Yan Pritzker photographer, entrepreneur, software engineer, musician, skier

Learn to speak vim – verbs, nouns, and modifiers!

Posted 16 December 2011 @ 12pm | Tagged vim

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Using vim is like talking to your editor in ‘verb modifier object’ sentences, turned into acronyms

• learn some verbs: v (visual), c (change), d (delete), y (yank/copy). these are the most important. there are others
• learn some modifiers: i (inside), a (around), t (till..finds a character), f (find..like till except including the char), / (search..find a string/regex)
• learn some text objects: w (word), s (sentence) p (paragraph) b (block/parentheses), t (tag, works for html/xml) there are others

To move efficiently in vim, don’t try to do anything by pressing keys many times, instead speak to the editor in sentences

• delete the current word: diw (delete inside word)
• change current sentence: cis (change inside sentence)
• change a string inside quotes: ci” (change inside quote)
• change until next occurrence of ‘foo’: c/foo (change search foo)
• change everything from here to the letter X: ctX
• visually select this paragraph: vap (visual around paragraph)

If you understand the verbs and objects you’re dealing with, you will soon realize that adding a new plugin and learning a new verb or noun exponentially increases your productivity, as you can now apply it in all the sentences you already know. It’s just like learning a language.

Let’s add some new text object plugins!

• install surround.vim: vim-surround- you get a new noun, the ‘surround’ (s or S)
  • visually select a word and surround it with quotes: viwS”
  • change surround from single quote to double quote: cs’”
• install vim-textobj-rubyblock – you get a new noun, the ‘ruby block’ (r)
  • delete current ruby block: dir (delete inside ruby block)
  • visually select a ruby function: var (visual around ruby block)
  • visually select the innards of a function: vir (visual inside ruby block)
• install tComment – new verb: “gc” (go comment)
• comment the current ruby method: gcar (go comment around ruby)

Now go out and learn a new verb or noun every day!

Resources and Further Reading

• Vim Text Objects, Definitive Guide, a great blog post!
• Want an exceptionally curated collection of the best plugins vim has to offer? Check out an early beta preview of my fully modularized vim/dotfile setup called YADR (Yet Another Dotfile Repo) which includes text object plugins for ruby blocks(r), indents(i), dates(da/df), function arguments(a), and ruby symbols(:)

I have been using vim for a couple of years now, but never thought about it like this. Thanks for the interesting insight!

Holy… wow, this is quite the improvement I just got. I learn much better when I understand the idea behind something, and while I knew the verb-modifier-object structure, the ‘in’ and ‘around’, as well as combining them with quotes, parenthesis, sentences – those will improve my workflow quite a bit. Cheers!

ct$ does not “change till end”, it “changes till dollar sign” (as in, an actual dollar sign in your text). If ct$ did “change till end”, it would not be equivalent to cc, which is “change the entire current line”, it would be equivalent to C, which is “change from current location to end of current line”

@Matt

There are exceptions too :) But I like the whole idea. It’s good to see Vim commands put that way.

oops thanks Matt! should have double checked myself :)
@Kris thanks. I made a monumental leap in vim once I got the verb/noun understanding. It should be stated much more clearly in the tutorial!

Realy nice idea how to learn/teach vim. Big thanks.

nice article! after It’s so important to understand the verb and object! thank you!

Really helpful post. I sort of know in the back of my mind that the commands all stood for something useful I just hadn’t taken the time to look into it. It’s always nice when seemingly complex things turn out to be simple like this.

Thanks, Elliot

[...] http://yanpritzker.com/2011/12/16/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-modifiers/ A great clever way to use and learn Vim: speak to him! [...]

Thanks for pointing out some extensions I haven’t heard of. Here’s my contribution:

Install argtextobj: you get a new object, the argument or ‘a’

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2699

@Eric awesome thanks for pointing that one out. I am adding it to my setup, which I’m tweaking for a 1.0 release slated sometime in January probably. I already have textobj plugins for ruby and indent blocks in there. If you aren’t already following, check out https://github.com/skwp/dotfiles – I would love feedback

[...] http://yanpritzker.com/2011/12/16/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-modifiers/ Leave a Comment TrackBack URI [...]

[...] Learn to speak vim – verbs, nouns, and modifiers! – Yan Pritzker "Using vim is like talking to your editor in ‘verb modifier object’ sentences, turned into acronyms." Which is a good way of thinking of it. (tags: vim editor text ) [...]

[...] Yan Pritzker: “To move efficiently in vim, don’t try to do anything by pressing keys many times, instead speak to the editor in sentences.” [...]

But “i” is “insert” and “a” is “append” and “r” is “replace”.
To move efficiently, is just a matter of knowing built-in stuff like 2{ (up 2 paragraphs), f5t (forward to the 5th “t”), 5j (down 5 lines), etc.

I have been using vim for many years now, but never thought about it like this.Really thanks for the interesting insight.

[...] Pritzker apptly explained it like this: vim commands are like a language you can [...]

[...] “Smash Into Vim” video (which I highly recommend) likened it to “text surgery    http://yanpritzker.com/2011/12/16/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-nouns-and-modifiers/  [...]

[...] I’ve just come across this excellent article on learning to speak vim, to get a more in depth [...]

What are some good resources for learning Vim?…

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