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 - 33735 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 / 7445
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #265 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 4
One number per line - 18766 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #943 / 3873
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values inside brackets - 2511 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #181 / 583
  • Number of attempts: 8
V to the i - 4813 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1368 / 1897
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2897 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #138 / 857
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2154 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #555 / 635
  • Number of attempts: 6
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3604 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #596 / 1169
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 3876 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #668 / 877
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7916 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #473 / 1881
  • Number of attempts: 6
Cool or not? - 836 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #24 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 7
html paragraph to table - 606 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 55
  • Position: #50 / 126
  • Number of attempts: 8
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 749 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #73 / 178
  • Number of attempts: 5
Every other line - 2915 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #245 / 704
  • Number of attempts: 6
Copy three lines - 2875 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 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 8
Convert Application Output to CSV - 203 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #18 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 14
  • Position: #372 / 755
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 5004 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #572 / 1630
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 31
  • Position: #28 / 129
  • Number of attempts: 6
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #203 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 9
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: #202 / 323
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11494 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2824 / 4213
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #220 / 589
  • Number of attempts: 7
Stairstep digits - 398 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #106 / 146
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5683 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #166 / 1269
  • Number of attempts: 18
Adam's challenge - 992 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 / 272
  • Number of attempts: 6
ninja substitution - 1420 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #148 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7952 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #454 / 2139
  • Number of attempts: 5
One to Ten - 2227 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: #372 / 677
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 14
  • Position: #29 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 5
Build a six - 294 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #33 / 95
  • Number of attempts: 8
Increment each number - 1025 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #106 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete to the end of the current line - 831 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 / 401
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 33
  • Position: #59 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 10
move titles next to url, in quotes - 537 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #137 / 142
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 2425 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #139 / 449
  • Number of attempts: 10
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: #120 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple format (2) - 335 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #67 / 70
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4308 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #419 / 1192
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 16034 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1844 / 4192
  • Number of attempts: 3
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #251 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: 13
  • Position: #271 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10688 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1376 / 3691
  • Number of attempts: 5
attr_aligner - 3522 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #612 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: 14
  • Position: #311 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 8
Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #974 / 3969
  • Number of attempts: 5
Resort and deup a CSV list - 170 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: #39 / 44
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #545 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1593 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #180 / 594
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 13010 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1760 / 3742
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7171 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #1295 / 1759
  • Number of attempts: 5
Gitsnik
Twitter:

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

entered into 51 challenges

contributed 0 challenges