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 - 33353 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: #1539 / 7358
  • Number of attempts: 10
Swap values - 4535 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #461 / 1255
  • Number of attempts: 4
One number per line - 18613 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #1833 / 3841
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values inside brackets - 2464 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #325 / 569
  • Number of attempts: 6
V to the i - 4743 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #603 / 1878
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #312 / 840
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 19
  • Position: #14 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 7
Com(m)a Trouble - 3654 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #206 / 821
  • Number of attempts: 9
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: 18
  • Position: #239 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #284 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 6
Copy three lines - 2839 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #234 / 634
  • Number of attempts: 4
Array propagate - 319 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #15 / 115
  • Number of attempts: 3
Extract argument from function - 2308 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #214 / 742
  • Number of attempts: 5
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #542 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 538 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: 36
  • Position: #71 / 127
  • 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: 9
  • Position: #80 / 162
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2554 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #191 / 694
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: #108 / 314
  • Number of attempts: 4
Just the middle - 11346 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #1165 / 4160
  • Number of attempts: 3
Team names - 1805 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #192 / 581
  • Number of attempts: 4
Make HTML List - 1039 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #75 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 21
  • Position: #37 / 131
  • Number of attempts: 10
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: #66 / 176
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 257 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #34 / 138
  • Number of attempts: 3
Stairstep digits - 376 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #37 / 141
  • Number of attempts: 3
Missing Library and a Typo - 856 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: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #77 / 209
  • Number of attempts: 5
Basic renumbering - 5584 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #141 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 13
Simple addition - 307 entries

The right side of the equation is already there. We just need the left one now.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #41 / 116
  • Number of attempts: 2
Create a table - 325 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #33 / 104
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #122 / 287
  • Number of attempts: 5
Nesting SASS - 261 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #57 / 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: #67 / 137
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7778 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #415 / 2095
  • Number of attempts: 8
C Reformatting - 688 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #45 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 8
Paragraph sort - 430 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #66 / 123
  • Number of attempts: 5
Order and join - 948 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #57 / 254
  • Number of attempts: 5
Paragraph breaks - 505 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #77 / 165
  • Number of attempts: 3
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #266 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 5
Scrambled numbers - 779 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #39 / 182
  • 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: #76 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 8
Hello ${world} - 299 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #25 / 94
  • Number of attempts: 4
Array transposition - 2378 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #7 / 443
  • Number of attempts: 9
convert yml into java pojo field - 829 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: #45 / 223
  • Number of attempts: 6
Mirror Symmetry - 798 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #114 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 5
From A to B - 564 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #90 / 155
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 4261 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #392 / 1185
  • Number of attempts: 6
camel riding - 769 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #65 / 274
  • Number of attempts: 4
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #118 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fix the XML - 996 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #54 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 6
Condensed Cases - 788 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #93 / 242
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 15922 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #2257 / 4159
  • Number of attempts: 5
-a-b-c- - 3170 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #373 / 1127
  • Number of attempts: 3
Count both ways - 997 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #48 / 350
  • Number of attempts: 4
Gray area - 724 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #109 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 5
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1120 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #93 / 293
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: #103 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 6
Two become one - 710 entries

We have two c arrays and want to make one two dimensional out of it. Can we do that?

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #41 / 205
  • Number of attempts: 5
Where should I put the Newline? - 859 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #389 / 430
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mess in revision history - 1157 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #54 / 245
  • Number of attempts: 8
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10616 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1323 / 3663
  • Number of attempts: 4
attr_aligner - 3444 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #149 / 692
  • Number of attempts: 10
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: 10
  • Position: #160 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 4
quotes inside quotes - 3124 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: #304 / 1071
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12848 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #929 / 3943
  • Number of attempts: 5
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1569 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #235 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 6
Array Transposition - 177 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #19 / 53
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 25
  • Position: #184 / 473
  • Number of attempts: 6
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1084 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #306 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vertical Limit - 2436 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #295 / 735
  • Number of attempts: 3
Exchanging Quotes - 820 entries

Sometimes you need to exchange a choice of quotes in some code.

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #72 / 224
  • Number of attempts: 4
replacing each line of a block selection - 2925 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #201 / 764
  • Number of attempts: 9
Switch function arguments - 2064 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #160 / 647
  • Number of attempts: 3
Append semicolon after expressions - 1002 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #234 / 401
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5028 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #943 / 1734
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make it more readable - 1952 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #92 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 5
Numbering a List - 1855 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #34 / 638
  • Number of attempts: 1
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1216 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #87 / 398
  • Number of attempts: 4
Shebangs for all - 1904 entries

We've all seen or used a shebang once or twice. Ditch the specific paths and leave just a dynamic Ruby and Python bath behind.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #317 / 497
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Cake is a Lie - 1284 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #244 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make Fancy Header - 1007 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #196 / 337
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1457 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #177 / 552
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sort and add attributes - 1321 entries

Sort the states and add the attribute country to each record.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #345 / 527
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1348 entries

Get the sentence back in the proper order, remove duplicate lines, and then combine the separate lines into one.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #106 / 379
  • Number of attempts: 2
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3288 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #120 / 728
  • Number of attempts: 11
Simple text editing with Vim - 12230 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1678 / 3567
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6511 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #540 / 1602
  • Number of attempts: 3
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entered into 86 challenges

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