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

Contribute to keyboard mashing - 905 entries

Speak in tongues

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #159 / 275
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33964 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: #5644 / 7500
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4701 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #1189 / 1290
  • Number of attempts: 2
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6388 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #928 / 1559
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 18889 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1244 / 3898
  • Number of attempts: 2
TAR archive pretty print - 38 entries

Will you use isk ?

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #13 / 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
citizen_hacks_2019_challenge2 - 204 entries

For the Citizen Hacks 2019 Vim competition.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #84 / 105
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values inside brackets - 2545 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #437 / 591
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4853 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1347 / 1909
  • Number of attempts: 2
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2927 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #345 / 865
  • Number of attempts: 3
Refactor typescript arrow function type - 348 entries

Make arrow function type less verbose and easier to read

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #51 / 74
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add string initializers to an enum - 899 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #152 / 264
  • Number of attempts: 1
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1269 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: #179 / 264
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap the operands under comparison - 318 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 45
  • Position: #102 / 106
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add semicolons - 10932 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #2239 / 3091
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 2174 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #603 / 638
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 3988 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #742 / 908
  • Number of attempts: 1
My cafe needs a new menu - 36 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: #9 / 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7997 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #912 / 1897
  • Number of attempts: 3
multiple cursor alternative - 1556 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: #299 / 386
  • Number of attempts: 3
Copy three lines - 2909 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #597 / 644
  • Number of attempts: 2
Extract argument from function - 2397 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #218 / 766
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 557 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: #77 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 4
Number Sort - 321 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 / 171
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 11572 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2772 / 4240
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1858 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #520 / 594
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5731 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #778 / 1277
  • Number of attempts: 2
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 884 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: #206 / 296
  • Number of attempts: 4
Order and join - 1009 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #246 / 263
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 1079 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #270 / 431
  • Number of attempts: 3
Create bison tokens - 57 entries

Create tokens for bison out of a known list of words

  • Best score: 85
  • Best player score: 93
  • Position: #11 / 20
  • Number of attempts: 1
Line under headers - 2093 entries

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

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #211 / 514
  • Number of attempts: 4
simple format (3) - 93 entries

reverse two column values!

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 52
  • Position: #16 / 25
  • Number of attempts: 4
convert yml into java pojo field - 873 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: #181 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 1
unknown command - 175 entries

I want change 5 words

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #83 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple format (2) - 342 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #47 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 6
Space out the alphabet - 1687 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #295 / 452
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 16176 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #811 / 4216
  • Number of attempts: 9
-a-b-c- - 3233 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #378 / 1143
  • Number of attempts: 4
Don't know what this is - 2040 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: #272 / 590
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10748 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1341 / 3711
  • Number of attempts: 3
attr_aligner - 3565 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #581 / 709
  • Number of attempts: 2
quotes inside quotes - 3195 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 / 1089
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 13024 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #3324 / 3983
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array Transposition - 215 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 54
  • Position: #48 / 58
  • Number of attempts: 1
calculations - 321 entries

Complete these (weird) calculations.

  • Best score: 38
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #40 / 70
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vertical Limit - 2624 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #566 / 774
  • Number of attempts: 3
Append semicolon after expressions - 1067 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #242 / 423
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5110 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1436 / 1758
  • Number of attempts: 1
82 bottles of beer on the wall - 314 entries

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

  • Best score: 106
  • Best player score: 132
  • Position: #82 / 147
  • Number of attempts: 6
Increment, increment, increment.... - 703 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #357 / 414
  • Number of attempts: 2
Context insensitive completion 0 - 596 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: #212 / 252
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple text editing with Vim - 13509 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #2755 / 3874
  • Number of attempts: 1

Contributed Challenges

Santa's naughty / nice list - 104 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 - 36 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