Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

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

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

Played Challenges

Python: Def to Lambda - 110 entries

LAMBDA!!!

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 5
Turn the x - 100 entries

Turn the x to a +

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 11
Rural Post - 3622 entries

Simple challenge to remove all but the post code on each line

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 7
Satisfy the go linter - 1464 entries

You just came up with this briliant go vars package. But dang, you forgot to add comments to the exported variables. Can you add a comment over each variable with a TODO-placeholder?

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 8
Add quotes to ansible playbook - 398 entries

You created an ansible playbook, but forgot to add quotes. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 4
Data reformat - 177 entries

Reformat this copy-paste data! #csv

  • Best score: 38
  • Best player score: 54
  • Number of attempts: 1
xrandr outputs and dashes - 480 entries

uh oh, different video drivers identify display outputs with more dashes. Quick, need to change this xrandr script!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 4
From a Thunderlink to a Markdown link - 571 entries

ThunderLinks are durable hyperlinks to specific email messages generated from Thunderbird in HTML format. Leverage the power of vim to make them suitable for a markdown-formatted file.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 11
Capitalize the Names - 186 entries

I want to capitalize the names in quotes, but just the people's names, not the file names.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 36
  • Number of attempts: 6
Yo To Hello - 833 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Replace pattern with 1, 2, 3, ... on each line - 867 entries

For each line replace a search pattern (in this case $) with numbers starting at 1 and then increasing by 1 for each replaced match. a$b$c$ -> a0b1c2

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 10
Alphabet soup - 284 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 3
prepend * to every non-blank line - 5702 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 5
Quote modules - 969 entries

Complete golang import statement.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 7
Aliases for cd - 778 entries

Create these beautiful aliases with as few strokes as possible. Are you up for the challenge?

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 179
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hogwarts Email Sorting - 769 entries

Given a list of emails, get the students full name and their associated house.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 5
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1059 entries

Convert strings in SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case. Examples: EMPLOYEE_NAME -> Employee Name REVENUE_YEAR_TO_DATE -> Revenue Year To Date SALARY -> Salary

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 9
Line under headers - 1851 entries

Put a line under each header, and remove the other markdown formatting.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 7
Unsemantic linewrapping - 797 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: 9
  • Number of attempts: 4
Bad Copy Syntax - 1881 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 7
Remove quotes after first field - 275 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 6
Add semicolons - 10286 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 12
html paragraph to table - 583 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 51
  • Number of attempts: 11
ninja substitution - 1200 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 8
Resort and deup a CSV list - 125 entries

I'm always adding items to a sorted list. There has to be a better way dedup and resort the lists. There are multiple lists with varying lengths to discourage manual sorting. Also Australia's animals are weird.

  • Best score: 44
  • Best player score: 210
  • Number of attempts: 1
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 682 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 5
Box it - 7592 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 22
Increment each number - 922 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 8
Build a six - 264 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 7
move titles next to url, in quotes - 440 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 5
One to Ten - 2029 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
  • Number of attempts: 6
Delete to the end of the current line - 700 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 2
Put the months in order - 885 entries

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

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 39
  • Number of attempts: 8
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3410 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 7
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 584 entries

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

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 12
Santa's naughty / nice list - 75 entries

Christmas is here and Santa hasn't decided who's naughty or nice yet. He's given a list of names to his programmer friend to quickly split the children into naughty and nice. Hint: There's a hidden pattern that might be familiar.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 44
  • Number of attempts: 6
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2697 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 16
Com(m)a Trouble - 3264 entries

Someone was real stupid when placing his commas. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 17
convert yml into java pojo field - 799 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: 29
  • Number of attempts: 14
Swap values inside brackets - 2397 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 7
Team names - 1752 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 9
multiple cursor alternative - 1410 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: 26
  • Number of attempts: 7
Array transposition - 2234 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 48
  • Number of attempts: 3
From argument to object - 1246 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 2
Adam's challenge - 903 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: 21
  • Number of attempts: 7
Every other line - 2769 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 7
Copy three lines - 2747 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 9
Split line with dots - 2075 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 8
One number per line - 18189 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values - 4374 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 10
Simple, Practical, and Common - 32648 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
  • Number of attempts: 19
Collect List - 4138 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 10
Fix the XML - 933 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 29
  • Number of attempts: 3
Wget failed to download redirections - 169 entries

Output of a wget session, where 302 where not properly handled due to certificate problems, has been saved to a file. Keep the correct URLs to start again downloading.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 6
Just the middle - 11070 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 15627 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 6
Basic renumbering - 5393 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 8
-a-b-c- - 3077 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 8
V to the i - 4591 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 7
Mess in revision history - 1117 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 38
  • Number of attempts: 5
attr_aligner - 3347 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 41
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 2996 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: 3
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 12674 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 6
Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 324 entries

"Sort by popularity" is a good order to play the challenges. Not perfect, but you could do a lot worse. ;) Input is a sample copy-pasted from vimgolf.com. Some of the challenge names have digits that will get in your way, so read ":help :sort" for hints on sorting with a regex. When you're done, try your solution on the full list!

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 10
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1441 entries

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

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 11
The name of the game - 597 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remove noise from HTTP log - 631 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
  • Number of attempts: 4
replacing each line of a block selection - 2740 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 13
switch variable - 4863 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 9
A Simple One - 870 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
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat some Python - 534 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 40
  • Number of attempts: 8
Search and Replace 0 - 4510 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 7
Flodder-challenge - 829 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 10
Simple text editing with Vim - 11332 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 9

Contributed Challenges

Put the months in order - 885 entries

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

TimMcGuire
Twitter:

entered into 74 challenges

contributed 1 challenges