I used to get stuck in vim when logging in to linux servers. The key things to know for any newbie...
:q
i
ESC
:w
After I learned those, I've really come to love Vim. I imagine I'd need to learn about 50 more commands before I could be really well versed. What are some other important things to know?
I'd start with looking at commands that allow you to quickly move around in buffers first (/, f, t, w, e, b etc). Then start combining those with actions (ct", dw etc). Then "timesavers" such as macros and built-in conveniences (q, gqq, marks etc). The rest will come to you.
Learning to exit, insert, and save the file is about as minimal a text editor skill set I can imagine. You should definitely start out by running through vimtutor a few times. The vim help is also really good. The author also provides a good list of links at the bottom of the article.
Are you not aware that '*' (asterisk) searches for the next occurrence of the word under the cursor. That's one key i just can't live without. '#' (hash) does the reverse.
Why not do a 'qq' to record your macro as 'q' and @q to replay it.
It was an arbitrary choice for an example. Obviously one would choose a key not being used for anything else. (This choice can also vary from session to session, depending on the task at hand.)
0 and $ go to the beginning/end of line without entering insert mode.
:%!command -- Runs the entire document through the command. If you use visual mode and then press ':!command' and it will run the selection through the command specified. Super useful for sorting a list.
Also ctrl+[ is equivalent to esc. If you rebind caps to ctrl you can easily hit escape and other commands like ^d, ^u (page down and up).
do you know how to highlight a block then double-indent? I can't make that work. With a block highlighted, I only know how to indent one ts at a time (then re-hightlight, etc.).
Unless you have some special script/filter for specific sorting of lists, then why not just use ':sort' instead of ':!sort' (i.e. the Vim sort command, rather than piping it to /usr/bin/sort)?
Why should vim have :sort built-in, when /usr/bin/sort already does it so well?
If you really want to get on a roll with vi, think of all the other cases where you wish it could do something, then make it work with :%!command_written_in_any_language_you_want .
You can also apply it to ranges. "%1,5!rev" reverses lines 1-5, etc.
I never said that '%!command' was a bad thing. I was just pointing out that that particular use-case was already built into the editor. We could make pedantic arguments about Unix all day long (e.g. "Each command should do something specific and do it well, Vim doesn't need the :sort built-in" vs "Why should I incur the cost of starting up another process and having it eat up my precious memory space?") but it's relatively useless.
Being able to pipe through commands is a powerful tool, but using an example where the external command already has a built-in equivalent seems possibly confusing to the (novice Vim'er) reader (please don't rattle me off the laundry list of options that /usr/bin/sort has that :sort doesn't because you'd be missing the point).
That said... On the topic of ranges, never give :bd! a range unless you know what you're doing. I ran :bd! once while I had a number of lines selected in visual mode because I though that the selected lines wouldn't affect :bd. Bad idea. The '<,>' part of the range apparently is converted to line numbers (e.g. '3,6') and then :bd reads that range as the buffers to delete. So when you select lines 1-8 and then hit :bd! it goes something like this:
:<,>bd! -> :1,8bd! -> delete buffers 1-8 without prompting for unsaved changes
You're absolutely right (and sort's options are rather quirky), just trying to nudge people to thinking about piping through shell commands that way. There's a lot of power in the ex parts of vi (the : commands) that I seldom hear vi(m) users mention.
I do a lot of bash scripting so I know `/usr/bin/sort` decently well. Using this technique I can use my bash scripting abilities to enhance my vim abilities.
:q
i
ESC
:w
After I learned those, I've really come to love Vim. I imagine I'd need to learn about 50 more commands before I could be really well versed. What are some other important things to know?