VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33715 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: #3630 / 7440
Number of attempts: 2

One number per line - 18751 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 21
Position: #2503 / 3869
Number of attempts: 2

Prime Numbers - 376 entries

List the first 100 prime numbers.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 72
Position: #68 / 106
Number of attempts: 2

Swap values inside brackets - 2507 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #172 / 582
Number of attempts: 4

V to the i - 4813 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #1351 / 1897
Number of attempts: 1

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2890 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 18
Position: #676 / 855
Number of attempts: 1

Swap the operands under comparison - 297 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 20
Position: #39 / 101
Number of attempts: 4

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3597 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #549 / 1167
Number of attempts: 1

Com(m)a Trouble - 3865 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #539 / 873
Number of attempts: 1

Extract argument from function - 2364 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #714 / 755
Number of attempts: 1

Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #1036 / 1630
Number of attempts: 1

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 540 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: #76 / 129
Number of attempts: 2

Number Sort - 314 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 / 166
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #193 / 701
Number of attempts: 6

comment and uncomment code inline - 1124 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: #194 / 323
Number of attempts: 3

Just the middle - 11477 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 9
Position: #3585 / 4206
Number of attempts: 1

Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 19
Position: #451 / 589
Number of attempts: 1

Interweave two blocks of text - 661 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: #58 / 215
Number of attempts: 6

Missing Library and a Typo - 893 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: #120 / 214
Number of attempts: 7

Basic renumbering - 5675 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 21
Position: #936 / 1268
Number of attempts: 2

Adam's challenge - 987 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: #223 / 271
Number of attempts: 1

comments galore - 1045 entries

Basic comment reformatting

Best score: 10
Best player score: 11
Position: #368 / 424
Number of attempts: 3

Python challenge - 172 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: #29 / 46
Number of attempts: 1

One to Ten - 2225 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: #402 / 676
Number of attempts: 1

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 662 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: #161 / 208
Number of attempts: 1

Build a six - 294 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #66 / 95
Number of attempts: 1

Delete to the end of the current line - 815 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 6
Position: #292 / 393
Number of attempts: 1

Put the months in order - 974 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: #97 / 163
Number of attempts: 1

move titles next to url, in quotes - 537 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 22
Position: #70 / 142
Number of attempts: 4

convert yml into java pojo field - 857 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: #114 / 227
Number of attempts: 3

Simple format (2) - 335 entries

try again!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #22 / 70
Number of attempts: 10

Collect List - 4305 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 17
Position: #993 / 1191
Number of attempts: 2

Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #124 / 444
Number of attempts: 6

I forgot quotes - 16014 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 14
Position: #1820 / 4188
Number of attempts: 2

-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #855 / 1138
Number of attempts: 1

Don't know what this is - 2024 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: #531 / 586
Number of attempts: 1

attr_aligner - 3522 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 33
Position: #536 / 703
Number of attempts: 3

Counting in binary - 526 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 29
Position: #50 / 117
Number of attempts: 1

Letter case trickery - 1630 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: #164 / 518
Number of attempts: 3

quotes inside quotes - 3165 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: #484 / 1079
Number of attempts: 3

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: #29 / 107
Number of attempts: 5

Words in parens - 12966 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 16
Position: #2469 / 3968
Number of attempts: 1

Vertical Limit - 2540 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 29
Position: #645 / 755
Number of attempts: 1

replacing each line of a block selection - 3001 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 20
Position: #283 / 778
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 14
Position: #1430 / 1749
Number of attempts: 1

Sort entries based on date - 392 entries

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

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #64 / 117
Number of attempts: 4

HTML to Haml - 881 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 30
Position: #58 / 205
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat long lines - 361 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: #37 / 135
Number of attempts: 4

Shebangs for all - 2016 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: #284 / 518
Number of attempts: 4

Table Reshuffle - 439 entries

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

Best score: 22
Best player score: 40
Position: #115 / 142
Number of attempts: 1

Reverse Simple Deletion - 854 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #341 / 460
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 1059 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 15
Best player score: 18
Position: #243 / 345
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat some Python - 622 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 39
Position: #89 / 238
Number of attempts: 1

Reformat most common surnames - 743 entries

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

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #18 / 215
Number of attempts: 4

Simple text editing with Vim - 12954 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 21
Position: #2931 / 3729
Number of attempts: 1