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: #1483 / 7517
  • Number of attempts: 9
Swap values - 4707 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #248 / 1294
  • Number of attempts: 3
One number per line - 18903 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #913 / 3904
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values inside brackets - 2551 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #154 / 594
  • Number of attempts: 6
V to the i - 4885 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #596 / 1915
  • Number of attempts: 2
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2931 entries

Remove identical text at the beginning of several lines and the closing parenthesis.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #288 / 867
  • Number of attempts: 4
Swap the operands under comparison - 325 entries

Swap the operands under comparison to prevent null pointer exception (at least in java)

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #39 / 108
  • Number of attempts: 4
Split line with dots - 2175 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #230 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 6
Com(m)a Trouble - 3993 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #211 / 910
  • Number of attempts: 12
multiple cursor alternative - 1592 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: 20
  • Position: #158 / 388
  • Number of attempts: 5
From argument to object - 1566 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: #102 / 471
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2951 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #22 / 712
  • Number of attempts: 8
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: 13
  • Position: #104 / 647
  • Number of attempts: 6
Extract argument from function - 2429 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #720 / 773
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 5162 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #538 / 1675
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 584 entries

Originally asked as question on reddit by kpthunder: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/9fvsro/what_is_the_most_efficient_way_to_go_about/

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #46 / 135
  • Number of attempts: 6
Number Sort - 328 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: #76 / 173
  • Number of attempts: 4
That hyphen - 2649 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #188 / 712
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 1182 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: #104 / 332
  • Number of attempts: 5
Just the middle - 11620 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #1156 / 4258
  • Number of attempts: 7
Team names - 1861 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #183 / 596
  • Number of attempts: 6
Missing Library and a Typo - 954 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: #81 / 223
  • Number of attempts: 5
Basic renumbering - 5737 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #137 / 1281
  • Number of attempts: 16
Adam's challenge - 1043 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: #70 / 281
  • Number of attempts: 6
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 886 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: #119 / 297
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vice versa - 8021 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #403 / 2158
  • Number of attempts: 7
Array transposition - 2481 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #129 / 461
  • Number of attempts: 11
convert yml into java pojo field - 879 entries

How fast vim can create fields for java pojo i.e class declaration referring to a (simple) yml file

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #36 / 233
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4342 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #388 / 1200
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 16239 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #788 / 4225
  • Number of attempts: 12
-a-b-c- - 3242 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #692 / 1147
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10758 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1311 / 3717
  • Number of attempts: 3
attr_aligner - 3568 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #449 / 711
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: #300 / 1094
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 13054 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #938 / 3991
  • Number of attempts: 5
Array Transposition - 216 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #28 / 59
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5128 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #521 / 1764
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 13
  • Position: #550 / 3907
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7694 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #415 / 1893
  • Number of attempts: 5
Benjamin Kiesl
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entered into 39 challenges

contributed 0 challenges