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

Start coding format - 128 entries

I used to start coding with following format: int main(){ -(cursor here) }

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 1
7th Birthday - 180 entries

We have a bunch of numbers written from 0 to 9 in the order present in the text input file. The task is to create 7 by replacing the numbers with dashes.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
Every other line - 2761 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 5
Paragraph breaks - 431 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 3
C Reformatting - 675 entries

You may use Visual mode... or not. #uppercase

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 32
  • Number of attempts: 5
Pretty multi-line bash - 210 entries

Bash line continuations are much prettier when they're column aligned.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
Generate a list of numbers - 262 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
A grid of punctuation - 112 entries

Create a checkerboard of = and - in an 80×24 grid!

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
Array of characters - 132 entries

We all copy paste things off the internet, but the syntax doesn't look right. Fix it as fast as possible.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Number of attempts: 5
Paragraph sort - 356 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
Wrap text in quotes - 315 entries

All the blocks of text should be wrapped in quotation marks.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Copy three lines - 2733 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 7
Split line with dots - 2074 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 1
Align commas - 990 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: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
From A to B - 533 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 3
One number per line - 18077 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 8
Scrambled numbers - 766 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 6
Swap values - 4361 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
Alsa configuration - 478 entries

I'm tweaking my ~/.asoundrc file!

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 4
Replace and keep the case - 369 entries

Replace all instance of plugin and Plugin to device and Device.

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 937 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 3
lipsum lines - 245 entries

Convert a quoted block of text into strings in a list.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 2
Angular naming conventions - 279 entries

In angular, a directive name follows the camelCase convention. When the directive is used in an HTML template, the words are instead separated by a dash. Go from to the other the fastest!

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vice versa - 7355 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 5
Simple, Practical, and Common - 32508 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: 4
Make HTML List - 933 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 12
Collect List - 4128 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 4
Mirror Symmetry - 739 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 6
camel riding - 731 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fix the XML - 921 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Space out the alphabet - 1519 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mute the second method of this script - 420 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 11038 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 4
Condensed Cases - 729 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
I forgot quotes - 15544 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 6
Basic renumbering - 5386 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Gray area - 669 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 5
That hyphen - 2452 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 4
Count both ways - 932 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 5
-a-b-c- - 3066 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
V to the i - 4573 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 2
Don't know what this is - 1903 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: 11
  • Number of attempts: 5
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1066 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 8
Where should I put the Newline? - 830 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 2
Extract argument from function - 2175 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
Two become one - 692 entries

We have two c arrays and want to make one two dimensional out of it. Can we do that?

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 6
Mess in revision history - 1102 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 4
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10486 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
attr_aligner - 3346 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 8
Letter case trickery - 1507 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: 9
  • Number of attempts: 5
quotes inside quotes - 2995 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: 14
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 12630 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Saving the hashes(#) - 1908 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: 20
  • Number of attempts: 7
Stairs Indenting - 387 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1432 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: 3
Vertical Limit - 2293 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Switch function arguments - 1914 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
replacing each line of a block selection - 2739 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 7
switch variable - 4853 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make it more readable - 1842 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
remove dupes from array - 1260 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: 24
  • Number of attempts: 1
Numbering a List - 1772 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Recursively Palindrome - 225 entries

Note that there are 2^6-1 characters.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 4
Generate English Alphabets - 425 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
Happy New Year! - 129 entries

This is a simple new year's challenge.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 1
Solve the Sokoban - 158 entries

A wink for all Vimgolfers that play Nethack too.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 5
Shebangs for all - 1711 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: 11
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reverse Simple Deletion - 739 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 6
Compile C - 287 entries

You might have to get clever to do this one.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 6
Search and Replace 0 - 4508 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Deleting folded text - 279 entries

The text below contains three folds. Delete them (and the text inside them). For example: 123 456 /*{{{*/ 789 /*}}}*/ 012 Should become: 123 012 Also, add `aoeuaoeu` to make sure small solutions don't get flagged as cheating.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 5
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2761 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 9
Simple text editing with Vim - 11292 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: 2
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entered into 73 challenges

contributed 0 challenges