VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Quicksort - 1757 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: #151 / 385
Number of attempts: 8

EDN reformat - 1099 entries

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

Best score: 17
Best player score: 21
Position: #86 / 153
Number of attempts: 15

Insert column data on Confluence-style table - 442 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: #44 / 105
Number of attempts: 8

HS exam question - 1523 entries

Convert the data to a python dictionary

Best score: 47
Best player score: 61
Position: #119 / 404
Number of attempts: 6

Reformat symbols in list - 1507 entries

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

Best score: 24
Best player score: 27
Position: #110 / 334
Number of attempts: 6

Fizzbuzz - 539 entries

type the first 100 lines of the fizzbuzz problem

Best score: 45
Best player score: 84
Position: #97 / 162
Number of attempts: 3

Substraction (bis) - 582 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 27
Position: #42 / 110
Number of attempts: 10

Changing around text with citations - 324 entries

Based off of something I saw on reddit

Best score: 28
Best player score: 37
Position: #38 / 90
Number of attempts: 2

Many duplicates - 1350 entries

Quick and easy

Best score: 7
Best player score: 11
Position: #375 / 440
Number of attempts: 4

2 quick changes and a numbered list - 615 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 / 148
Number of attempts: 14

delete swap - 1650 entries

delete all swap

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #69 / 514
Number of attempts: 4

Fix the shell script! - 2431 entries

Fix the shell script with the fewest keystrokes!

Best score: 26
Best player score: 28
Position: #139 / 569
Number of attempts: 6

Put a newline after every 10 lines in vim - 1649 entries

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

Best score: 10
Best player score: 13
Position: #246 / 551
Number of attempts: 2

Java to JavaScript - 267 entries

Let convert some simple Java file to JavaScript!

Best score: 59
Best player score: 64
Position: #16 / 72
Number of attempts: 7

Wikitext headings to markdown - 985 entries

Convert the wikitext headings to markdown.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 22
Position: #78 / 207
Number of attempts: 8

hello-world-vimgolf - 2472 entries

Simple number generation

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #62 / 699
Number of attempts: 12

Contribute to keyboard mashing - 880 entries

Speak in tongues

Best score: 17
Best player score: 18
Position: #84 / 268
Number of attempts: 3

Reordering Lorem Ipsum - 265 entries

Who even sorted this?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #7 / 64
Number of attempts: 10

Solve anagram with ASCII letters - 42 entries

ASCII created by TOIlet command

Best score: 46
Best player score: 81
Position: #11 / 17
Number of attempts: 3

Fill in the chess board - 933 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: #118 / 180
Number of attempts: 5

Learn to ask for :help - 572 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #27 / 128
Number of attempts: 9

Plotting some variables in python - 1605 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: #97 / 345
Number of attempts: 6

Transpose a python matrix - 848 entries

Rotate the matrix in 90 degrees.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 71
Position: #110 / 135
Number of attempts: 2

Lowercase first characters - 484 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: #125 / 181
Number of attempts: 3

Migrated to Postgres! - 324 entries

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

Best score: 26
Best player score: 29
Position: #55 / 126
Number of attempts: 4

simple replacements - 1710 entries

The goal is to see the replacement commands in action.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #35 / 378
Number of attempts: 8

Inverting Lines - 1870 entries

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

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #123 / 505
Number of attempts: 9

HS Final exam vimgolf - 892 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: #137 / 234
Number of attempts: 7

Extend shell script - 110 entries

Just add some more stuff

Best score: 37
Best player score: 51
Position: #22 / 44
Number of attempts: 8

Python: Def to Lambda - 441 entries

LAMBDA!!!

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #11 / 154
Number of attempts: 5

Turn the x - 317 entries

Turn the x to a +

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #40 / 80
Number of attempts: 11

Rural Post - 4427 entries

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

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #213 / 1086
Number of attempts: 7

Satisfy the go linter - 2360 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: #256 / 465
Number of attempts: 8

Add quotes to ansible playbook - 946 entries

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

Best score: 8
Best player score: 9
Position: #120 / 302
Number of attempts: 4

Data reformat - 286 entries

Reformat this copy-paste data! #csv

Best score: 36
Best player score: 54
Position: #39 / 63
Number of attempts: 2

xrandr outputs and dashes - 671 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 / 218
Number of attempts: 4

From a Thunderlink to a Markdown link - 757 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: #85 / 168
Number of attempts: 11

Capitalize the Names - 382 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: #78 / 95
Number of attempts: 6

Yo To Hello - 1127 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #93 / 522
Number of attempts: 1

Replace pattern with 1, 2, 3, ... on each line - 1114 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 / 228
Number of attempts: 10

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33483 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 / 7384
Number of attempts: 19

Hogwarts Email Sorting - 891 entries

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

Best score: 20
Best player score: 21
Position: #64 / 257
Number of attempts: 5

Swap values - 4554 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #305 / 1259
Number of attempts: 10

prepend * to every non-blank line - 6254 entries

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

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #10 / 1530
Number of attempts: 5

One number per line - 18673 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 21
Position: #2493 / 3852
Number of attempts: 5

Quote modules - 1066 entries

Complete golang import statement.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 23
Position: #84 / 278
Number of attempts: 7

Aliases for cd - 877 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: #147 / 154
Number of attempts: 1

Wget failed to download redirections - 185 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: #41 / 64
Number of attempts: 6

Swap values inside brackets - 2477 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 17
Position: #292 / 573
Number of attempts: 7

Unsemantic linewrapping - 901 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 / 226
Number of attempts: 4

V to the i - 4771 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #620 / 1887
Number of attempts: 7

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2851 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #85 / 843
Number of attempts: 16

SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1203 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: #142 / 247
Number of attempts: 9

Add semicolons - 10831 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #258 / 3055
Number of attempts: 12

Bad Copy Syntax - 2009 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #132 / 518
Number of attempts: 7

Split line with dots - 2131 entries

This line is too long, split it.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 25
Position: #534 / 633
Number of attempts: 8

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3556 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #72 / 1151
Number of attempts: 7

Com(m)a Trouble - 3711 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #283 / 839
Number of attempts: 17

Box it - 7849 entries

Create a box around a line.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #215 / 1870
Number of attempts: 22

multiple cursor alternative - 1488 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: #315 / 378
Number of attempts: 7

html paragraph to table - 601 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

Best score: 48
Best player score: 51
Position: #32 / 125
Number of attempts: 11

From argument to object - 1481 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: #243 / 453
Number of attempts: 2

Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 747 entries

Clean and group.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 28
Position: #152 / 177
Number of attempts: 5

Every other line - 2902 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #293 / 702
Number of attempts: 7

Copy three lines - 2869 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 / 639
Number of attempts: 9

Search and Replace 0 - 4853 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #550 / 1605
Number of attempts: 7

Just the middle - 11380 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1304 / 4174
Number of attempts: 5

Team names - 1812 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #206 / 585
Number of attempts: 9

Basic renumbering - 5605 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 17
Position: #603 / 1260
Number of attempts: 8

Adam's challenge - 958 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: #160 / 267
Number of attempts: 7

ninja substitution - 1399 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

Best score: 14
Best player score: 19
Position: #195 / 265
Number of attempts: 8

One to Ten - 2174 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 / 664
Number of attempts: 6

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 648 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: #116 / 205
Number of attempts: 12

Line under headers - 2023 entries

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

Best score: 24
Best player score: 28
Position: #217 / 498
Number of attempts: 7

Build a six - 277 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #20 / 94
Number of attempts: 7

Increment each number - 995 entries

Increment each number individually by one

Best score: 15
Best player score: 18
Position: #97 / 245
Number of attempts: 8

Delete to the end of the current line - 795 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 / 387
Number of attempts: 2

Remove quotes after first field - 367 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 26
Position: #80 / 90
Number of attempts: 6

Put the months in order - 972 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: #81 / 161
Number of attempts: 8

move titles next to url, in quotes - 510 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 23
Position: #96 / 137
Number of attempts: 5

Array transposition - 2407 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 48
Position: #420 / 445
Number of attempts: 3

convert yml into java pojo field - 837 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 / 225
Number of attempts: 14

Collect List - 4267 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 16
Position: #851 / 1188
Number of attempts: 10

Fix the XML - 1000 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 29
Position: #246 / 287
Number of attempts: 3

I forgot quotes - 15946 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1807 / 4166
Number of attempts: 6

-a-b-c- - 3183 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #269 / 1132
Number of attempts: 8

Mess in revision history - 1183 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 38
Position: #223 / 249
Number of attempts: 5

attr_aligner - 3454 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 41
Position: #629 / 695
Number of attempts: 2

quotes inside quotes - 3128 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: #924 / 1073
Number of attempts: 1

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 346 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 / 106
Number of attempts: 10

Words in parens - 12868 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #1785 / 3950
Number of attempts: 6

Resort and deup a CSV list - 146 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: #40 / 41
Number of attempts: 1

Santa's naughty / nice list - 79 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: #13 / 25
Number of attempts: 6

The name of the game - 654 entries

End up with the name of the game.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #253 / 359
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1594 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 / 443
Number of attempts: 11

Alphabet soup - 425 entries

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

Best score: 25
Best player score: 26
Position: #37 / 106
Number of attempts: 3

replacing each line of a block selection - 2966 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #218 / 772
Number of attempts: 13

Remove noise from HTTP log - 700 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 / 272
Number of attempts: 4

switch variable - 5045 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #531 / 1742
Number of attempts: 9

A Simple One - 1009 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 / 648
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat some Python - 590 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 40
Position: #92 / 233
Number of attempts: 8

Flodder-challenge - 1176 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

Best score: 27
Best player score: 34
Position: #126 / 321
Number of attempts: 10

Simple text editing with Vim - 12491 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 / 3626
Number of attempts: 9

Contributed Challenges