VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33236 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: #1 / 7330
Number of attempts: 3

Swap values - 4513 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 13
Position: #521 / 1250
Number of attempts: 6

Prime Numbers - 340 entries

List the first 100 prime numbers.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 104
Position: #79 / 100
Number of attempts: 1

V to the i - 4717 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #5 / 1874
Number of attempts: 2

Word Blender - 129 entries

The insides of long words seem to have been run through the blender. Can you fix this famous tale, brave knight?

Best score: 28
Best player score: 87
Position: #47 / 54
Number of attempts: 2

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 652 entries

You're replying to an email with silly long lines. Clean them up.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #21 / 376
Number of attempts: 1

Extract argument from function - 2289 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #3 / 740
Number of attempts: 2

Search and Replace 0 - 4766 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #55 / 1578
Number of attempts: 2

Across-Down Flip - 53 entries

Do this instead of the Sunday crossword.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 46
Position: #20 / 24
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2530 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #8 / 690
Number of attempts: 5

Just the middle - 11318 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1 / 4152
Number of attempts: 3

Interweave two blocks of text - 615 entries

Suppose you've got data on a list of things from multiple sources. They're all in separate chunks, so how might you create a tabular output?

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #35 / 210
Number of attempts: 5

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 930 entries

A novice Python using prints Hello World! and a pro shows him different way. Using vim to get into pro style from novice, win the challenge.

Best score: 39
Best player score: 42
Position: #90 / 361
Number of attempts: 4

Return the cow - 71 entries

This cow is too verbose. Give it a lesson.

Best score: 52
Best player score: 69
Position: #16 / 28
Number of attempts: 2

Basic renumbering - 5514 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 15
Position: #495 / 1249
Number of attempts: 2

Create Leading Zeros - 208 entries

Create leading zeros only for id columns. Please use generic approach!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #10 / 78
Number of attempts: 3

Add to end of each line... kinda - 316 entries

Visual-block mode can be used to add something to the end of each line, even if they are of differing lengths. However, what if it's not quite at the end?

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #2 / 166
Number of attempts: 2

Vice versa - 7687 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #615 / 2079
Number of attempts: 4

Free hyphen! - 156 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: #34 / 84
Number of attempts: 2

Vim's not included features - 183 entries

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

Best score: 23
Best player score: 29
Position: #33 / 59
Number of attempts: 6

comments galore - 982 entries

Basic comment reformatting

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #11 / 414
Number of attempts: 2

Inner hyphens - 124 entries

Yet another hyphen challenge. Adding 5 hyphens to a file shouldn't be too hard.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #15 / 77
Number of attempts: 4

Angular naming conventions - 287 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: 20
Position: #61 / 112
Number of attempts: 1

Manual SQL - 114 entries

Change select and insert queries to simulate inserting a new record.

Best score: 49
Best player score: 56
Position: #12 / 44
Number of attempts: 2

Mirror Symmetry - 793 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #2 / 265
Number of attempts: 4

Swap assigned value - 593 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #2 / 242
Number of attempts: 5

Cartesian product - 218 entries

{1,2,3,4,5} X {1,2,3,4,5}

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #27 / 92
Number of attempts: 4

Change your calendar - 352 entries

Happy New Year!

Best score: 18
Best player score: 23
Position: #27 / 83
Number of attempts: 6

Collect List - 4228 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #1 / 1179
Number of attempts: 4

VimGolfNight - 524 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #8 / 339
Number of attempts: 1

camel riding - 765 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #149 / 273
Number of attempts: 1

swap or reverse - 110 entries

Try to swap or reverse the line as needed.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #5 / 64
Number of attempts: 1

readability - 310 entries

Make the code readable by adding some spaces

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #1 / 147
Number of attempts: 1

Space out the alphabet - 1610 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #137 / 438
Number of attempts: 3

Sort with uniq OpenEmbedded package names - 33 entries

For each line take 4th dirname of path. For example: "alsa-utils", "gawk-3.1.5", ... But! But if previous result is "files", take 3rd dirname instead. For example: "mktemp", "mklibs" ... If version is present in package name (dash is the separator character), take it. For example: "apt-0.9.9.4" prevails over "apt". And finally, use sort -u to get unique names!

Best score: 32
Best player score: 45
Position: #7 / 13
Number of attempts: 3

remove all lines in first part - 190 entries

From the second part, remove all lines in the first part. It can be useful when you have done something from a long list, you want to know what is not done yet!

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #12 / 65
Number of attempts: 2

Fill visual area - 82 entries

Just have fun!

Best score: 20
Best player score: 28
Position: #10 / 36
Number of attempts: 4

Shuffled numbers - 228 entries

Each number is paired with the number it should follow. That's enough information to put them in order.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #6 / 92
Number of attempts: 2

Mute the second method of this script - 447 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #10 / 237
Number of attempts: 1

Remove hard line breaks - 64 entries

Text files with Hard breaks are not good for e-readers. We need remove all hard line breaks and have long lines.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #2 / 30
Number of attempts: 1

Custom McCarthy sequence - 36 entries

Generate the first one hundred and twenty numbers (starting with n=1). See here for some inspiration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthy_91_function

Best score: 15
Best player score: 20
Position: #10 / 15
Number of attempts: 2

Greek column realign - 42 entries

Oops one letter is missing! Shift down the second column to insert nu letter. Symbol can be entered using: <C-K>n*

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #1 / 23
Number of attempts: 1

Winning streak - 124 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 26
Position: #8 / 49
Number of attempts: 2

Sorting database text output - 213 entries

Sometimes it is nice to be able to quickly take column-formatted text output from the SQL command line and turn it into a list of useful data. In this case we want a unique, sorted list of the values from the second column combined into one comma-separated list. What is the fewest strokes you can do this in?

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #69 / 80
Number of attempts: 3

Simple Maths - 45 entries

Not much to say, discover by yourself!

Best score: 26
Best player score: 33
Position: #6 / 25
Number of attempts: 2

I forgot quotes - 15880 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1420 / 4146
Number of attempts: 3

Shift down - 193 entries

Number words are back.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #3 / 67
Number of attempts: 4

learn vim in short time - 225 entries

so happy to learn vim.because vim is awesome

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #8 / 155
Number of attempts: 1

Replace Parameter with Explicit Methods - 61 entries

Implementing the methods of a Java Interface

Best score: 33
Best player score: 37
Position: #6 / 25
Number of attempts: 1

vim1001 - 275 entries

change number 1001 into a "vim1001 sequence". (My first challenge, hope it is not too bad... )

Best score: 17
Best player score: 23
Position: #47 / 107
Number of attempts: 1

Roman numerals - 68 entries

Use the substitutions on top to convert unary to Roman numerals.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #1 / 27
Number of attempts: 4

-a-b-c- - 3160 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #1 / 1124
Number of attempts: 6

Count both ways - 987 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #7 / 348
Number of attempts: 7

Suffix sort - 244 entries

Sort from the end of the line, as if the letters in each line were reversed.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 24
Position: #25 / 64
Number of attempts: 3

NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 243 entries

Just testing.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #9 / 114
Number of attempts: 1

Change name of a variable - 169 entries

Replace the name of the $variable with the fastest move possible. The challenge is having a command that allow you to easily change the variable name even if its indented.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #3 / 132
Number of attempts: 3

Lisp Condense - 438 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #1 / 154
Number of attempts: 3

Gray area - 713 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 13
Position: #129 / 265
Number of attempts: 2

NBCU Weekly Challenge - #0 - 124 entries

One of our favorites lines here at NBCU! p.s. The first version of #0 was deleted due to me copy/pasting a HTML entity. Congrats to the one who figured that out, you are a true ninja warrior!

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #3 / 55
Number of attempts: 2

Winding path - 93 entries

It's a maze, but the bad paths have been blocked off. Mark the correct path.

Best score: 27
Best player score: 40
Position: #9 / 40
Number of attempts: 4

Comparing scores - 94 entries

If Alice and Bob both did the challenge, put their entries together in the top paragraph, so we can compare their scores more easily.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 22
Position: #13 / 33
Number of attempts: 2

Neither Fizz nor Buzz - 226 entries

Not your regular increment macro! The gaps are tricky.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #14 / 99
Number of attempts: 4

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1108 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #3 / 293
Number of attempts: 5

Don't know what this is - 1961 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: #1 / 576
Number of attempts: 3

Where should I put the Newline? - 857 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #3 / 429
Number of attempts: 2

Piphilology - 131 entries

Piphilology comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember a span of digits of the mathematical constant π. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology

Best score: 29
Best player score: 42
Position: #45 / 51
Number of attempts: 1

Shuffle puzzle - 317 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: 15
Position: #49 / 101
Number of attempts: 4

Split the words - 356 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: 36
Position: #41 / 108
Number of attempts: 1

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10584 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #228 / 3653
Number of attempts: 3

attr_aligner - 3408 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #1 / 689
Number of attempts: 2

Ninjas Leaderboard - 84 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: 34
Position: #13 / 38
Number of attempts: 5

Counting in binary - 447 entries

"a" represents 0; "A" represents 1. Start from zero and count to 15.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 32
Position: #50 / 112
Number of attempts: 2

Letter case trickery - 1588 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: 11
Position: #172 / 509
Number of attempts: 5

quotes inside quotes - 3105 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: 17
Position: #660 / 1066
Number of attempts: 1

Top X - 191 entries

The End File is the Top 10 Vimgolf Leaderboard at June 29, 2013. This is a second version, with a great contribution of @udioica. X is ten in Roman,a numeric system in ancient Rome

Best score: 18
Best player score: 28
Position: #37 / 69
Number of attempts: 4

Change The Perspective - 36 entries

This is a go game recodes file(.sgf file, refer to http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/). It base on such a coordinate system: in vertical direction, is from top(farthest end) to bottom, mark as a,b,c,...，s(19*19 board); in horizontal direction, is from left to right, uses the same notations. For Example, the coordinate notation 'cq', is the position at the bottom-left corner(vertical coordinate first). The record is from one player's perspective. We need to change to another's, but we don't want to change coordinate system, let it keep top to bottom and left to right. so we have to change the coordinates, a <-> s, b <-> r,c <-> q, etc. the Position 'cq', as transformation, it will be 'qd'.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 47
Position: #10 / 22
Number of attempts: 1

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 344 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: 16
Position: #37 / 104
Number of attempts: 1

Words in parens - 12821 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #323 / 3938
Number of attempts: 4

Hole-in-one - 1012 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: #99 / 302
Number of attempts: 1

It's a factor - 91 entries

Flaunt your macro prowess by factoring some numbers. Too hard? It takes less than 30 strokes, I promise.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 58
Position: #18 / 36
Number of attempts: 6

Delete unwanted lines - 392 entries

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

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #4 / 224
Number of attempts: 1

Parsing with CSV: Unify lines and result. - 164 entries

col1;col2;col3;col4 A;1;4;5 A;3;4; A;1;4; # New output: col1;col2;col3;col4 A;1(2x);3;4(3x);5 any ideas?

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #2 / 72
Number of attempts: 2

Lookahead and Lookbehind - 67 entries

Look everywhere

Best score: 16
Best player score: 24
Position: #23 / 29
Number of attempts: 2

Word frequency alignment - 273 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: #4 / 156
Number of attempts: 1

Minimalist Limerick - 514 entries

Reproduce this lovely poem.

Best score: 31
Best player score: 31
Position: #2 / 170
Number of attempts: 5

Coordinates placeholder - 62 entries

Place coordinates instead of target search.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #2 / 36
Number of attempts: 3

fib.c cleanup - 66 entries

cleanup the file

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #5 / 54
Number of attempts: 1

REDRUM - 149 entries

If you remember "The Shinning", the first time you saw the bloody word REDRUM you probably thinked "What the Hell is that?" Well, then you know that you need a little help from a looking-glass to make sense of it. Now it's time to use vim like a mirror to reveal the message.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #2 / 61
Number of attempts: 1

Enumerate words - 242 entries

Enumerate the unique words in order.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 25
Position: #9 / 87
Number of attempts: 4

199 Fibonacci Numbers - 39 entries

Generate 199 Fibonacci Numbers using, if you like, the function S(x,y), a vimscript to sum two big numbers in reverse order.

Best score: 51
Best player score: 74
Position: #14 / 17
Number of attempts: 1

Harder than "abcd > a b c d" - 76 entries

Not as easy as the last challenge. This time, just one space between a and b, up to 25 spaces between y and z. (Removed some lines; diff was too long.)

Best score: 15
Best player score: 29
Position: #35 / 39
Number of attempts: 2

Groups magic - 146 entries

Regexp or macros for string converting: (a) -> ___ (abc) -> ____ (abcd) -> ______ All in the '(' replace to _ multiply by char count + ()

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #19 / 88
Number of attempts: 1

Prefixes and suffixes - 590 entries

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

Best score: 17
Best player score: 28
Position: #112 / 191
Number of attempts: 2

abcd > a b c d - 279 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #6 / 217
Number of attempts: 2

Changing URL path in CSS - 123 entries

What's the quickest way to swap out all the URLs in a CSS file? Is it wasted keystrokes using look-behinds and look-aheads? (I'm sorry for the delete/report--I made a mistake with the last one requiring an ugly search for graphic to replace with images. I just intended this to be a simple search and replace that might possibly generate some macros or normals solutions that are quicker)

Best score: 40
Best player score: 40
Position: #2 / 57
Number of attempts: 2

NATO phonetic alphabet - 498 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #3 / 189
Number of attempts: 1

Create a pandoc compatible table - 177 entries

In [this vimcast][1], a featured gist from Tim Pope shows how to quickly make a simple table structure. How fast can you convert it to pandoc's markdown style? [1]: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/aligning-text-with-tabular-vim/

Best score: 32
Best player score: 33
Position: #12 / 51
Number of attempts: 3

Shuffle and Sort - 201 entries

The values where sorted incorrectly. Get them back to how they are supposed to be

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #4 / 63
Number of attempts: 6

Printable ASCII characters - 120 entries

From a blank input, print all 95 printing ASCII characters one per line, from space to tilde.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 36
Position: #21 / 40
Number of attempts: 3

A simple change - 434 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #3 / 187
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: Tic-Tac-Toe - 132 entries

Tic-Tac-Toe You are 'X', and it is your turn. Stop 'O' from winning, and complete the game. Draw a diagonal line through your winning row of three X's.

Best score: 25
Best player score: 33
Position: #22 / 50
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: The Quick Brown Fox - 168 entries

Someone has vandalized our text (again). Please fix to read: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #19 / 100
Number of attempts: 1

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 398 entries

Someone has vandalized this text file and replaced the beginning character of one word in each line with a Big "X." Please remove the big X's, and fix each line to read "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog."

Best score: 8
Best player score: 10
Position: #9 / 186
Number of attempts: 1

The name of the game - 643 entries

End up with the name of the game.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #5 / 353
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: ASCII Logo Border - 70 entries

Draw a border around this familiar logo ;)

Best score: 20
Best player score: 24
Position: #10 / 30
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1550 entries

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

Best score: 8
Best player score: 9
Position: #130 / 435
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: Pipe Dreams - 99 entries

Move the pipes so they match the output.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 15
Position: #16 / 44
Number of attempts: 1

Stairs Indenting - 442 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #57 / 191
Number of attempts: 2

Unwrap the text of an email message - 182 entries

Reverse of "Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters". gq and gw are great for wrapping paragraphs. But sometimes other programs choke on your wrapped lines. What's the best way to un-gq?

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #1 / 72
Number of attempts: 1

Cleanining up 80 column concatenated text - 185 entries

1. Put the whole query on one line, remove the concatenation operators 2. Remove the double spaces that appear a few times in the query 3. Use string-interpolated variable statementPid rather than the ugly concatenation

Best score: 31
Best player score: 31
Position: #2 / 74
Number of attempts: 5

Saving the hashes(#) - 1977 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: 25
Position: #132 / 470
Number of attempts: 2

Convert pandoc unordered list to a numbered list - 157 entries

I know it's possible to use #. in pandoc to auto-generate numbered lists, but then it's not easy to tell how many items there are when reading it in Markdown. How fast can you make the switch?

Best score: 20
Best player score: 23
Position: #12 / 55
Number of attempts: 4

SFD-ROC: ROT13 Phonics - 96 entries

A is for apple, b is for ball, etc... This familiar phonics poem has been rotated 13 characters. Make the letter match the word.

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #3 / 70
Number of attempts: 1

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1066 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #3 / 436
Number of attempts: 1

Recursively Palindrome - 235 entries

Note that there are 2^6-1 characters.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 23
Position: #15 / 72
Number of attempts: 4

Inconsistent real estate paste - 178 entries

Format a hand-typed real estate listing that uses inconsistent punctuation into four sections

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #1 / 53
Number of attempts: 4

Vertical Limit - 2406 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 22
Position: #100 / 728
Number of attempts: 7

Make the circuit grid! - 83 entries

Copy this command for a circuit layout program to create 10 total smd commands. Increment the number in quotes to name each pad, and add 0.7 to each of the (X Y) coordinates at the end of each line.

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #4 / 46
Number of attempts: 1

Aligning function arguments to match a specific coding style - 218 entries

Most projects have specific coding style guidelines. In this case, the argument list must be broken into a new line for each argument, with the argument names right aligned, taking into account pointers.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #13 / 66
Number of attempts: 4

Exchanging Quotes - 801 entries

Sometimes you need to exchange a choice of quotes in some code.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 31
Position: #16 / 221
Number of attempts: 9

replacing each line of a block selection - 2907 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #2 / 760
Number of attempts: 4

Switch function arguments - 2019 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #3 / 637
Number of attempts: 2

Append semicolon after expressions - 986 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #5 / 397
Number of attempts: 5

Reverse and double space - 475 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #1 / 191
Number of attempts: 2

Remove noise from HTTP log - 675 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
Position: #2 / 266
Number of attempts: 3

constructor - 178 entries

coding a constructor for a simple class

Best score: 59
Best player score: 61
Position: #6 / 57
Number of attempts: 5

Remove semicolons after expressions - 602 entries

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

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #2 / 253
Number of attempts: 2

un-C-escape string - 55 entries

Convert escape sequences to characters

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #1 / 49
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 5012 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #3 / 1728
Number of attempts: 7

The meaning - 543 entries

Numbers are fun!

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #6 / 350
Number of attempts: 4

Format the output - 143 entries

Sometimes your standard out is a little hard to read. Take this multilevel hash and make it human readable.

Best score: 35
Best player score: 35
Position: #2 / 38
Number of attempts: 7

Calculate the table totals - 129 entries

Go ahead... commit the treachery of using vim as a spreadsheet.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #2 / 42
Number of attempts: 9

Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 953 entries

convert an ugly spreadsheet copy/paste into a CSV format.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #35 / 184
Number of attempts: 7

Replacing some words - 418 entries

How fast could it be?

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #1 / 147
Number of attempts: 2

PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 1 - 211 entries

Convert this tiny php class to adequate java one.

Best score: 65
Best player score: 71
Position: #8 / 61
Number of attempts: 9

Multiplication table. - 195 entries

Create a multiplication table.

Best score: 31
Best player score: 49
Position: #11 / 63
Number of attempts: 3

Sort the cardinal numbers - 284 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #1 / 143
Number of attempts: 7

formatted text to markdown - 181 entries

You're converting some posts from an old blog to markdown. The formatted text is far closer to the finished product than the html markup, so it seems like a good place to start. Word wrapping seems to be the main area for optimization.

Best score: 70
Best player score: 74
Position: #4 / 66
Number of attempts: 8

Make it more readable - 1930 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #3 / 636
Number of attempts: 7

Line Zipper - 449 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #43 / 209
Number of attempts: 3

remove dupes from array - 1324 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: 17
Position: #1 / 328
Number of attempts: 5

PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 2 - 95 entries

Same class but reverse!

Best score: 80
Best player score: 93
Position: #8 / 37
Number of attempts: 4

Alphabetize the directory - 281 entries

Put the contacts and their information in alphabetical order.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 32
Position: #25 / 98
Number of attempts: 4

PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 505 entries

I recently needed to send an e-mail to our marketing department listing allowed merge tags for our MailChimp campaigns. The allowed merge tags were determined from a PHP array in one of our PHP classes. I transformed the PHP class to MailChimp's syntax and sent the e-mail. It was, however, a long, laborious process. I'm still fairly new to Vim and would love to see how an expert Vim user would tackle one of my own, real-world problems. Thanks and have fun!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #14 / 146
Number of attempts: 6

Complete the hex array data - 190 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

Best score: 23
Best player score: 25
Position: #15 / 72
Number of attempts: 8

Case preserving word replacement - 444 entries

Half way through my project, my people turned into dogs. Now I have to change everything in my source.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #1 / 178
Number of attempts: 3

Complete the hex array data (Part II) - 151 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

Best score: 20
Best player score: 22
Position: #6 / 67
Number of attempts: 3

Sort entries based on date - 359 entries

Sort some entries in a Ledger-file based on date.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #2 / 113
Number of attempts: 3

Here, piggy, piggy... - 75 entries

Youay owknay atwhay otay oday...

Best score: 68
Best player score: 102
Position: #18 / 21
Number of attempts: 1

Happy New Year! - 139 entries

This is a simple new year's challenge.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 27
Position: #36 / 56
Number of attempts: 3

imports alignment (python) - 657 entries

Align as one import per line.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #1 / 194
Number of attempts: 3

Generate Fibonacci Numbers - 256 entries

Use your super vim powers to generate Fibonacci Numbers.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #56 / 97
Number of attempts: 2

It'ss tooo coold too typpe todaay - 211 entries

My hands are numb with cold. It's hard to type correctly.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 18
Position: #28 / 96
Number of attempts: 2

Rotating Philosophers Problem - 386 entries

Can you help the philosophers find a good place to sit before they get five forks and spaghetti?

Best score: 29
Best player score: 29
Position: #2 / 163
Number of attempts: 3

HTML to Haml - 838 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #1 / 201
Number of attempts: 4

expand a list comprehension (python) - 296 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

Best score: 42
Best player score: 42
Position: #3 / 105
Number of attempts: 7

Reformat long lines - 336 entries

Rearrange this ruby method call to put each parameter on its own line. Could become a useful macro.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #41 / 130
Number of attempts: 2

Generate English Alphabets - 456 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 24
Position: #26 / 198
Number of attempts: 2

Overall Vimgolf Rank - 161 entries

Suppose you are trying to figure out what your overall rank is at Vimgolf(the sum of all the ranks you got), and as a Vim ninja you decided to use Vim to do the job. Your solution should work for every Vimgolf profile page(The actual input file for this challenge is my Vimgolf profile page). So, direct answer insertion is considered cheating.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 33
Position: #34 / 57
Number of attempts: 3

Insert a Markdown link - 422 entries

Put a link in a markdown document, using the after-the-paragraph format.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #13 / 142
Number of attempts: 4

Numbering a List - 1849 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 19
Position: #139 / 636
Number of attempts: 3

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 - 145 entries

Somebody's got this slightly muddled up. See how quickly you can fix it. (I made this to experiment with buffers. I'm not actually sure whether this is faster with buffers or without.)

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #1 / 68
Number of attempts: 2

Getters & Setters: Java - 190 entries

Boilerplate getters & setters - it's a tedious fact of life in Java, and probably the only thing that still pulls me back to an IDE. Perhaps someone knows a fast, pure vim way...

Best score: 89
Best player score: 111
Position: #22 / 54
Number of attempts: 2

Solve the Sokoban - 161 entries

A wink for all Vimgolfers that play Nethack too.

Best score: 25
Best player score: 32
Position: #51 / 71
Number of attempts: 2

Java Array2List - 218 entries

Convert an java array initializer into a list.

Best score: 67
Best player score: 78
Position: #9 / 82
Number of attempts: 3

The holy-grail may help - 339 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #4 / 204
Number of attempts: 2

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1202 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #119 / 394
Number of attempts: 4

CSV to JSON - 158 entries

A search for shortest vimissh way to convert CSV to JSON.

Best score: 56
Best player score: 76
Position: #12 / 63
Number of attempts: 1

Assignment Alignment - 824 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #11 / 215
Number of attempts: 8

Shebangs for all - 1846 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
Position: #3 / 486
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 978 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
Position: #137 / 636
Number of attempts: 1

Round Round - 285 entries

Round Round

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #27 / 83
Number of attempts: 2

82 bottles of beer on the wall - 296 entries

Take them down. (sorry, only 82 bottles because the problem size is limited!)

Best score: 107
Best player score: 115
Position: #23 / 138
Number of attempts: 1

Table Reshuffle - 366 entries

Fix the column order in this table... also append the new 'username' column.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #6 / 132
Number of attempts: 4

Reverse and count - 432 entries

Someone typed things upside down and now a Vim ninja needs to reverse the lines and count how many there are.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 22
Position: #29 / 168
Number of attempts: 5

Letters are numbers - 149 entries

Letters and numbers are interchangeable. A lot of programming languages give you simple ways to convert individual letters to hex, binary and decimal but does Vim?

Best score: 20
Best player score: 32
Position: #49 / 73
Number of attempts: 1

Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 236 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #12 / 85
Number of attempts: 3

Ruby 1.9 compat - 608 entries

Remember when Ruby supported `when <expr> :`? Well, it doesn't in 1.9, so let's make sure we use `then`, without ruining our lovely new hash syntax!

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #12 / 229
Number of attempts: 1

Reverse Simple Deletion - 824 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #121 / 450
Number of attempts: 1

Increment, increment, increment.... - 626 entries

Vim likes macros

Best score: 10
Best player score: 12
Position: #133 / 393
Number of attempts: 1

Sorting paragraphs - 503 entries

Order the paragraphs correctly, per prefixed index

Best score: 18
Best player score: 21
Position: #18 / 156
Number of attempts: 5

Indentation - 492 entries

Indent each line according to the right number of spaces it needs.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 24
Position: #36 / 167
Number of attempts: 3

Hatsuyume - 442 entries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsuyume

Best score: 16
Best player score: 23
Position: #41 / 173
Number of attempts: 1

Turn this csv list into queries - 203 entries

Transform each line of this csv file into a MySQL-ready INSERT query.

Best score: 98
Best player score: 115
Position: #39 / 94
Number of attempts: 2

Dumb to smart - 93 entries

Turn dumb quote to smart vim's way.

Best score: 28
Best player score: 30
Position: #19 / 54
Number of attempts: 2

The Cake is a Lie - 1266 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #78 / 506
Number of attempts: 1

Fix the Haiku - 272 entries

Change this slightly scrambled haiku to its unscrambled form and fix the capitalisation and punctuation along the way.

Best score: 28
Best player score: 33
Position: #20 / 108
Number of attempts: 2

Context insensitive completion 0 - 492 entries

Buried in the lines you're not supposed to add is the line "Add this line!" Add that line to the top of the file.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #27 / 229
Number of attempts: 1

Remove Accent off the Letter - 105 entries

Remove all the accent from extremely accented statements.

Best score: 37
Best player score: 54
Position: #7 / 49
Number of attempts: 3

Compile C - 362 entries

You might have to get clever to do this one.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #33 / 131
Number of attempts: 2

Context Insensitive completion 1 - 444 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #47 / 228
Number of attempts: 1

Almost encrypted - 196 entries

Convert the first paragraph to be even less readable.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #3 / 144
Number of attempts: 3

Make Fancy Header - 996 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #26 / 335
Number of attempts: 3

Linear congruential generator - 112 entries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator

Best score: 28
Best player score: 30
Position: #11 / 48
Number of attempts: 2

Reformat some Python - 576 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 34
Position: #5 / 227
Number of attempts: 2

Reformat a C golf submission - 547 entries

Take this C golf submission (for the "tiny but standards-compliant Hello World program" category, naturally), and turn it into formatted C code.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 28
Position: #51 / 198
Number of attempts: 3

Reverse characters in a line - 701 entries

You have everything you need, just not in the right order. Mastermind would give you 26 white pegs.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #26 / 248
Number of attempts: 2

PEP8 Python Wrapping Comments and Code - 174 entries

According to PEP8, long flowy text and code should have different max line lengths. Code: 79 characters max Long flowy text: 72 characters max

Best score: 23
Best player score: 27
Position: #29 / 63
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat most common surnames - 613 entries

Reformat copy-pasted table into a list of the most common surnames

Best score: 23
Best player score: 25
Position: #34 / 193
Number of attempts: 6

Remember FizzBuzz? - 634 entries

Output FizzBuzz to 100. Start with nothing.

Best score: 39
Best player score: 56
Position: #69 / 173
Number of attempts: 2

Get rid of html tags - 356 entries

Want to read more about Vim's background? Then get rid of those html tags...

Best score: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #40 / 213
Number of attempts: 1

Change the content of a string - 1425 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #28 / 542
Number of attempts: 1

Deleting folded text - 325 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: 19
Position: #24 / 111
Number of attempts: 4

Sort and add attributes - 1273 entries

Sort the states and add the attribute country to each record.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #24 / 510
Number of attempts: 2

Add fold markers to a .c file - 526 entries

Fold markers can make it easier to navigate source code. Add them to this .c file.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 32
Position: #55 / 165
Number of attempts: 3

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1265 entries

Get the sentence back in the proper order, remove duplicate lines, and then combine the separate lines into one.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 20
Position: #49 / 366
Number of attempts: 5

Braces or Brackets? - 779 entries

Someone forgot whether to use braces or brackets and you have to clean up their code!

Best score: 34
Best player score: 42
Position: #96 / 268
Number of attempts: 3

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3141 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 22
Position: #214 / 700
Number of attempts: 3

Flodder-challenge - 1006 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

Best score: 27
Best player score: 28
Position: #44 / 294
Number of attempts: 2

Simple text editing with Vim - 11970 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #73 / 3505
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6338 entries

A simple case of removing unneeded code and fixing broken indentation.

Best score: 32
Best player score: 36
Position: #389 / 1562
Number of attempts: 2

Contributed Challenges

Before there was Farmville... - 95 entries

There was old MacDonald. For my toddler. The first Vim sing-a-long?

Here, piggy, piggy... - 75 entries

Youay owknay atwhay otay oday...

Word Blender - 129 entries

The insides of long words seem to have been run through the blender. Can you fix this famous tale, brave knight?

Tim Chase
Twitter: @gumnos

Christian geek; husband of a wonderful wife; father of two sweet kids [GPG: A8AC DE26 CB08 38D4 78E2 F9D3 AEA6 D898 A54C 94FF]

Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

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

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33236 entries

Swap values - 4513 entries

Prime Numbers - 340 entries

V to the i - 4717 entries

Word Blender - 129 entries

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 652 entries

Extract argument from function - 2289 entries

Search and Replace 0 - 4766 entries

Across-Down Flip - 53 entries

That hyphen - 2530 entries

Just the middle - 11318 entries

Interweave two blocks of text - 615 entries

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 930 entries

Return the cow - 71 entries

Basic renumbering - 5514 entries

Create Leading Zeros - 208 entries

Add to end of each line... kinda - 316 entries

Vice versa - 7687 entries

Free hyphen! - 156 entries

Vim's not included features - 183 entries

comments galore - 982 entries

Inner hyphens - 124 entries

Angular naming conventions - 287 entries

Manual SQL - 114 entries

Mirror Symmetry - 793 entries

Swap assigned value - 593 entries

Cartesian product - 218 entries

Change your calendar - 352 entries

Collect List - 4228 entries

VimGolfNight - 524 entries

camel riding - 765 entries

swap or reverse - 110 entries

readability - 310 entries

Space out the alphabet - 1610 entries

Sort with uniq OpenEmbedded package names - 33 entries

remove all lines in first part - 190 entries

Fill visual area - 82 entries

Shuffled numbers - 228 entries

Mute the second method of this script - 447 entries

Remove hard line breaks - 64 entries

Custom McCarthy sequence - 36 entries

Greek column realign - 42 entries

Winning streak - 124 entries

Sorting database text output - 213 entries

Simple Maths - 45 entries

I forgot quotes - 15880 entries

Shift down - 193 entries

learn vim in short time - 225 entries

Replace Parameter with Explicit Methods - 61 entries

vim1001 - 275 entries

Roman numerals - 68 entries

-a-b-c- - 3160 entries

Count both ways - 987 entries

Suffix sort - 244 entries

NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 243 entries

Change name of a variable - 169 entries

Lisp Condense - 438 entries

Gray area - 713 entries

NBCU Weekly Challenge - #0 - 124 entries

Winding path - 93 entries

Comparing scores - 94 entries

Neither Fizz nor Buzz - 226 entries

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1108 entries

Don't know what this is - 1961 entries

Where should I put the Newline? - 857 entries

Piphilology - 131 entries

Shuffle puzzle - 317 entries

Split the words - 356 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10584 entries

attr_aligner - 3408 entries

Ninjas Leaderboard - 84 entries

Counting in binary - 447 entries

Letter case trickery - 1588 entries

quotes inside quotes - 3105 entries

Top X - 191 entries

Change The Perspective - 36 entries

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 344 entries