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.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

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

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33354 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: 25
  • Position: #3203 / 7358
  • Number of attempts: 2
Swap values - 4535 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #7 / 1255
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18615 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #139 / 3841
  • Number of attempts: 9
V to the i - 4743 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #328 / 1878
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add semicolons - 10785 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #462 / 3042
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #12 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 2
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #144 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 3
Extract argument from function - 2308 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #153 / 742
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #423 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 8
That hyphen - 2554 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #112 / 694
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: #33 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11346 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #571 / 4160
  • Number of attempts: 8
Make HTML List - 1039 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #110 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 1
Stairstep digits - 376 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #18 / 141
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5584 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #435 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 10
create arrows in a list - 103 entries

Add arrow at same distance

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #30 / 70
  • Number of attempts: 1
Adam's challenge - 950 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: 18
  • Position: #28 / 265
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #76 / 287
  • Number of attempts: 3
Combines all items - 303 entries

For each line that starts with the same number I want to combine its contents

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #14 / 137
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7778 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #298 / 2095
  • Number of attempts: 4
Free hyphen! - 159 entries

Just like "Inner hyphens", but I'm giving you a free hyphen to play with. Will your solution be any different?

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #11 / 85
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sorting a glossary - 118 entries

Sort a glossary. Glossary head contains a header phrase ending with ':' and glossary body has multi line text indented with a tab.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #29 / 76
  • Number of attempts: 1
Order and join - 948 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #5 / 254
  • Number of attempts: 3
Paragraph breaks - 505 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #21 / 165
  • Number of attempts: 3
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #126 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 2
lipsum lines - 251 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #45 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 2
Angular naming conventions - 295 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
  • Position: #31 / 113
  • Number of attempts: 6
Replace and keep the case - 407 entries

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

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #25 / 115
  • 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: 11
  • Position: #23 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mirror Symmetry - 798 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #53 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 7
From A to B - 564 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #10 / 155
  • Number of attempts: 6
Collect List - 4261 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #205 / 1185
  • Number of attempts: 3
swap or reverse - 115 entries

Try to swap or reverse the line as needed.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #46 / 66
  • Number of attempts: 1
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #48 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 6
Fix the XML - 996 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #133 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 4
Winning streak - 124 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #35 / 49
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15923 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #398 / 4159
  • Number of attempts: 6
-a-b-c- - 3170 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #150 / 1127
  • Number of attempts: 3
Gray area - 724 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #87 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 11
  • Position: #62 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 6
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10616 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1179 / 3663
  • Number of attempts: 3
quotes inside quotes - 3124 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
  • Position: #225 / 1071
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 12850 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #3084 / 3944
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vertical Limit - 2436 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #358 / 735
  • Number of attempts: 3
replacing each line of a block selection - 2925 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #107 / 764
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5028 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #395 / 1734
  • Number of attempts: 3
Make it more readable - 1952 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #73 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 4
Numbering a List - 1855 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #331 / 638
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple text editing with Vim - 12233 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #401 / 3567
  • Number of attempts: 4
Michael Buckley
Twitter:

entered into 49 challenges

contributed 0 challenges