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.

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

Played Challenges

Yo To Hello - 1115 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #154 / 518
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33385 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: #2652 / 7364
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values - 4543 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #485 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 5
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6208 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #596 / 1517
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18616 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #534 / 3842
  • Number of attempts: 9
Swap values inside brackets - 2464 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #179 / 569
  • Number of attempts: 2
Unsemantic linewrapping - 890 entries

[Inspired by a blog post I read: https://scott.mn/2014/02/21/semantic_linewrapping/. Text adapted.] Sometimes when editing a Markdown file, I wrap the lines semantically. Instead of inserting a newline at 70 columns (or whatever), or making paragraphs one long line, I put in newlines at a point that seems logical to me. This may seem silly, but it produces better diffs. Semantic linewrapping also makes editing snappier. I can delete, edit or insert sentences easily using linewise operations. Code-oriented text editors like Vim and [REDACTED] are really good at this kind of manipulation. Editing text that hasn't been wrapped semantically is a pain, though:

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #105 / 224
  • Number of attempts: 1
V to the i - 4751 entries

Input is 99 V's. Output is 100 i's.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1376 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 3
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2845 entries

Remove identical text at the beginning of several lines and the closing parenthesis.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #384 / 840
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add semicolons - 10792 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #868 / 3044
  • Number of attempts: 6
Bad Copy Syntax - 2001 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #58 / 516
  • Number of attempts: 4
Split line with dots - 2125 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #148 / 630
  • Number of attempts: 14
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3537 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #226 / 1144
  • Number of attempts: 4
Box it - 7828 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #136 / 1865
  • Number of attempts: 9
multiple cursor alternative - 1474 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #165 / 376
  • Number of attempts: 6
From argument to object - 1474 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #114 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 4
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 735 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #77 / 174
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #245 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 11
Copy three lines - 2840 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #336 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 4
Extract argument from function - 2314 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #232 / 744
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4792 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #594 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2556 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #259 / 695
  • Number of attempts: 9
comment and uncomment code inline - 1069 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #121 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 4
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2861 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1805 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #232 / 581
  • Number of attempts: 4
For all cases. - 141 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #67 / 100
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5587 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #176 / 1258
  • Number of attempts: 2
Adam's challenge - 957 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #120 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 840 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #132 / 287
  • Number of attempts: 1
ninja substitution - 1372 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #101 / 261
  • Number of attempts: 6
Vice versa - 7805 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #802 / 2101
  • Number of attempts: 3
Order and join - 956 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #125 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 3
Paragraph breaks - 505 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #79 / 165
  • Number of attempts: 3
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #278 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 779 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #47 / 182
  • Number of attempts: 4
Align commas - 1049 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #105 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 7
One to Ten - 2165 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #134 / 662
  • Number of attempts: 4
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 639 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #106 / 203
  • Number of attempts: 2
Increment each number - 977 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #165 / 242
  • Number of attempts: 3
Join 'em - 248 entries

This shouldn't be too tough

  • Best score: 4
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #94 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 1
change parenthesis - 278 entries

change the pair of braces into a pair of parentheses

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #29 / 156
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove quotes after first field - 353 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #44 / 87
  • Number of attempts: 7
Put the months in order - 932 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #58 / 158
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reorder the groups - 1137 entries

Change the order so that the groups of fruit come before the vegetables.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #99 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 7
Array transposition - 2378 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #144 / 443
  • Number of attempts: 15
convert yml into java pojo field - 829 entries

How fast vim can create fields for java pojo i.e class declaration referring to a (simple) yml file

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #189 / 223
  • Number of attempts: 1
Assign numbers to fields - 105 entries

You are given a list of space-separated strings. Add an increasing numeric prefix to each one.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #44 / 59
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap assigned value - 626 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #185 / 250
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4264 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #604 / 1186
  • Number of attempts: 7
camel riding - 769 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #143 / 274
  • Number of attempts: 3
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #124 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #3022 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3176 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #387 / 1129
  • Number of attempts: 2
Count both ways - 1001 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #83 / 351
  • Number of attempts: 4
Gray area - 732 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #114 / 268
  • Number of attempts: 3
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1120 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #95 / 293
  • Number of attempts: 8
Don't know what this is - 1978 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #222 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 5
Where should I put the Newline? - 863 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #393 / 431
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mess in revision history - 1161 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #91 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 12
Going underground.... - 339 entries

Simple reformatting: in this case changing from the format London underground supplies its customers with, to the format that Google Calendar likes...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #11 / 125
  • Number of attempts: 8
attr_aligner - 3444 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #186 / 692
  • Number of attempts: 13
Letter case trickery - 1594 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: #163 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 3
quotes inside quotes - 3125 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: #488 / 1072
  • Number of attempts: 5
Top X - 191 entries

The End File is the Top 10 Vimgolf Leaderboard at June 29, 2013. This is a second version, with a great contribution of @udioica. X is ten in Roman,a numeric system in ancient Rome

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #19 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12858 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1725 / 3946
  • Number of attempts: 6
Prefixes and suffixes - 593 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #38 / 193
  • Number of attempts: 5
SFD-ROC: Tic-Tac-Toe - 134 entries

Tic-Tac-Toe You are 'X', and it is your turn. Stop 'O' from winning, and complete the game. Draw a diagonal line through your winning row of three X's.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #9 / 51
  • Number of attempts: 7
lamb had a little Mary - 586 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #49 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 6
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1581 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #238 / 439
  • Number of attempts: 6
ASCII-art Histogram - 310 entries

Create an ASCCI-art histogram for the given numbers. Make sure not to leave trailing whitespaces. Thanks to VimGolf I recently discovered a feature of Vim thAT blew my mind. I'm curious to see what real ninjas make of it ;-)

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #34 / 55
  • Number of attempts: 7
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1091 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #315 / 441
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vertical Limit - 2448 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #169 / 738
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2947 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #203 / 768
  • Number of attempts: 10
Switch function arguments - 2082 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #309 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 2
Append semicolon after expressions - 1005 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #242 / 403
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove noise from HTTP log - 695 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: 15
  • Position: #128 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5036 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #953 / 1736
  • Number of attempts: 1
The meaning - 558 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #289 / 356
  • Number of attempts: 1
Line Zipper - 450 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #189 / 210
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove dupes from array - 1336 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: 18
  • Position: #102 / 331
  • Number of attempts: 5
Case preserving word replacement - 453 entries

Half way through my project, my people turned into dogs. Now I have to change everything in my source.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #77 / 179
  • Number of attempts: 4
It'ss tooo coold too typpe todaay - 215 entries

My hands are numb with cold. It's hard to type correctly.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #26 / 96
  • Number of attempts: 4
HTML to Haml - 842 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #131 / 202
  • Number of attempts: 2
expand a list comprehension (python) - 301 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

  • Best score: 42
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #23 / 106
  • Number of attempts: 7
Generate English Alphabets - 473 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #20 / 202
  • Number of attempts: 3
Numbering a List - 1859 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #42 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shebangs for all - 1912 entries

We've all seen or used a shebang once or twice. Ditch the specific paths and leave just a dynamic Ruby and Python bath behind.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #150 / 500
  • Number of attempts: 5
A Simple One - 1001 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: #499 / 643
  • Number of attempts: 1
Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 237 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #35 / 85
  • Number of attempts: 5
Reverse Simple Deletion - 832 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #345 / 454
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Cake is a Lie - 1286 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #250 / 512
  • Number of attempts: 3
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 460 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #140 / 233
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 1014 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #201 / 338
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1476 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #287 / 558
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6560 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 40
  • Position: #803 / 1616
  • Number of attempts: 4
Chester Yap
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entered into 95 challenges

contributed 0 challenges