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

Contribute to keyboard mashing - 890 entries

Speak in tongues

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #156 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33647 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: 31
  • Position: #5604 / 7425
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4627 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #1174 / 1270
  • Number of attempts: 2
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6319 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #917 / 1540
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 18749 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1237 / 3867
  • Number of attempts: 2
TAR archive pretty print - 31 entries

Will you use isk ?

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #12 / 13
  • Number of attempts: 2
citizen_hacks_2019_challenge2 - 195 entries

For the Citizen Hacks 2019 Vim competition.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #81 / 102
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values inside brackets - 2500 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #427 / 580
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4810 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1340 / 1896
  • Number of attempts: 2
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2882 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #339 / 852
  • Number of attempts: 3
Refactor typescript arrow function type - 323 entries

Make arrow function type less verbose and easier to read

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #48 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add string initializers to an enum - 872 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #147 / 258
  • Number of attempts: 1
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1214 entries

Convert strings in SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case. Examples: EMPLOYEE_NAME -> Employee Name REVENUE_YEAR_TO_DATE -> Revenue Year To Date SALARY -> Salary

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #171 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 45
  • Position: #97 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add semicolons - 10872 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #2220 / 3067
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 2144 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #599 / 634
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 3831 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #709 / 867
  • Number of attempts: 1
My cafe needs a new menu - 31 entries

Help! My cafe needs a new menu and I've only got this plain-text file from the kitchen. In order to get it printed, I need to transform it into a markdown file with; headings for each type of item, prices on each menu item, dietary options and a key down the bottom.

  • Best score: 126
  • Best player score: 189
  • Position: #8 / 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7909 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #902 / 1878
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 24
  • Position: #294 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 28
  • Position: #593 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #218 / 753
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 540 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: #75 / 129
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: #89 / 166
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 11464 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2761 / 4202
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1836 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #514 / 588
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5673 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #770 / 1267
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 16
  • Position: #203 / 291
  • Number of attempts: 4
Order and join - 983 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #242 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 1045 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #270 / 424
  • Number of attempts: 3
Create bison tokens - 47 entries

Create tokens for bison out of a known list of words

  • Best score: 85
  • Best player score: 93
  • Position: #10 / 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Line under headers - 2045 entries

Put a line under each header, and remove the other markdown formatting.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #206 / 504
  • Number of attempts: 4
simple format (3) - 86 entries

reverse two column values!

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 52
  • Position: #15 / 24
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 34
  • Position: #177 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 1
unknown command - 167 entries

I want change 5 words

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #80 / 87
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple format (2) - 335 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #46 / 70
  • Number of attempts: 6
Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #292 / 444
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 15997 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #811 / 4184
  • Number of attempts: 9
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #377 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 13
  • Position: #270 / 585
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10672 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1341 / 3685
  • Number of attempts: 3
attr_aligner - 3520 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #577 / 702
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 3165 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: #306 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 12939 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #3309 / 3964
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array Transposition - 201 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 54
  • Position: #46 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 1
calculations - 312 entries

Complete these (weird) calculations.

  • Best score: 38
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #39 / 68
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vertical Limit - 2540 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #555 / 755
  • Number of attempts: 3
Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #241 / 419
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1428 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 1
82 bottles of beer on the wall - 313 entries

Take them down. (sorry, only 82 bottles because the problem size is limited!)

  • Best score: 106
  • Best player score: 132
  • Position: #82 / 146
  • Number of attempts: 6
Increment, increment, increment.... - 689 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #353 / 409
  • Number of attempts: 2
Context insensitive completion 0 - 577 entries

Buried in the lines you're not supposed to add is the line "Add this line!" Add that line to the top of the file.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #207 / 246
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple text editing with Vim - 12856 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #2652 / 3707
  • Number of attempts: 1

Contributed Challenges

Santa's naughty / nice list - 90 entries

Christmas is here and Santa hasn't decided who's naughty or nice yet. He's given a list of names to his programmer friend to quickly split the children into naughty and nice. Hint: There's a hidden pattern that might be familiar.

My cafe needs a new menu - 31 entries

Help! My cafe needs a new menu and I've only got this plain-text file from the kitchen. In order to get it printed, I need to transform it into a markdown file with; headings for each type of item, prices on each menu item, dietary options and a key down the bottom.

Bennett
Twitter:

Software Engineer working with video at Clipchamp. I like Rust 🦀, JavaScript 😅 and Personal Knowledge Management 📚

entered into 53 challenges

contributed 2 challenges