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: 22
  • Position: #1499 / 7364
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values - 4543 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #1068 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 18616 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #2706 / 3842
  • Number of attempts: 2
Swap values inside brackets - 2464 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #414 / 569
  • Number of attempts: 1
V to the i - 4751 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #597 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 5
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2845 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #297 / 840
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap the operands under comparison - 270 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #84 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 3668 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #504 / 826
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 23
  • Position: #272 / 376
  • Number of attempts: 1
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #644 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 19
  • Position: #376 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 2
Number Sort - 303 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: 10
  • Position: #146 / 162
  • Number of attempts: 1
That hyphen - 2556 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #607 / 695
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #105 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 7
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2728 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1805 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #484 / 581
  • Number of attempts: 1
For all cases. - 141 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #60 / 100
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5587 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #1052 / 1258
  • Number of attempts: 1
Interactive git rebase changing commands - 161 entries

How to change the action of some commits in git rebase dialog.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #77 / 77
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #71 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 8
replace 2nd column blanks with values in same column if blank - 231 entries

Where ,SOMELOGB and ,SOMELOGC replaces each /r carriage return if 2nd column is blank. The replace only happens if 2nd column is blank though and should replace up to the non blank row.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #67 / 81
  • Number of attempts: 1
Fun With The Diagonal - 103 entries

change the lowercase characters on the main diagonal to uppercase

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #59 / 79
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7803 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #409 / 2100
  • Number of attempts: 5
Convert pasted text into Markdown - 21 entries

I often need to copy/paste text into Markdown files. The challenge here is to wrap the lines in a way that prefers breaks after periods, commas, or other logical demarcations. There should be no spaces at the beginning of a line.

  • Best score: 47
  • Best player score: 90
  • Position: #9 / 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sort files from hosts - 179 entries

Resume files by host. I hope you enjoy with this challenge

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #65 / 74
  • Number of attempts: 2
Order and join - 956 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #212 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #263 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 2
Angular naming conventions - 301 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: 21
  • Position: #72 / 114
  • Number of attempts: 1
Replace and keep the case - 407 entries

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

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #103 / 115
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 779 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #163 / 182
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 17
  • Position: #170 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 1
A grid of punctuation - 124 entries

Create a checkerboard of = and - in an 80×24 grid!

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #49 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 1
Generate a list of numbers - 283 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #119 / 136
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 2165 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #415 / 662
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array transposition - 2378 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #384 / 443
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4264 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #985 / 1186
  • Number of attempts: 2
Fix the XML - 996 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #196 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 2
Conway sequence - 23 entries

Generate the the first fifteen numbers. See here for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-and-say_sequence

  • Best score: 43
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #14 / 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #2253 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3176 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #845 / 1129
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10624 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1316 / 3666
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 9
  • Position: #23 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 6
Words in parens - 12854 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #2960 / 3945
  • Number of attempts: 1
Switch function arguments - 2078 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #157 / 651
  • Number of attempts: 6
switch variable - 5031 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1615 / 1735
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple text editing with Vim - 12281 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1675 / 3580
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sxcy
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entered into 46 challenges

contributed 0 challenges