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 - 33757 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: #1567 / 7450
  • Number of attempts: 9
Swap values - 4644 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #748 / 1275
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 18780 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1485 / 3877
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4824 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #611 / 1899
  • Number of attempts: 3
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2900 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #74 / 859
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add semicolons - 10889 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #104 / 3076
  • Number of attempts: 2
Bad Copy Syntax - 2050 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #386 / 533
  • Number of attempts: 2
Com(m)a Trouble - 3890 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #5 / 882
  • Number of attempts: 8
Box it - 7939 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #999 / 1885
  • Number of attempts: 4
multiple cursor alternative - 1542 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: #66 / 384
  • Number of attempts: 6
From argument to object - 1524 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: #306 / 463
  • Number of attempts: 1
Every other line - 2922 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #236 / 706
  • Number of attempts: 6
Extract argument from function - 2369 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #216 / 756
  • Number of attempts: 10
Number Sort - 317 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: #88 / 169
  • Number of attempts: 4
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #250 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 5
comment and uncomment code inline - 1151 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: #109 / 328
  • Number of attempts: 6
Just the middle - 11500 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2882 / 4216
  • Number of attempts: 3
Adam's challenge - 1008 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: 41
  • Position: #273 / 275
  • Number of attempts: 1
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 873 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: #124 / 294
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vice versa - 7968 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1093 / 2144
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 1069 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #269 / 428
  • Number of attempts: 2
One to Ten - 2234 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: #142 / 679
  • Number of attempts: 1
Put the months in order - 978 entries

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

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 46
  • Position: #103 / 164
  • Number of attempts: 2
unknown command - 168 entries

I want change 5 words

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #22 / 88
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 4308 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1075 / 1192
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 16051 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #826 / 4194
  • Number of attempts: 10
Don't know what this is - 2024 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: #107 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 6
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10699 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1352 / 3695
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 12969 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1008 / 3970
  • Number of attempts: 8
abcd > a b c d - 298 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #172 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 29
  • Position: #356 / 480
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vertical Limit - 2564 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #739 / 759
  • Number of attempts: 1
replacing each line of a block selection - 3005 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #281 / 779
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5085 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #1227 / 1750
  • Number of attempts: 4
Generate English Alphabets - 498 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 53
  • Position: #194 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 13092 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #556 / 3765
  • Number of attempts: 8
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entered into 36 challenges

contributed 0 challenges