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 - 33385 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: 28
  • Position: #4211 / 7364
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4543 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #427 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 5
V to the i - 4751 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #494 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add semicolons - 10792 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1628 / 3044
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 3675 entries

Someone was real stupid when placing his commas. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #342 / 827
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: #8 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 2
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #475 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 1
Copy three lines - 2840 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #280 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 11
Extract argument from function - 2314 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #188 / 744
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 4792 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #490 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: #28 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 4
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2436 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 4
Basic renumbering - 5587 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 46
  • Position: #1249 / 1258
  • Number of attempts: 1
create arrows in a list - 106 entries

Add arrow at same distance

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #14 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 2
Adam's challenge - 957 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: 24
  • Position: #223 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #74 / 287
  • Number of attempts: 3
Nesting SASS - 261 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #26 / 93
  • 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: #60 / 137
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7805 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #1986 / 2101
  • Number of attempts: 1
Order and join - 956 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #35 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 4
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #229 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: #61 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 8
Collect List - 4264 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #962 / 1186
  • Number of attempts: 3
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #385 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #3200 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 1
-a-b-c- - 3176 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #209 / 1129
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 12
  • Position: #206 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 4
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10628 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2191 / 3667
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 3125 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: #271 / 1072
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12858 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1581 / 3946
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5036 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #472 / 1736
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 12290 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1563 / 3581
  • Number of attempts: 3
David Gustavsson
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entered into 32 challenges

contributed 0 challenges