VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33236 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: #3580 / 7330
Number of attempts: 2

One number per line - 18559 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 21
Position: #2482 / 3830
Number of attempts: 2

Prime Numbers - 340 entries

List the first 100 prime numbers.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 72
Position: #65 / 100
Number of attempts: 2

Swap values inside brackets - 2443 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 15
Position: #167 / 566
Number of attempts: 4

V to the i - 4717 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #1341 / 1874
Number of attempts: 1

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2820 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 18
Position: #656 / 834
Number of attempts: 1

Swap the operands under comparison - 266 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 20
Position: #37 / 96
Number of attempts: 4

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3502 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #535 / 1134
Number of attempts: 1

Com(m)a Trouble - 3552 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #499 / 798
Number of attempts: 1

Extract argument from function - 2283 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #699 / 739
Number of attempts: 1

Search and Replace 0 - 4766 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #1001 / 1578
Number of attempts: 1

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 530 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: #73 / 125
Number of attempts: 2

Number Sort - 300 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 / 160
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2530 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #193 / 690
Number of attempts: 6

comment and uncomment code inline - 1039 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: #183 / 306
Number of attempts: 3

Just the middle - 11318 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 9
Position: #3544 / 4152
Number of attempts: 1

Team names - 1795 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 19
Position: #443 / 578
Number of attempts: 1

Interweave two blocks of text - 615 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: #54 / 210
Number of attempts: 6

Missing Library and a Typo - 838 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: 15
Best player score: 17
Position: #114 / 206
Number of attempts: 7

Basic renumbering - 5514 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 21
Position: #920 / 1249
Number of attempts: 2

Adam's challenge - 928 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: #215 / 261
Number of attempts: 1

comments galore - 982 entries

Basic comment reformatting

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #358 / 414
Number of attempts: 3

Python challenge - 146 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: #26 / 43
Number of attempts: 1

One to Ten - 2128 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: #383 / 652
Number of attempts: 1

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 627 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: #154 / 200
Number of attempts: 1

Build a six - 268 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #62 / 90
Number of attempts: 1

Delete to the end of the current line - 729 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 6
Position: #276 / 359
Number of attempts: 1

Put the months in order - 926 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: #92 / 157
Number of attempts: 1

move titles next to url, in quotes - 501 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 22
Position: #67 / 133
Number of attempts: 4

convert yml into java pojo field - 829 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: #111 / 223
Number of attempts: 3

Simple format (2) - 328 entries

try again!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #21 / 68
Number of attempts: 10

Collect List - 4228 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #984 / 1179
Number of attempts: 2

Space out the alphabet - 1610 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #122 / 438
Number of attempts: 6

I forgot quotes - 15880 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1809 / 4146
Number of attempts: 2

-a-b-c- - 3160 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #844 / 1124
Number of attempts: 1

Don't know what this is - 1961 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: #524 / 576
Number of attempts: 1

attr_aligner - 3408 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 33
Position: #525 / 689
Number of attempts: 3

Counting in binary - 447 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 29
Position: #47 / 112
Number of attempts: 1

Letter case trickery - 1588 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: #162 / 509
Number of attempts: 3

quotes inside quotes - 3105 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: #477 / 1066
Number of attempts: 3

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 344 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 / 104
Number of attempts: 5

Words in parens - 12821 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #2449 / 3938
Number of attempts: 1

Vertical Limit - 2399 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 29
Position: #622 / 727
Number of attempts: 1

replacing each line of a block selection - 2901 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #274 / 759
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 5012 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 14
Position: #1418 / 1728
Number of attempts: 1

Sort entries based on date - 359 entries

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

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #62 / 113
Number of attempts: 4

HTML to Haml - 838 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 30
Position: #56 / 201
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat long lines - 336 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: #35 / 130
Number of attempts: 4

Shebangs for all - 1846 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: #271 / 486
Number of attempts: 4

Table Reshuffle - 366 entries

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

Best score: 22
Best player score: 40
Position: #108 / 132
Number of attempts: 1

Reverse Simple Deletion - 824 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #339 / 450
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 996 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 18
Position: #238 / 335
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat some Python - 576 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 39
Position: #84 / 227
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat most common surnames - 613 entries

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

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #17 / 193
Number of attempts: 4

Simple text editing with Vim - 11962 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #2766 / 3502
Number of attempts: 1