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 - 33614 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: #1447 / 7418
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4616 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #612 / 1268
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 18725 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1478 / 3862
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values inside brackets - 2493 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #135 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 7
V to the i - 4802 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #586 / 1893
  • Number of attempts: 3
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2877 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #113 / 850
  • Number of attempts: 6
Swap the operands under comparison - 297 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #8 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 7
Add semicolons - 10851 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1052 / 3063
  • Number of attempts: 2
Com(m)a Trouble - 3815 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #458 / 864
  • Number of attempts: 2
multiple cursor alternative - 1519 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: 19
  • Position: #61 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 5
From argument to object - 1508 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: 19
  • Position: #301 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2910 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #284 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 4
Copy three lines - 2872 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #102 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 5
Extract argument from function - 2357 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #206 / 753
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 4989 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #530 / 1624
  • Number of attempts: 3
Number Sort - 314 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: #67 / 166
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #185 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 1122 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: #100 / 322
  • Number of attempts: 5
Just the middle - 11454 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #1146 / 4197
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1836 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #175 / 588
  • Number of attempts: 2
Learn some german verbs - 533 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: 21
  • Position: #35 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 8
Missing Library and a Typo - 887 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: #74 / 213
  • Number of attempts: 6
Basic renumbering - 5648 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #595 / 1264
  • Number of attempts: 1
Adam's challenge - 984 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: #67 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 865 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: #116 / 291
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7904 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #1350 / 2126
  • Number of attempts: 2
Order and join - 983 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #54 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 6
comments galore - 1045 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #255 / 424
  • Number of attempts: 3
Align commas - 1095 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: #73 / 246
  • Number of attempts: 10
Array transposition - 2416 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #203 / 447
  • Number of attempts: 9
convert yml into java pojo field - 857 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: 30
  • Position: #99 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 4298 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #592 / 1190
  • Number of attempts: 4
Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #256 / 444
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15980 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1784 / 4179
  • Number of attempts: 6
-a-b-c- - 3213 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #239 / 1137
  • Number of attempts: 3
Don't know what this is - 2022 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: #218 / 585
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10663 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1299 / 3683
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 3159 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: 16
  • Position: #647 / 1078
  • Number of attempts: 3
Words in parens - 12930 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #912 / 3962
  • Number of attempts: 3
Array Transposition - 201 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #24 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 5
Saving the hashes(#) - 2063 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: 22
  • Position: #131 / 480
  • Number of attempts: 9
Vertical Limit - 2538 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #303 / 754
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2999 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #105 / 777
  • Number of attempts: 9
Switch function arguments - 2139 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #510 / 663
  • Number of attempts: 2
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #941 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 2
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3647 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #534 / 784
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple text editing with Vim - 12787 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1686 / 3688
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6968 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 50
  • Position: #1386 / 1702
  • Number of attempts: 2
Jeff
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entered into 48 challenges

contributed 0 challenges