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 - 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: #156 / 7442
  • Number of attempts: 6
Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #293 / 1630
  • Number of attempts: 6
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #5 / 701
  • 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: #455 / 4209
  • Number of attempts: 7
VimGolfNight - 566 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #157 / 348
  • Number of attempts: 3
I forgot quotes - 16022 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #278 / 4189
  • Number of attempts: 8
Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #17 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 3
Carriage return - 43 entries

I have some raw data from terminal output which uses carriege return for formatting. Carriage return sets the pointer to the first character on the line, and subsequent characters will overwrite what was there before. The challange is to simulate the terminal behaviour in vim. I'm kind of unsure if I should have skipped lines 9 and 15, since there might be some interesting solutions which are not that generic. Happy Golfing!

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #4 / 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10682 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #110 / 3689
  • Number of attempts: 2
attr_aligner - 3522 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #469 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #94 / 518
  • Number of attempts: 8
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: #130 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 7
Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #267 / 3969
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: 8
  • Position: #45 / 446
  • Number of attempts: 8
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1122 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #59 / 446
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vertical Limit - 2552 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #23 / 757
  • Number of attempts: 10
replacing each line of a block selection - 3001 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #59 / 778
  • Number of attempts: 10
Switch function arguments - 2140 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #87 / 664
  • Number of attempts: 5
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #804 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make it more readable - 2009 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #50 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 5
Numbering a List - 1935 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #99 / 654
  • Number of attempts: 9
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3742 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #318 / 803
  • Number of attempts: 10
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: #1241 / 3737
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7154 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 45
  • Position: #1162 / 1754
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mina Naguib
Twitter:

I build simple software and systems that do complex things @AdGear

entered into 24 challenges

contributed 0 challenges