Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

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$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33929 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: #1730 / 7489
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4667 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #265 / 1284
  • Number of attempts: 4
One number per line - 18840 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #947 / 3893
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values inside brackets - 2539 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #182 / 590
  • Number of attempts: 8
V to the i - 4833 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1373 / 1904
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2920 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #139 / 864
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2156 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #556 / 636
  • Number of attempts: 6
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3631 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #601 / 1179
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 3968 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #687 / 901
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7987 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #477 / 1895
  • Number of attempts: 6
Cool or not? - 852 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #24 / 234
  • Number of attempts: 7
html paragraph to table - 634 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 55
  • Position: #51 / 130
  • Number of attempts: 8
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 767 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #74 / 180
  • Number of attempts: 5
Every other line - 2925 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #245 / 707
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: 13
  • Position: #122 / 642
  • Number of attempts: 8
Convert Application Output to CSV - 214 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #18 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 5
Extract argument from function - 2379 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #375 / 760
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 5042 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #572 / 1643
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 557 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: 31
  • Position: #29 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 6
That hyphen - 2602 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #203 / 704
  • Number of attempts: 9
comment and uncomment code inline - 1151 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: #206 / 328
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11555 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2830 / 4234
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1848 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #220 / 592
  • Number of attempts: 7
Stairstep digits - 407 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #107 / 149
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5707 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #166 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 18
Adam's challenge - 1010 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: 18
  • Position: #77 / 277
  • Number of attempts: 6
ninja substitution - 1436 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #149 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7981 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #454 / 2147
  • Number of attempts: 5
One to Ten - 2243 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: 13
  • Position: #376 / 683
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 679 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: 14
  • Position: #29 / 211
  • Number of attempts: 5
Build a six - 314 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #33 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 8
Increment each number - 1062 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #108 / 257
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete to the end of the current line - 865 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #117 / 415
  • Number of attempts: 2
Put the months in order - 998 entries

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

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #60 / 166
  • Number of attempts: 10
move titles next to url, in quotes - 558 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #142 / 147
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 2444 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #139 / 453
  • Number of attempts: 10
convert yml into java pojo field - 873 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: #122 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple format (2) - 342 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #68 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4317 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #419 / 1194
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 16127 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1853 / 4208
  • Number of attempts: 3
-a-b-c- - 3225 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #251 / 1140
  • Number of attempts: 7
Don't know what this is - 2025 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: 13
  • Position: #271 / 587
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10720 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1376 / 3703
  • Number of attempts: 5
attr_aligner - 3525 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #613 / 706
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: 14
  • Position: #311 / 1086
  • Number of attempts: 8
Words in parens - 13005 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #978 / 3979
  • Number of attempts: 5
Resort and deup a CSV list - 184 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: 70
  • Position: #40 / 45
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5101 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #545 / 1756
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1750 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #180 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 13419 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1782 / 3846
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7507 entries

A simple case of removing unneeded code and fixing broken indentation.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #1342 / 1847
  • Number of attempts: 5
Gitsnik
Twitter:

Security, Development, Administration, https://t.co/ASim2EMMsa

entered into 51 challenges

contributed 0 challenges