VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 32904 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: #1254 / 7270
Number of attempts: 8

Swap values - 4440 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #439 / 1241
Number of attempts: 3

One number per line - 18377 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #382 / 3787
Number of attempts: 10

V to the i - 4639 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #543 / 1856
Number of attempts: 9

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2748 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #328 / 815
Number of attempts: 2

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3454 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #524 / 1121
Number of attempts: 3

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 576 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 6
Position: #299 / 352
Number of attempts: 2

multiple cursor alternative - 1447 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: 19
Position: #46 / 369
Number of attempts: 7

From argument to object - 1262 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: #79 / 417
Number of attempts: 4

Every other line - 2829 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #216 / 686
Number of attempts: 4

Copy three lines - 2794 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #83 / 625
Number of attempts: 9

Extract argument from function - 2215 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #322 / 728
Number of attempts: 4

Search and Replace 0 - 4651 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #764 / 1541
Number of attempts: 7

That hyphen - 2498 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #79 / 683
Number of attempts: 3

Just the middle - 11136 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1052 / 4112
Number of attempts: 6

Team names - 1777 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #104 / 570
Number of attempts: 3

Basic renumbering - 5430 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #264 / 1227
Number of attempts: 10

Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 795 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: 14
Position: #170 / 271
Number of attempts: 4

Add to end of each line... kinda - 288 entries

Visual-block mode can be used to add something to the end of each line, even if they are of differing lengths. However, what if it's not quite at the end?

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #104 / 155
Number of attempts: 1

Vice versa - 7520 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #24 / 2043
Number of attempts: 6

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 598 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: #81 / 191
Number of attempts: 2

Delete to the end of the current line - 711 entries

Delete to the end of the current line, but keep the character under the cursor.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #48 / 348
Number of attempts: 1

Put the months in order - 915 entries

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

Best score: 20
Best player score: 37
Position: #67 / 155
Number of attempts: 9

Array transposition - 2312 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 18
Position: #189 / 431
Number of attempts: 12

Mirror Symmetry - 781 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #31 / 262
Number of attempts: 5

Swap assigned value - 556 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #153 / 235
Number of attempts: 3

Change your calendar - 279 entries

Happy New Year!

Best score: 18
Best player score: 33
Position: #42 / 77
Number of attempts: 4

Collect List - 4178 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #349 / 1166
Number of attempts: 5

camel riding - 745 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #36 / 267
Number of attempts: 4

Space out the alphabet - 1590 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #34 / 433
Number of attempts: 6

Fix the XML - 958 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #76 / 279
Number of attempts: 9

I forgot quotes - 15728 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #238 / 4114
Number of attempts: 8

-a-b-c- - 3118 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #114 / 1112
Number of attempts: 5

Count both ways - 957 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #60 / 340
Number of attempts: 6

NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 233 entries

Just testing.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #77 / 112
Number of attempts: 1

Change name of a variable - 161 entries

Replace the name of the $variable with the fastest move possible. The challenge is having a command that allow you to easily change the variable name even if its indented.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #52 / 125
Number of attempts: 2

Lisp Condense - 431 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #101 / 151
Number of attempts: 1

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1105 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #91 / 291
Number of attempts: 11

Don't know what this is - 1948 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: #155 / 571
Number of attempts: 6

Where should I put the Newline? - 842 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #198 / 421
Number of attempts: 3

Mess in revision history - 1143 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #50 / 242
Number of attempts: 6

Split the words - 348 entries

Add the spaces manually if you must, but if you use Vim's spell checking feature wisely, I think you'll save a LARGE number of strokes.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 36
Position: #59 / 105
Number of attempts: 3

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10533 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #437 / 3637
Number of attempts: 14

attr_aligner - 3402 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #197 / 685
Number of attempts: 13

Letter case trickery - 1547 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: 11
Position: #278 / 498
Number of attempts: 3

quotes inside quotes - 3026 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: #436 / 1044
Number of attempts: 4

Words in parens - 12736 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #1455 / 3919
Number of attempts: 4

Hole-in-one - 973 entries

Lets take this golf thing literally.. Drive off the tee into the hole, and of course you don't strike the ball completely clean.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #102 / 297
Number of attempts: 7

Prefixes and suffixes - 567 entries

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

Best score: 17
Best player score: 21
Position: #29 / 185
Number of attempts: 7

abcd > a b c d - 260 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #138 / 204
Number of attempts: 1

NATO phonetic alphabet - 476 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #87 / 181
Number of attempts: 4

A simple change - 396 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #98 / 175
Number of attempts: 3

SFD-ROC: The Quick Brown Fox - 160 entries

Someone has vandalized our text (again). Please fix to read: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #68 / 97
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1508 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: #198 / 424
Number of attempts: 5

Saving the hashes(#) - 1961 entries

The following file is copied from vimcasts.org(Its only for learning purpose,hope the site owner doesn't mind it), its probably the easiest of challenges.Our goal is to delete every line which doesn't contain a hash signs. The remaining hash signs with numbers are then sorted to get the final output.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 21
Position: #113 / 466
Number of attempts: 7

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1004 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #68 / 417
Number of attempts: 3

Vertical Limit - 2367 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 22
Position: #141 / 716
Number of attempts: 9

Make the circuit grid! - 77 entries

Copy this command for a circuit layout program to create 10 total smd commands. Increment the number in quotes to name each pad, and add 0.7 to each of the (X Y) coordinates at the end of each line.

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #23 / 44
Number of attempts: 4

replacing each line of a block selection - 2791 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #163 / 732
Number of attempts: 10

Switch function arguments - 1982 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #102 / 627
Number of attempts: 6

Append semicolon after expressions - 942 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #77 / 385
Number of attempts: 4

Reverse and double space - 445 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

Best score: 14
Best player score: 16
Position: #97 / 183
Number of attempts: 2

Remove semicolons after expressions - 541 entries

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

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #76 / 235
Number of attempts: 3

switch variable - 4917 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #369 / 1701
Number of attempts: 9

The meaning - 521 entries

Numbers are fun!

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #230 / 336
Number of attempts: 2

Sort the cardinal numbers - 274 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #119 / 140
Number of attempts: 2

Make it more readable - 1891 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #57 / 622
Number of attempts: 7

remove dupes from array - 1290 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: 17
Position: #60 / 325
Number of attempts: 15

PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 482 entries

I recently needed to send an e-mail to our marketing department listing allowed merge tags for our MailChimp campaigns. The allowed merge tags were determined from a PHP array in one of our PHP classes. I transformed the PHP class to MailChimp's syntax and sent the e-mail. It was, however, a long, laborious process. I'm still fairly new to Vim and would love to see how an expert Vim user would tackle one of my own, real-world problems. Thanks and have fun!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #20 / 143
Number of attempts: 13

imports alignment (python) - 640 entries

Align as one import per line.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 19
Position: #62 / 191
Number of attempts: 12

HTML to Haml - 800 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 27
Position: #36 / 197
Number of attempts: 13

Numbering a List - 1828 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #28 / 625
Number of attempts: 3

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1157 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #154 / 382
Number of attempts: 6

Shebangs for all - 1771 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: #127 / 467
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 915 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: #386 / 609
Number of attempts: 1

Ruby 1.9 compat - 590 entries

Remember when Ruby supported `when <expr> :`? Well, it doesn't in 1.9, so let's make sure we use `then`, without ruining our lovely new hash syntax!

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #48 / 225
Number of attempts: 6

Reverse Simple Deletion - 758 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #22 / 429
Number of attempts: 2

Increment, increment, increment.... - 567 entries

Vim likes macros

Best score: 10
Best player score: 12
Position: #260 / 370
Number of attempts: 1

Context Insensitive completion 1 - 427 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #165 / 222
Number of attempts: 1

Make Fancy Header - 963 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #180 / 326
Number of attempts: 5

Reformat some Python - 554 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 35
Position: #55 / 221
Number of attempts: 6

Reformat most common surnames - 586 entries

Reformat copy-pasted table into a list of the most common surnames

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #12 / 186
Number of attempts: 6

Change the content of a string - 1346 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #174 / 520
Number of attempts: 3

Sort and add attributes - 1183 entries

Sort the states and add the attribute country to each record.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 34
Position: #305 / 482
Number of attempts: 3

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2970 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #104 / 661
Number of attempts: 12

Simple text editing with Vim - 11620 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #366 / 3409
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6000 entries

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

Best score: 32
Best player score: 33
Position: #244 / 1479
Number of attempts: 7

Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

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