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 - 33617 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: 23
  • Position: #2474 / 7421
  • Number of attempts: 4
Bad Copy Syntax - 2037 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #223 / 525
  • Number of attempts: 3
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 766 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #186 / 410
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 4989 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #162 / 1624
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11454 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1533 / 4197
  • Number of attempts: 3
Interweave two blocks of text - 659 entries

Suppose you've got data on a list of things from multiple sources. They're all in separate chunks, so how might you create a tabular output?

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #191 / 214
  • Number of attempts: 1
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 994 entries

A novice Python using prints Hello World! and a pro shows him different way. Using vim to get into pro style from novice, win the challenge.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #111 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5648 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #621 / 1264
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7907 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #146 / 2128
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 14
  • Position: #121 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 3
I forgot quotes - 15983 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1447 / 4180
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10663 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #1648 / 3683
  • Number of attempts: 1
quotes inside quotes - 3159 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: #371 / 1078
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12935 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #227 / 3963
  • Number of attempts: 6
Dehamlizing - 185 entries

Change this piece of HAML code back into erb

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 38
  • Position: #24 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 1
NATO phonetic alphabet - 529 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #113 / 196
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shuffle and Sort - 229 entries

The values where sorted incorrectly. Get them back to how they are supposed to be

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #21 / 67
  • Number of attempts: 4
A simple change - 461 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #92 / 191
  • Number of attempts: 1
Convert regular pandoc footnotes to in-line notes - 64 entries

Pandoc extends markdown by allowing footnotes, which are usually represented with a footnote identifier followed later in the document by the footnote itself. But Pandoc also allows inline footnotes without identifiers. How many strokes does it take to convert regular footnotes to inline notes? (NB: I've had trouble figuring out whether text-width makes a difference to Vimgolf in comparing the input and output file. I finally tested this locally using the Vimgolf vimrc and did a "gq" on the entire buffer as the last step. Apologies if I'm making a newbie mistake. First time submitter.)

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 71
  • Position: #17 / 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 420 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: 11
  • Position: #103 / 192
  • Number of attempts: 1
Complete the circuit grid! - 105 entries

Continuing from the last challenge, add additional rows to the grid. Change each of the names from 'A1'...'A10' to 'B1'...'B10', 'C1'...'C10', etc, and for each new row add 0.7 to the X values in the (X Y) at the end of each line.

  • Best score: 46
  • Best player score: 61
  • Position: #13 / 30
  • Number of attempts: 1
Cleanining up 80 column concatenated text - 203 entries

1. Put the whole query on one line, remove the concatenation operators 2. Remove the double spaces that appear a few times in the query 3. Use string-interpolated variable statementPid rather than the ugly concatenation

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 48
  • Position: #56 / 79
  • Number of attempts: 1
Convert pandoc unordered list to a numbered list - 166 entries

I know it's possible to use #. in pandoc to auto-generate numbered lists, but then it's not easy to tell how many items there are when reading it in Markdown. How fast can you make the switch?

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #39 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 3
Create an alphabet diamond - 105 entries

Here's a brain teaser to keep things interesting...

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 64
  • Position: #19 / 32
  • Number of attempts: 1
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1118 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #195 / 445
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vertical Limit - 2538 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #263 / 754
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 31
  • Position: #39 / 50
  • Number of attempts: 1
Exchanging Quotes - 858 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 55
  • Position: #223 / 230
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #141 / 777
  • Number of attempts: 6
Switch function arguments - 2139 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #99 / 663
  • Number of attempts: 6
Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #170 / 419
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remove noise from HTTP log - 717 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #157 / 273
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove semicolons after expressions - 654 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #181 / 263
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #174 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 3
The meaning - 575 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #124 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 1
Calculate the table totals - 146 entries

Go ahead... commit the treachery of using vim as a spreadsheet.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 71
  • Position: #35 / 45
  • Number of attempts: 1
Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 1009 entries

convert an ugly spreadsheet copy/paste into a CSV format.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #69 / 193
  • Number of attempts: 4
Replacing some words - 428 entries

How fast could it be?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #79 / 151
  • Number of attempts: 4
Sort the cardinal numbers - 310 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #118 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 1
Line Zipper - 473 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #171 / 215
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 22
  • Position: #168 / 336
  • Number of attempts: 1
HTML to Haml - 878 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #106 / 204
  • Number of attempts: 1
Overall Vimgolf Rank - 216 entries

Suppose you are trying to figure out what your overall rank is at Vimgolf(the sum of all the ranks you got), and as a Vim ninja you decided to use Vim to do the job. Your solution should work for every Vimgolf profile page(The actual input file for this challenge is my Vimgolf profile page). So, direct answer insertion is considered cheating.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #39 / 59
  • Number of attempts: 1
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 - 163 entries

Somebody's got this slightly muddled up. See how quickly you can fix it. (I made this to experiment with buffers. I'm not actually sure whether this is faster with buffers or without.)

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #41 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 1
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1244 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: #54 / 406
  • Number of attempts: 3
Assignment Alignment - 883 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #66 / 220
  • Number of attempts: 5
A Simple One - 1050 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: #334 / 664
  • 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: #236 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment, increment, increment.... - 688 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #266 / 408
  • Number of attempts: 1
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 498 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #107 / 245
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make Fancy Header - 1052 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #182 / 344
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat a C golf submission - 604 entries

Take this C golf submission (for the "tiny but standards-compliant Hello World program" category, naturally), and turn it into formatted C code.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #39 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reverse characters in a line - 771 entries

You have everything you need, just not in the right order. Mastermind would give you 26 white pegs.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #47 / 265
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat most common surnames - 717 entries

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

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #85 / 210
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remember FizzBuzz? - 725 entries

Output FizzBuzz to 100. Start with nothing.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 59
  • Position: #102 / 190
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change the content of a string - 1580 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #450 / 588
  • Number of attempts: 1
Deleting folded text - 360 entries

The text below contains three folds. Delete them (and the text inside them). For example: 123 456 /*{{{*/ 789 /*}}}*/ 012 Should become: 123 012 Also, add `aoeuaoeu` to make sure small solutions don't get flagged as cheating.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #72 / 117
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sort and add attributes - 1451 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #345 / 563
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add fold markers to a .c file - 625 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #106 / 183
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1507 entries

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

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #327 / 412
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 14
  • Position: #977 / 3694
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6982 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #216 / 1706
  • Number of attempts: 3

Contributed Challenges

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.

Complete the circuit grid! - 105 entries

Continuing from the last challenge, add additional rows to the grid. Change each of the names from 'A1'...'A10' to 'B1'...'B10', 'C1'...'C10', etc, and for each new row add 0.7 to the X values in the (X Y) at the end of each line.

Chris Brown
Twitter:

entered into 62 challenges

contributed 2 challenges