VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Rearrange array to single level - 1620 entries

The goal is to flatten the array into a single list and remove any empty elements.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 22
Position: #90 / 270
Number of attempts: 2

Quicksort - 2055 entries

We need the numbers in the first row sorted as quickly as possible! Be careful not to disturb the data below the divider though: that must remain unchanged.

Best score: 6
Best player score: 8
Position: #174 / 456
Number of attempts: 8

EDN reformat - 1193 entries

The goal is to make the code more readable and concise while maintaining its functionality.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 21
Position: #95 / 169
Number of attempts: 15

Insert column data on Confluence-style table - 474 entries

Add ip addresses into new "IP" column based on the last digits from the "Server" column

Best score: 33
Best player score: 45
Position: #47 / 110
Number of attempts: 8

HS exam question - 1599 entries

Convert the data to a python dictionary

Best score: 47
Best player score: 61
Position: #127 / 419
Number of attempts: 6

Reformat symbols in list - 1635 entries

Saw this in some lecture, easy reformatting using multiple cursor in VS Code

Best score: 24
Best player score: 27
Position: #118 / 352
Number of attempts: 6

Fizzbuzz - 586 entries

type the first 100 lines of the fizzbuzz problem

Best score: 44
Best player score: 84
Position: #102 / 169
Number of attempts: 3

Substraction (bis) - 621 entries

Solve the equations (adapted from the original @Caek_'s challenge).

Best score: 21
Best player score: 27
Position: #45 / 115
Number of attempts: 10

Changing around text with citations - 340 entries

Based off of something I saw on reddit

Best score: 28
Best player score: 37
Position: #39 / 94
Number of attempts: 2

Many duplicates - 1460 entries

Quick and easy

Best score: 7
Best player score: 11
Position: #404 / 477
Number of attempts: 4

2 quick changes and a numbered list - 648 entries

The ascii will not be lost, but rather numbered in 4 digit blocks with leading zeros.

Best score: 37
Best player score: 37
Position: #2 / 155
Number of attempts: 14

delete swap - 1815 entries

delete all swap

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #69 / 566
Number of attempts: 4

Fix the shell script! - 2646 entries

Fix the shell script with the fewest keystrokes!

Best score: 26
Best player score: 28
Position: #144 / 614
Number of attempts: 6

Put a newline after every 10 lines in vim - 1668 entries

Goal is to put a newline after every 10 lines in vim.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 13
Position: #250 / 561
Number of attempts: 2

Java to JavaScript - 285 entries

Let convert some simple Java file to JavaScript!

Best score: 59
Best player score: 64
Position: #18 / 76
Number of attempts: 7

Wikitext headings to markdown - 1014 entries

Convert the wikitext headings to markdown.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 22
Position: #80 / 211
Number of attempts: 8

hello-world-vimgolf - 2510 entries

Simple number generation

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #62 / 716
Number of attempts: 12

Contribute to keyboard mashing - 900 entries

Speak in tongues

Best score: 17
Best player score: 18
Position: #86 / 273
Number of attempts: 3

Reordering Lorem Ipsum - 290 entries

Who even sorted this?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #7 / 66
Number of attempts: 10

Solve anagram with ASCII letters - 54 entries

ASCII created by TOIlet command

Best score: 46
Best player score: 81
Position: #12 / 18
Number of attempts: 3

Fill in the chess board - 959 entries

Fill in the name of each square using its file (a-h) and rank (1-8).

Best score: 19
Best player score: 42
Position: #123 / 185
Number of attempts: 5

Learn to ask for :help - 587 entries

Learn to use the help to reduce your strokes...

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #27 / 130
Number of attempts: 9

Plotting some variables in python - 1673 entries

4 sets of (x,y) variables to plot. Just increment the numbers! Well, let's change the colors of the lines as well. Oh and we meant to plot the absolute values of course.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 37
Position: #99 / 350
Number of attempts: 6

Transpose a python matrix - 873 entries

Rotate the matrix in 90 degrees.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 71
Position: #112 / 138
Number of attempts: 2

Lowercase first characters - 490 entries

This is the (abridged) input for Day 3 in Advent of Code 2019. The output is a format more suitable for Prolog programming: the two lines of input become two lists of pairs, joined together in a wires functor.

Best score: 33
Best player score: 44
Position: #126 / 184
Number of attempts: 3

Migrated to Postgres! - 338 entries

Celebration completion of this project. https://github.com/igrigorik/vimgolf/pull/322

Best score: 26
Best player score: 29
Position: #56 / 133
Number of attempts: 4

simple replacements - 1833 entries

The goal is to see the replacement commands in action.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #35 / 396
Number of attempts: 8

Inverting Lines - 1932 entries

A simple challenge to invert all lines, except the first.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #123 / 518
Number of attempts: 9

HS Final exam vimgolf - 913 entries

Change the initial file to a single line containing all names comma-separated with numbers inside parentheses.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 28
Position: #143 / 241
Number of attempts: 7

Extend shell script - 138 entries

Just add some more stuff

Best score: 37
Best player score: 51
Position: #23 / 48
Number of attempts: 8

Python: Def to Lambda - 460 entries

LAMBDA!!!

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #11 / 157
Number of attempts: 5

Turn the x - 328 entries

Turn the x to a +

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #40 / 82
Number of attempts: 11

Rural Post - 4572 entries

Simple challenge to remove all but the post code on each line

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #220 / 1116
Number of attempts: 7

Satisfy the go linter - 2468 entries

You just came up with this briliant go vars package. But dang, you forgot to add comments to the exported variables. Can you add a comment over each variable with a TODO-placeholder?

Best score: 20
Best player score: 25
Position: #266 / 491
Number of attempts: 8

Add quotes to ansible playbook - 1030 entries

You created an ansible playbook, but forgot to add quotes. Can you fix it?

Best score: 8
Best player score: 9
Position: #124 / 325
Number of attempts: 4

Data reformat - 304 entries

Reformat this copy-paste data! #csv

Best score: 36
Best player score: 54
Position: #40 / 66
Number of attempts: 2

xrandr outputs and dashes - 725 entries

uh oh, different video drivers identify display outputs with more dashes. Quick, need to change this xrandr script!

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #26 / 226
Number of attempts: 4

From a Thunderlink to a Markdown link - 783 entries

ThunderLinks are durable hyperlinks to specific email messages generated from Thunderbird in HTML format. Leverage the power of vim to make them suitable for a markdown-formatted file.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 21
Position: #87 / 174
Number of attempts: 11

Capitalize the Names - 412 entries

I want to capitalize the names in quotes, but just the people's names, not the file names.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 36
Position: #80 / 98
Number of attempts: 6

Yo To Hello - 1152 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

Best score: 8
Best player score: 10
Position: #94 / 534
Number of attempts: 1

Replace pattern with 1, 2, 3, ... on each line - 1151 entries

For each line replace a search pattern (in this case $) with numbers starting at 1 and then increasing by 1 for each replaced match. a$b$c$ -> a0b1c2

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #14 / 233
Number of attempts: 10

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33843 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: #1761 / 7469
Number of attempts: 19

Hogwarts Email Sorting - 944 entries

Given a list of emails, get the students full name and their associated house.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 21
Position: #65 / 267
Number of attempts: 5

Swap values - 4656 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #305 / 1281
Number of attempts: 10

prepend * to every non-blank line - 6365 entries

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

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #10 / 1554
Number of attempts: 5

One number per line - 18830 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 21
Position: #2509 / 3888
Number of attempts: 5

Quote modules - 1095 entries

Complete golang import statement.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 23
Position: #85 / 286
Number of attempts: 7

Aliases for cd - 881 entries

Create these beautiful aliases with as few strokes as possible. Are you up for the challenge?

Best score: 30
Best player score: 179
Position: #148 / 156
Number of attempts: 1

Wget failed to download redirections - 205 entries

Output of a wget session, where 302 where not properly handled due to certificate problems, has been saved to a file. Keep the correct URLs to start again downloading.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 20
Position: #42 / 66
Number of attempts: 6

Swap values inside brackets - 2523 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 17
Position: #298 / 587
Number of attempts: 7

Unsemantic linewrapping - 934 entries

[Inspired by a blog post I read: https://scott.mn/2014/02/21/semantic_linewrapping/. Text adapted.] Sometimes when editing a Markdown file, I wrap the lines semantically. Instead of inserting a newline at 70 columns (or whatever), or making paragraphs one long line, I put in newlines at a point that seems logical to me. This may seem silly, but it produces better diffs. Semantic linewrapping also makes editing snappier. I can delete, edit or insert sentences easily using linewise operations. Code-oriented text editors like Vim and [REDACTED] are really good at this kind of manipulation. Editing text that hasn't been wrapped semantically is a pain, though:

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #78 / 233
Number of attempts: 4

V to the i - 4829 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #620 / 1902
Number of attempts: 7

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2915 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #87 / 863
Number of attempts: 16

SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1253 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: 27
Position: #144 / 261
Number of attempts: 9

Add semicolons - 10913 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #258 / 3083
Number of attempts: 12

Bad Copy Syntax - 2055 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #132 / 536
Number of attempts: 7

Split line with dots - 2156 entries

This line is too long, split it.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 25
Position: #536 / 636
Number of attempts: 8

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3622 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #72 / 1177
Number of attempts: 7

Com(m)a Trouble - 3941 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #294 / 892
Number of attempts: 17

Box it - 7961 entries

Create a box around a line.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #215 / 1890
Number of attempts: 22

multiple cursor alternative - 1547 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: 26
Position: #322 / 385
Number of attempts: 7

html paragraph to table - 612 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

Best score: 48
Best player score: 51
Position: #32 / 128
Number of attempts: 11

From argument to object - 1536 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: #245 / 466
Number of attempts: 2

Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 751 entries

Clean and group.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 28
Position: #153 / 179
Number of attempts: 5

Every other line - 2925 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #295 / 707
Number of attempts: 7

Copy three lines - 2882 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 17
Position: #290 / 642
Number of attempts: 9

Search and Replace 0 - 5022 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #550 / 1636
Number of attempts: 7

Just the middle - 11534 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1304 / 4227
Number of attempts: 5

Team names - 1848 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #206 / 592
Number of attempts: 9

Basic renumbering - 5699 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 17
Position: #612 / 1273
Number of attempts: 8

Adam's challenge - 1009 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: 21
Position: #166 / 276
Number of attempts: 7

ninja substitution - 1427 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

Best score: 14
Best player score: 19
Position: #197 / 269
Number of attempts: 8

One to Ten - 2241 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: #13 / 682
Number of attempts: 6

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 672 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: #118 / 210
Number of attempts: 12

Line under headers - 2072 entries

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

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #220 / 510
Number of attempts: 7

Build a six - 307 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #20 / 100
Number of attempts: 7

Increment each number - 1043 entries

Increment each number individually by one

Best score: 15
Best player score: 18
Position: #98 / 255
Number of attempts: 8

Delete to the end of the current line - 855 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #16 / 411
Number of attempts: 2

Remove quotes after first field - 386 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 26
Position: #83 / 93
Number of attempts: 6

Put the months in order - 979 entries

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

Best score: 20
Best player score: 39
Position: #82 / 165
Number of attempts: 8

move titles next to url, in quotes - 551 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #100 / 146
Number of attempts: 5

Array transposition - 2436 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 48
Position: #427 / 452
Number of attempts: 3

convert yml into java pojo field - 867 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: #53 / 230
Number of attempts: 14

Collect List - 4317 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 16
Position: #855 / 1194
Number of attempts: 10

Fix the XML - 1039 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 29
Position: #249 / 290
Number of attempts: 3

I forgot quotes - 16089 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1818 / 4200
Number of attempts: 6

-a-b-c- - 3225 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #269 / 1140
Number of attempts: 8

Mess in revision history - 1210 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 38
Position: #227 / 254
Number of attempts: 5

attr_aligner - 3525 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 41
Position: #638 / 706
Number of attempts: 2

quotes inside quotes - 3185 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: 17
Position: #929 / 1086
Number of attempts: 1

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 348 entries

"Sort by popularity" is a good order to play the challenges. Not perfect, but you could do a lot worse. ;) Input is a sample copy-pasted from vimgolf.com. Some of the challenge names have digits that will get in your way, so read ":help :sort" for hints on sorting with a regex. When you're done, try your solution on the full list!

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #32 / 107
Number of attempts: 10

Words in parens - 12991 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #1799 / 3976
Number of attempts: 6

Resort and deup a CSV list - 170 entries

I'm always adding items to a sorted list. There has to be a better way dedup and resort the lists. There are multiple lists with varying lengths to discourage manual sorting. Also Australia's animals are weird.

Best score: 44
Best player score: 210
Position: #43 / 44
Number of attempts: 1

Santa's naughty / nice list - 91 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.

Best score: 39
Best player score: 44
Position: #14 / 27
Number of attempts: 6

The name of the game - 678 entries

End up with the name of the game.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #253 / 363
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1620 entries

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

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #113 / 450
Number of attempts: 11

Alphabet soup - 434 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

Best score: 25
Best player score: 26
Position: #37 / 109
Number of attempts: 3

replacing each line of a block selection - 3007 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #220 / 780
Number of attempts: 13

Remove noise from HTTP log - 729 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #134 / 276
Number of attempts: 4

switch variable - 5093 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #531 / 1753
Number of attempts: 9

A Simple One - 1067 entries

Here is a very simple one - just to illustrate/introduce a vim feature that some people seem to miss...

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #510 / 671
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat some Python - 627 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 40
Position: #97 / 240
Number of attempts: 8

Flodder-challenge - 1401 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

Best score: 27
Best player score: 34
Position: #141 / 358
Number of attempts: 10

Simple text editing with Vim - 13251 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #561 / 3806
Number of attempts: 9

Contributed Challenges