / 3673
  • Number of attempts: 1
Jacob Buete
Twitter:

Recent graduate in astrophysics, current person who doesn't know what to do with a degree in astrophysics.

entered into 56 challenges

contributed 0 challenges