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 - 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: 26
  • Position: #3638 / 7442
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #939 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 18755 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #3017 / 3870
  • Number of attempts: 2
Swap values inside brackets - 2511 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #452 / 583
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4813 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #1718 / 1897
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #366 / 857
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3604 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #142 / 1169
  • Number of attempts: 6
Com(m)a Trouble - 3875 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #543 / 876
  • Number of attempts: 2
Box it - 7916 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #823 / 1881
  • 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: 28
  • Position: #328 / 381
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 22
  • Position: #397 / 460
  • Number of attempts: 1
Every other line - 2915 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #506 / 704
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 17
  • Position: #286 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #223 / 755
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #562 / 1630
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 44
  • Position: #119 / 129
  • Number of attempts: 1
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #479 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 12
  • Position: #265 / 323
  • Number of attempts: 2
Flip the bit - 129 entries

Change the specific 0 to a 1.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #14 / 74
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 11484 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #3589 / 4209
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #552 / 589
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #40 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 6
Basic renumbering - 5683 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #160 / 1269
  • Number of attempts: 10
Adam's challenge - 987 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: 22
  • Position: #194 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 4
ninja substitution - 1420 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #246 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7945 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #1374 / 2138
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 2227 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #66 / 677
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 21
  • Position: #193 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment each number - 1025 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #197 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 3
Delete to the end of the current line - 829 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #96 / 400
  • Number of attempts: 2
move titles next to url, in quotes - 537 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #84 / 142
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 35
  • Position: #184 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 16022 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #3327 / 4189
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1018 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 14
  • Position: #371 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10682 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2373 / 3689
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 17
  • Position: #927 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2471 / 3969
  • Number of attempts: 2
replacing each line of a block selection - 3001 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #486 / 778
  • Number of attempts: 2
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1532 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #1747 / 3739
  • Number of attempts: 1
zenwalker
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entered into 41 challenges

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