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

Reformat symbols in list - 1470 entries

Saw this in some lecture, easy reformatting using multiple cursor in VS Code

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #65 / 323
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 22
  • Position: #1259 / 7364
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values - 4543 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #211 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 4
One number per line - 18616 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1448 / 3842
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4751 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1274 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 4
multiple cursor alternative - 1474 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #209 / 376
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: #80 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #219 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 8
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: 13
  • Position: #87 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 10
Array propagate - 319 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #5 / 115
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: #197 / 744
  • Number of attempts: 2
Number Sort - 305 entries

sort the list of newline-separated numbers incrementally. Numbers are in the range 1 to 1000, with 500 missing

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #20 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2556 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #358 / 695
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #87 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 8
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #1055 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 2
Learn some german verbs - 531 entries

The list needs to be structured so we can print in verbatim and feel ok about how it looks.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #87 / 131
  • Number of attempts: 4
Todo list specification - 385 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: #61 / 176
  • Number of attempts: 4
Subnetting - 111 entries

Split up the IP addresses in the right way.

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #3 / 36
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 257 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #20 / 138
  • Number of attempts: 3
Basic renumbering - 5587 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #96 / 1258
  • Number of attempts: 12
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: 18
  • Position: #57 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: #105 / 287
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vice versa - 7805 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #346 / 2101
  • Number of attempts: 9
C Reformatting - 688 entries

You may use Visual mode... or not. #uppercase

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #14 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 9
Order and join - 956 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #47 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 10
Scrambled numbers - 779 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #33 / 182
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: #65 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 5
Array transposition - 2378 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #360 / 443
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4264 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #350 / 1186
  • Number of attempts: 6
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #114 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 10
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #701 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 10
-a-b-c- - 3176 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #224 / 1129
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #92 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 8
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10628 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2267 / 3667
  • Number of attempts: 1
Letter case trickery - 1594 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: 12
  • Position: #348 / 511
  • 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: #286 / 1072
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 12858 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #855 / 3946
  • Number of attempts: 3
Saving the hashes(#) - 1992 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: 27
  • Position: #258 / 473
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vertical Limit - 2448 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #69 / 738
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2947 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #102 / 768
  • Number of attempts: 10
Switch function arguments - 2082 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #148 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5036 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #498 / 1736
  • Number of attempts: 2
Replacing some words - 419 entries

How fast could it be?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #29 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 6
Make it more readable - 1952 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #88 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 4
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3339 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #12 / 736
  • Number of attempts: 14
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: 13
  • Position: #513 / 3581
  • Number of attempts: 3
GreenPinguin
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entered into 46 challenges

contributed 0 challenges