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 - 34021 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: #499 / 7517
  • Number of attempts: 6
Swap values - 4707 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #70 / 1294
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18903 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #45 / 3904
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4885 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1175 / 1915
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add semicolons - 10956 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #1888 / 3098
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 2175 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #43 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 3
Copy three lines - 2924 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #364 / 647
  • Number of attempts: 5
Search and Replace 0 - 5162 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #443 / 1675
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2649 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #347 / 712
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11620 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #650 / 4258
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make HTML List - 1072 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 41
  • Position: #106 / 276
  • Number of attempts: 4
Basic renumbering - 5737 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #679 / 1281
  • Number of attempts: 2
Wrap text in quotes - 378 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #60 / 124
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 8021 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #191 / 2158
  • Number of attempts: 6
Free hyphen! - 199 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: 11
  • Position: #73 / 97
  • Number of attempts: 7
Paragraph breaks - 550 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #99 / 172
  • Number of attempts: 1
comments galore - 1101 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #185 / 433
  • Number of attempts: 5
Align commas - 1134 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: 15
  • Position: #120 / 250
  • Number of attempts: 6
Mirror Symmetry - 845 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #108 / 273
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap assigned value - 695 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #82 / 263
  • Number of attempts: 8
From A to B - 628 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #78 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4342 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #214 / 1200
  • Number of attempts: 7
Space out the alphabet - 1696 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #227 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 2
Mute the second method of this script - 465 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #213 / 246
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 16239 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #411 / 4225
  • Number of attempts: 4
-a-b-c- - 3242 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #346 / 1147
  • Number of attempts: 5
Count both ways - 1053 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #255 / 362
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split the words - 399 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: 43
  • Position: #101 / 115
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10758 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #966 / 3717
  • Number of attempts: 2
attr_aligner - 3568 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #253 / 711
  • Number of attempts: 8
quotes inside quotes - 3203 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: #236 / 1094
  • Number of attempts: 3
Words in parens - 13054 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #697 / 3991
  • Number of attempts: 5
Prefixes and suffixes - 668 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #96 / 207
  • Number of attempts: 3
replacing each line of a block selection - 3068 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #406 / 789
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5128 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #903 / 1764
  • Number of attempts: 6
Simple text editing with Vim - 13645 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1580 / 3907
  • Number of attempts: 2
tgmeng
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entered into 36 challenges

contributed 0 challenges