Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

Changelog, Rules & FAQ, updates: @vimgolf, RSS.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

$ 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: #1556 / 7364
  • Number of attempts: 9
Swap values - 4543 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #620 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 6
One number per line - 18616 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #1834 / 3842
  • Number of attempts: 6
Swap values inside brackets - 2464 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #459 / 569
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4751 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1346 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 15
  • Position: #514 / 840
  • Number of attempts: 9
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: 35
  • Position: #88 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 2125 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #229 / 630
  • Number of attempts: 5
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3537 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #522 / 1144
  • 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: 24
  • Position: #652 / 826
  • Number of attempts: 6
Box it - 7827 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #1508 / 1864
  • Number of attempts: 2
Cool or not? - 793 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #81 / 226
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2886 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #502 / 700
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 21
  • Position: #461 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1002 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 38
  • Position: #91 / 127
  • 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: #81 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2556 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #192 / 695
  • Number of attempts: 6
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2748 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1805 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #197 / 581
  • Number of attempts: 3
Basic renumbering - 5587 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #1053 / 1258
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vice versa - 7803 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #1350 / 2100
  • Number of attempts: 4
Order and join - 956 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #58 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 9
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #360 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 16
  • Position: #138 / 241
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: 12
  • Position: #6 / 662
  • Number of attempts: 6
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 639 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #84 / 203
  • Number of attempts: 5
Increment each number - 977 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #122 / 242
  • Number of attempts: 2
simple format (3) - 72 entries

reverse two column values!

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 57
  • Position: #17 / 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Delete to the end of the current line - 784 entries

Delete to the end of the current line, but keep the character under the cursor.

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #265 / 384
  • Number of attempts: 3
Put the months in order - 932 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 48
  • Position: #110 / 158
  • Number of attempts: 7
move titles next to url, in quotes - 504 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #69 / 135
  • Number of attempts: 5
Array transposition - 2378 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #308 / 443
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple format (2) - 334 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #33 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 6
Collect List - 4264 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #732 / 1186
  • Number of attempts: 6
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #332 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 4
Remove hard line breaks - 67 entries

Text files with Hard breaks are not good for e-readers. We need remove all hard line breaks and have long lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #27 / 32
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple Maths - 45 entries

Not much to say, discover by yourself!

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #13 / 25
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1795 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 7
-a-b-c- - 3176 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #685 / 1129
  • Number of attempts: 2
Refactor static member invocation - 198 entries

Someone used a static method. Refactor the method into a static import while fixing the assertion.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #42 / 63
  • Number of attempts: 11
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1120 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #149 / 293
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: 16
  • Position: #523 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10624 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2343 / 3666
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 16
  • Position: #646 / 1072
  • Number of attempts: 2
Words in parens - 12854 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2447 / 3945
  • 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: 27
  • Position: #261 / 473
  • Number of attempts: 4
replacing each line of a block selection - 2946 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #401 / 767
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5031 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #1216 / 1735
  • Number of attempts: 7
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3339 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #300 / 736
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: #1683 / 3580
  • Number of attempts: 8
PJ Frazer
Twitter:

entered into 51 challenges

contributed 0 challenges