VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 34021 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: 26
Position: #3654 / 7517
Number of attempts: 2

One number per line - 18903 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 21
Position: #2522 / 3904
Number of attempts: 2

Prime Numbers - 401 entries

List the first 100 prime numbers.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 72
Position: #70 / 109
Number of attempts: 2

Swap values inside brackets - 2551 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #175 / 594
Number of attempts: 4

V to the i - 4885 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #1359 / 1915
Number of attempts: 1

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2931 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 18
Position: #687 / 867
Number of attempts: 1

Swap the operands under comparison - 325 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 20
Position: #41 / 108
Number of attempts: 4

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3652 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #557 / 1185
Number of attempts: 1

Com(m)a Trouble - 3993 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #562 / 910
Number of attempts: 1

Extract argument from function - 2429 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #731 / 773
Number of attempts: 1

Search and Replace 0 - 5162 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #1060 / 1675
Number of attempts: 1

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 584 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: #80 / 135
Number of attempts: 2

Number Sort - 328 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: #98 / 173
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2649 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #193 / 712
Number of attempts: 6

comment and uncomment code inline - 1182 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: 10
Position: #199 / 332
Number of attempts: 3

Just the middle - 11620 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 9
Position: #3617 / 4258
Number of attempts: 1

Team names - 1861 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 19
Position: #456 / 596
Number of attempts: 1

Interweave two blocks of text - 692 entries

Suppose you've got data on a list of things from multiple sources. They're all in separate chunks, so how might you create a tabular output?

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #59 / 217
Number of attempts: 6

Missing Library and a Typo - 954 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 17
Position: #126 / 223
Number of attempts: 7

Basic renumbering - 5737 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 21
Position: #948 / 1281
Number of attempts: 2

Adam's challenge - 1043 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: 23
Position: #233 / 281
Number of attempts: 1

comments galore - 1101 entries

Basic comment reformatting

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #374 / 433
Number of attempts: 3

Python challenge - 211 entries

Change the types of the variables in the list from str to float, while keeping the truncation.

Best score: 31
Best player score: 52
Position: #33 / 51
Number of attempts: 1

One to Ten - 2258 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: 14
Position: #409 / 688
Number of attempts: 1

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 691 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: 17
Position: #166 / 214
Number of attempts: 1

Build a six - 315 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #71 / 102
Number of attempts: 1

Delete to the end of the current line - 882 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 6
Position: #310 / 418
Number of attempts: 1

Put the months in order - 1001 entries

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

Best score: 20
Best player score: 45
Position: #100 / 168
Number of attempts: 1

move titles next to url, in quotes - 565 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 22
Position: #73 / 149
Number of attempts: 4

convert yml into java pojo field - 879 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: 30
Position: #117 / 233
Number of attempts: 3

Simple format (2) - 365 entries

try again!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #23 / 73
Number of attempts: 10

Collect List - 4342 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #1000 / 1200
Number of attempts: 2

Space out the alphabet - 1696 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #128 / 458
Number of attempts: 6

I forgot quotes - 16239 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1839 / 4225
Number of attempts: 2

-a-b-c- - 3242 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #862 / 1147
Number of attempts: 1

Don't know what this is - 2070 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: 16
Position: #540 / 596
Number of attempts: 1

attr_aligner - 3568 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 33
Position: #541 / 711
Number of attempts: 3

Counting in binary - 556 entries

"a" represents 0; "A" represents 1. Start from zero and count to 15.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 29
Position: #51 / 118
Number of attempts: 1

Letter case trickery - 1688 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #166 / 526
Number of attempts: 3

quotes inside quotes - 3203 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: 15
Position: #489 / 1094
Number of attempts: 3

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 369 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: #29 / 110
Number of attempts: 5

Words in parens - 13054 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #2482 / 3991
Number of attempts: 1

Vertical Limit - 2637 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 29
Position: #660 / 778
Number of attempts: 1

replacing each line of a block selection - 3068 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #289 / 789
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 5128 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 14
Position: #1443 / 1764
Number of attempts: 1

Sort entries based on date - 432 entries

Sort some entries in a Ledger-file based on date.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #67 / 121
Number of attempts: 4

HTML to Haml - 905 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 30
Position: #59 / 207
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat long lines - 388 entries

Rearrange this ruby method call to put each parameter on its own line. Could become a useful macro.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #40 / 141
Number of attempts: 4

Shebangs for all - 2103 entries

We've all seen or used a shebang once or twice. Ditch the specific paths and leave just a dynamic Ruby and Python bath behind.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 15
Position: #292 / 533
Number of attempts: 4

Table Reshuffle - 468 entries

Fix the column order in this table... also append the new 'username' column.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 40
Position: #118 / 145
Number of attempts: 1

Reverse Simple Deletion - 874 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #345 / 466
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 1109 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 15
Best player score: 18
Position: #250 / 356
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat some Python - 659 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 39
Position: #93 / 248
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat most common surnames - 837 entries

Reformat copy-pasted table into a list of the most common surnames

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #19 / 239
Number of attempts: 4

Simple text editing with Vim - 13645 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #3053 / 3907
Number of attempts: 1