VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33724 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: #1539 / 7442
Number of attempts: 10

Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #464 / 1274
Number of attempts: 4

One number per line - 18755 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 19
Position: #1842 / 3870
Number of attempts: 7

Swap values inside brackets - 2511 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 18
Position: #334 / 583
Number of attempts: 6

V to the i - 4813 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #603 / 1897
Number of attempts: 4

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: #321 / 857
Number of attempts: 5

Swap the operands under comparison - 297 entries

Swap the operands under comparison to prevent null pointer exception (at least in java)

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #14 / 101
Number of attempts: 7

Com(m)a Trouble - 3875 entries

Someone was real stupid when placing his commas. Can you fix it?

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #217 / 876
Number of attempts: 9

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: 18
Position: #242 / 460
Number of attempts: 4

Every other line - 2915 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #287 / 704
Number of attempts: 6

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: 15
Position: #236 / 641
Number of attempts: 4

Array propagate - 338 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #15 / 119
Number of attempts: 3

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: 13
Position: #214 / 755
Number of attempts: 5

Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #542 / 1630
Number of attempts: 4

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 540 entries

Originally asked as question on reddit by kpthunder: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/9fvsro/what_is_the_most_efficient_way_to_go_about/

Best score: 30
Best player score: 36
Position: #72 / 129
Number of attempts: 2

Number Sort - 314 entries

sort the list of newline-separated numbers incrementally. Numbers are in the range 1 to 1000, with 500 missing

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #80 / 166
Number of attempts: 2

That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #191 / 701
Number of attempts: 5

comment and uncomment code inline - 1124 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: #108 / 323
Number of attempts: 4

Just the middle - 11484 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1165 / 4209
Number of attempts: 3

Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #192 / 589
Number of attempts: 4

Make HTML List - 1061 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 37
Position: #77 / 274
Number of attempts: 5

Learn some german verbs - 533 entries

The list needs to be structured so we can print in verbatim and feel ok about how it looks.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #37 / 133
Number of attempts: 10

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: 37
Position: #66 / 179
Number of attempts: 2

Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 264 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #34 / 142
Number of attempts: 3

Stairstep digits - 398 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #37 / 146
Number of attempts: 3

Missing Library and a Typo - 893 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: 16
Position: #79 / 214
Number of attempts: 5

Basic renumbering - 5683 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #141 / 1269
Number of attempts: 13

Simple addition - 331 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: #41 / 123
Number of attempts: 2

Create a table - 332 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #33 / 105
Number of attempts: 4

Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 867 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: 13
Position: #122 / 292
Number of attempts: 5

Nesting SASS - 266 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

Best score: 9
Best player score: 15
Position: #58 / 96
Number of attempts: 3

Combines all items - 313 entries

For each line that starts with the same number I want to combine its contents

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #67 / 140
Number of attempts: 2

Vice versa - 7945 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #415 / 2138
Number of attempts: 8

C Reformatting - 690 entries

You may use Visual mode... or not. #uppercase

Best score: 30
Best player score: 32
Position: #46 / 163
Number of attempts: 8

Paragraph sort - 450 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 17
Position: #68 / 125
Number of attempts: 5

Order and join - 985 entries

There's something special about the input order.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #57 / 260
Number of attempts: 5

Paragraph breaks - 522 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #79 / 167
Number of attempts: 3

comments galore - 1048 entries

Basic comment reformatting

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #266 / 425
Number of attempts: 5

Scrambled numbers - 807 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #39 / 184
Number of attempts: 3

Align commas - 1095 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #76 / 246
Number of attempts: 8

Hello ${world} - 324 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #25 / 96
Number of attempts: 4

Array transposition - 2425 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #7 / 449
Number of attempts: 9

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: #45 / 227
Number of attempts: 6

Mirror Symmetry - 822 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 10
Position: #117 / 269
Number of attempts: 5

From A to B - 591 entries

Mirror and change this text block

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #93 / 159
Number of attempts: 2

Collect List - 4305 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #392 / 1191
Number of attempts: 6

camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #65 / 281
Number of attempts: 4

Space out the alphabet - 1659 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #120 / 446
Number of attempts: 5

Fix the XML - 1039 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #54 / 290
Number of attempts: 6

Condensed Cases - 804 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #95 / 247
Number of attempts: 6

I forgot quotes - 16022 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 15
Position: #2273 / 4189
Number of attempts: 5

-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #375 / 1138
Number of attempts: 3

Count both ways - 1022 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #48 / 354
Number of attempts: 4

Gray area - 747 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #110 / 271
Number of attempts: 5

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1158 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #94 / 300
Number of attempts: 6

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: 11
Position: #103 / 586
Number of attempts: 6

Two become one - 713 entries

We have two c arrays and want to make one two dimensional out of it. Can we do that?

Best score: 25
Best player score: 27
Position: #42 / 208
Number of attempts: 5

Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #393 / 437
Number of attempts: 1

Mess in revision history - 1184 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #54 / 250
Number of attempts: 8

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10682 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #1323 / 3689
Number of attempts: 4

attr_aligner - 3522 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #149 / 703
Number of attempts: 10

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: 10
Position: #162 / 518
Number of attempts: 4

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: 14
Position: #304 / 1079
Number of attempts: 4

Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #937 / 3969
Number of attempts: 5

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: #240 / 446
Number of attempts: 6

Array Transposition - 201 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

Best score: 27
Best player score: 29
Position: #21 / 56
Number of attempts: 4

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: 25
Position: #187 / 480
Number of attempts: 6

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1122 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 9
Position: #310 / 446
Number of attempts: 1

Vertical Limit - 2552 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 24
Position: #305 / 757
Number of attempts: 3

Exchanging Quotes - 858 entries

Sometimes you need to exchange a choice of quotes in some code.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 33
Position: #74 / 230
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: #206 / 778
Number of attempts: 9

Switch function arguments - 2142 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #160 / 665
Number of attempts: 3

Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #240 / 419
Number of attempts: 1

switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #949 / 1749
Number of attempts: 1

Make it more readable - 2009 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #92 / 652
Number of attempts: 5

Numbering a List - 1935 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #34 / 654
Number of attempts: 1

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: 12
Position: #87 / 407
Number of attempts: 4

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: 16
Position: #328 / 519
Number of attempts: 2

The Cake is a Lie - 1365 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #244 / 532
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 1063 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #202 / 346
Number of attempts: 3

Change the content of a string - 1593 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #177 / 594
Number of attempts: 2

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: #373 / 575
Number of attempts: 3

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1589 entries

Get the sentence back in the proper order, remove duplicate lines, and then combine the separate lines into one.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 20
Position: #111 / 425
Number of attempts: 2

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3744 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #134 / 804
Number of attempts: 11

Simple text editing with Vim - 12996 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #1719 / 3739
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7157 entries

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

Best score: 28
Best player score: 37
Position: #565 / 1755
Number of attempts: 3