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

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33609 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: #203 / 7415
  • Number of attempts: 8
Extract argument from function - 2355 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #140 / 752
  • Number of attempts: 6
comment and uncomment code inline - 1122 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: 12
  • Position: #240 / 322
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 11444 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2024 / 4193
  • Number of attempts: 5
Stairstep digits - 394 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #93 / 145
  • Number of attempts: 1
Acute accents - 33 entries

Featuring all 17 lowercase letters with an acute accent digraph. Find a way to automate the digraphs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #13 / 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5648 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #658 / 1264
  • Number of attempts: 1
Forgot to follow the naming convention... - 40 entries

Rename everything like MY_VAR_SOMETHING to MyVarSomething.

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #16 / 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vim's not included features - 240 entries

Filter not included (-) features in a hypothetical installation of vim.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #27 / 65
  • Number of attempts: 5
lipsum lines - 273 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #39 / 94
  • Number of attempts: 2
Angular naming conventions - 320 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: 22
  • Position: #78 / 118
  • Number of attempts: 3
VimGolfNight - 560 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #228 / 347
  • Number of attempts: 1
swap or reverse - 126 entries

Try to swap or reverse the line as needed.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #38 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 1
Not enough Ps - 67 entries

Different type of code

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #15 / 36
  • Number of attempts: 1
Winning streak - 135 entries

Make the number on each line equal the consecutive L's or W's.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #28 / 51
  • Number of attempts: 4
Condensed Cases - 804 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: 14
  • Position: #140 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15977 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1616 / 4177
  • Number of attempts: 6
learn vim in short time - 240 entries

so happy to learn vim.because vim is awesome

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #80 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shuffle puzzle - 346 entries

Sort the lines in each indent group, and sort the groups. That's the pattern. Or just move lines around manually to get a better score.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #45 / 104
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ninjas Leaderboard - 99 entries

The two lines in "Start file" has an obfuscated email address. Second line give an index (from 1 to 30) to the chars list of the first line, for example, the first char of email (n) is in position 25, second char (i) is in position 19 and s.o.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #33 / 41
  • Number of attempts: 1
Letter case trickery - 1624 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: #136 / 517
  • Number of attempts: 3
Words in parens - 12929 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1591 / 3961
  • Number of attempts: 3
Draw the Go board - 149 entries

which is a 19×19 lines board. Here we use ascii characters only for simplicity. See diff file to get a sense. (See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game))

  • Best score: 50
  • Best player score: 106
  • Position: #49 / 51
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hole-in-one - 1018 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: #108 / 304
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete unwanted lines - 411 entries

Delete all lines which does not end in "o.."

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #153 / 229
  • Number of attempts: 1
Word frequency alignment - 290 entries

You've got to align the second column, but the spacing is inconvenient and there are nasty tabs in the way. If you're a "real Vim ninja," this could be very quick indeed...

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #94 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 1
Block Fun 1 - 210 entries

Manipulate the columns to produce desired result.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #67 / 75
  • Number of attempts: 1
abcd > a b c d - 291 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #157 / 222
  • Number of attempts: 2
NATO phonetic alphabet - 526 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #25 / 195
  • Number of attempts: 6
Presidential Sorting - 51 entries

Given a nice CSV formatted arrangement of the Presidents of the United States, we need to print out an alphabetical list in pretty columns. Prove that vim can conquer this basic Excel task!

  • Best score: 40
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #13 / 26
  • Number of attempts: 2
The name of the game - 665 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #200 / 360
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove semicolons after expressions - 654 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #82 / 263
  • Number of attempts: 2
The holy-grail may help - 362 entries

Can you find it in less than 20 strokes, Arthur?

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #140 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change the content of a string - 1567 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #295 / 585
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple text editing with Vim - 12740 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1473 / 3680
  • Number of attempts: 5
Robert Goeddel
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entered into 35 challenges

contributed 0 challenges