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 - 33757 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: #564 / 7450
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4644 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #407 / 1275
  • Number of attempts: 6
One number per line - 18784 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1358 / 3878
  • Number of attempts: 12
V to the i - 4824 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #391 / 1899
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2154 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #332 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 4
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3614 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #60 / 1173
  • Number of attempts: 7
From argument to object - 1524 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: #43 / 463
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2922 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #101 / 706
  • Number of attempts: 4
Copy three lines - 2875 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #366 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 4
Extract argument from function - 2369 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #167 / 756
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 5007 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #456 / 1631
  • Number of attempts: 6
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #134 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 5
comment and uncomment code inline - 1151 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: 10
  • Position: #185 / 328
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 11500 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #698 / 4216
  • Number of attempts: 4
Make HTML List - 1061 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #68 / 274
  • Number of attempts: 5
Un"finnish"ed Work - 119 entries

Replace å by a, ä by a and ö by o.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #14 / 61
  • Number of attempts: 3
Todo list specification - 403 entries

The every item on the todo list must be done today. Modify the list to reflect that.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #42 / 181
  • Number of attempts: 2
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 1006 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: #129 / 383
  • Number of attempts: 4
Missing Library and a Typo - 920 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #54 / 219
  • Number of attempts: 5
JS notation to Immutable.js notation - 186 entries

Now Immutable.js made its way into many frontends. This challenge consists of a typical refactoring that many of us are facing now.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 46
  • Position: #53 / 63
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add to end of each line... kinda - 338 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: #80 / 175
  • Number of attempts: 5
Wrap text in quotes - 368 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #89 / 122
  • Number of attempts: 1
underscore_to_camelCase - 173 entries

Pointy haired boss decided we need to switch to camelCase. Let's get this over with.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #25 / 82
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vice versa - 7968 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #746 / 2144
  • Number of attempts: 6
Pretty multi-line bash - 235 entries

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

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #14 / 77
  • Number of attempts: 4
Free hyphen! - 176 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: #70 / 90
  • Number of attempts: 1
Paragraph sort - 450 entries

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

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #58 / 125
  • Number of attempts: 3
Sorting a glossary - 132 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: #49 / 82
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 1069 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #192 / 428
  • Number of attempts: 5
Mirrored text - 185 entries

backward and forward, and long enough to be challenging

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #51 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 2
lipsum lines - 278 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #55 / 95
  • Number of attempts: 1
Inner hyphens - 136 entries

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

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #61 / 82
  • Number of attempts: 2
Angular naming conventions - 326 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: 19
  • Position: #61 / 119
  • Number of attempts: 2
Replace and keep the case - 437 entries

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

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #36 / 118
  • Number of attempts: 7
Scrambled numbers - 807 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #96 / 184
  • Number of attempts: 9
Align commas - 1097 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: #39 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 7
Hello ${world} - 327 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #14 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 4
Generate a list of numbers - 299 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #91 / 141
  • Number of attempts: 1
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 672 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #141 / 210
  • Number of attempts: 6
Put the months in order - 979 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 53
  • Position: #138 / 165
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array transposition - 2430 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #64 / 451
  • Number of attempts: 8
Mirror Symmetry - 822 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #62 / 269
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap assigned value - 664 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #83 / 258
  • Number of attempts: 5
From A to B - 591 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #24 / 159
  • Number of attempts: 5
Collect List - 4308 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #231 / 1192
  • Number of attempts: 6
VimGolfNight - 575 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #322 / 352
  • Number of attempts: 2
camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #127 / 281
  • Number of attempts: 4
readability - 327 entries

Make the code readable by adding some spaces

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #126 / 152
  • Number of attempts: 1
Space out the alphabet - 1659 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #59 / 446
  • Number of attempts: 8
Fix the XML - 1039 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #168 / 290
  • Number of attempts: 2
Line 'em up! - 421 entries

It can be so hard to keep everything neatly lined-up. Somebody clearly hasn't bothered here. Tidy it up, please!

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #28 / 114
  • Number of attempts: 5
Mute the second method of this script - 455 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #113 / 239
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sorting database text output - 223 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: 26
  • Position: #67 / 83
  • Number of attempts: 1
Condensed Cases - 807 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: 17
  • Position: #201 / 248
  • Number of attempts: 1
Happy TvvO - 427 entries

Don’t forget the past, learn from it. Happy New Year.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #117 / 206
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 16051 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #432 / 4194
  • 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: #89 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 2
vim1001 - 307 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #82 / 110
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #170 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 8
Count both ways - 1022 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #117 / 354
  • Number of attempts: 4
NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 253 entries

Just testing.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #50 / 116
  • Number of attempts: 6
Lisp Condense - 460 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #156 / 158
  • Number of attempts: 1
120 Degrees - 505 entries

Rotate that triangle.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #97 / 146
  • Number of attempts: 1
Gray area - 747 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #93 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 3
Don't know what this is - 2024 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: 13
  • Position: #264 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 4
Two become one - 713 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: 35
  • Position: #160 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 1
Where should I put the Newline? - 883 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #177 / 438
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mess in revision history - 1210 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #208 / 254
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split the words - 372 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: 40
  • Position: #84 / 112
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10699 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #999 / 3695
  • Number of attempts: 8
attr_aligner - 3525 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #440 / 706
  • Number of attempts: 3
Counting in binary - 526 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #65 / 117
  • Number of attempts: 4
Letter case trickery - 1644 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: #150 / 520
  • Number of attempts: 7
quotes inside quotes - 3182 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: #239 / 1085
  • Number of attempts: 6
Words in parens - 12969 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1551 / 3970
  • Number of attempts: 5
Hole-in-one - 1024 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: 16
  • Position: #86 / 305
  • Number of attempts: 5
Define to require - 127 entries

When JSHint is enabled, there's a rule that doesn't let you have more than 6 arguments in a function, so the moment you need to add a 7th argument, you need to do a refactoring.

  • Best score: 62
  • Best player score: 90
  • Position: #33 / 50
  • Number of attempts: 2
Prefixes and suffixes - 637 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #94 / 202
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 425 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: #81 / 193
  • Number of attempts: 3
The name of the game - 678 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #214 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 3
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1616 entries

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

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #80 / 447
  • Number of attempts: 3
Stairs Indenting - 479 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #126 / 199
  • Number of attempts: 1
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1130 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #97 / 448
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vertical Limit - 2564 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #239 / 759
  • Number of attempts: 6
replacing each line of a block selection - 3005 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #635 / 779
  • Number of attempts: 1
Switch function arguments - 2152 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #129 / 667
  • Number of attempts: 3
Append semicolon after expressions - 1057 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #98 / 420
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reverse and double space - 500 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #106 / 199
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove semicolons after expressions - 663 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #88 / 264
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5085 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #902 / 1750
  • Number of attempts: 4
The meaning - 575 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #260 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make it more readable - 2009 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #485 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 2
Line Zipper - 477 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #192 / 216
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove dupes from array - 1358 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: 25
  • Position: #248 / 336
  • Number of attempts: 3
imports alignment (python) - 700 entries

Align as one import per line.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #124 / 198
  • Number of attempts: 6
Numbering a List - 1939 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #347 / 655
  • Number of attempts: 2
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1258 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: #171 / 409
  • Number of attempts: 3
Assignment Alignment - 885 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #40 / 221
  • Number of attempts: 2
Shebangs for all - 2046 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: 14
  • Position: #237 / 522
  • Number of attempts: 8
A Simple One - 1064 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: #436 / 670
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reverse Simple Deletion - 857 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #328 / 461
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment, increment, increment.... - 701 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #334 / 413
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sorting paragraphs - 552 entries

Order the paragraphs correctly, per prefixed index

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #109 / 165
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hatsuyume - 548 entries

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

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #57 / 189
  • Number of attempts: 1
The Cake is a Lie - 1374 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #221 / 534
  • Number of attempts: 4
Context insensitive completion 0 - 590 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: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #96 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 3
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 512 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #127 / 248
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 1070 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #290 / 348
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat some Python - 627 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #33 / 240
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat most common surnames - 755 entries

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

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #82 / 217
  • Number of attempts: 8
Change the content of a string - 1647 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #309 / 608
  • Number of attempts: 4
Sort and add attributes - 1501 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #373 / 582
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1649 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #105 / 434
  • Number of attempts: 4
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3793 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #553 / 814
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 13095 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #2520 / 3767
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7230 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 44
  • Position: #1139 / 1779
  • Number of attempts: 1
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entered into 116 challenges

contributed 0 challenges