Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

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

Changelog, Rules & FAQ, updates: @vimgolf, RSS.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

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

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33722 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: 25
  • Position: #3297 / 7442
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #536 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 6
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6337 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #501 / 1546
  • Number of attempts: 12
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 799 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #176 / 421
  • Number of attempts: 2
Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #947 / 1630
  • Number of attempts: 4
comments galore - 1048 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #341 / 425
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap assigned value - 655 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #218 / 256
  • Number of attempts: 4
Collect List - 4305 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #1163 / 1191
  • Number of attempts: 4
Fix the XML - 1039 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #118 / 290
  • Number of attempts: 8
I forgot quotes - 16022 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2590 / 4189
  • 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: 31
  • Position: #1059 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1225 / 3969
  • Number of attempts: 7
Enumerate words - 254 entries

Enumerate the unique words in order.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #72 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 2
Transposition - 99 entries

Transpose the original lines in separate columns, one for each line.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 97
  • Position: #32 / 32
  • Number of attempts: 1
Groups magic - 161 entries

Regexp or macros for string converting: (a) -> ___ (abc) -> ____ (abcd) -> ______ All in the '(' replace to _ multiply by char count + ()

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #30 / 94
  • Number of attempts: 3
Prefixes and suffixes - 635 entries

Generate all prefixes of "vimchallenge", then all suffixes.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #187 / 201
  • Number of attempts: 2
abcd > a b c d - 297 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #50 / 226
  • Number of attempts: 1
The name of the game - 668 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #341 / 361
  • Number of attempts: 2
lamb had a little Mary - 618 entries

"Mary" and "lamb" are swapped. Unswap them. Fast as you can.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #57 / 169
  • Number of attempts: 4
Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #304 / 419
  • Number of attempts: 6
Remove semicolons after expressions - 654 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #54 / 263
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #752 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 4
The meaning - 575 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #166 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 1
A Simple One - 1057 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: #300 / 667
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reverse Simple Deletion - 854 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #260 / 460
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment, increment, increment.... - 692 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #257 / 410
  • Number of attempts: 2
Braces or Brackets? - 1054 entries

Someone forgot whether to use braces or brackets and you have to clean up their code!

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 65
  • Position: #300 / 324
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 12989 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1107 / 3737
  • Number of attempts: 14

Contributed Challenges

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 :)

Global Maquereau
Twitter:

entered into 28 challenges

contributed 1 challenges