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: #1754 / 7489
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values - 4667 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #762 / 1284
  • Number of attempts: 3
One number per line - 18840 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1256 / 3893
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values inside brackets - 2539 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #251 / 590
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4833 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1377 / 1904
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 14
  • Position: #381 / 864
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3631 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #614 / 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: 13
  • Position: #253 / 901
  • Number of attempts: 4
Box it - 7987 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #854 / 1895
  • Number of attempts: 2
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 767 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #100 / 180
  • Number of attempts: 1
Every other line - 2925 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #38 / 707
  • Number of attempts: 8
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: #377 / 760
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 5042 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #578 / 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: 33
  • Position: #53 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2602 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #260 / 704
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: #207 / 328
  • Number of attempts: 6
Just the middle - 11555 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2838 / 4234
  • Number of attempts: 3
Team names - 1848 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #226 / 592
  • Number of attempts: 4
Basic renumbering - 5707 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #315 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 8
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: #79 / 277
  • Number of attempts: 5
42-header - 47 entries

Rush 42mexican-standoff at 42 school

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #7 / 17
  • Number of attempts: 8
ninja substitution - 1436 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #97 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 8
Vice versa - 7981 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #462 / 2147
  • Number of attempts: 4
Lower cased and dashed strings - 49 entries

As I have to generate big fixtures files, I wanted to find a way to format input data the way described by start and end files. Especially the lower-cased-and-dashed ids Not so good to find a pure Vim way, that's why I submit this challenge ;)

  • Best score: 59
  • Best player score: 74
  • Position: #11 / 20
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 14
  • Position: #478 / 683
  • Number of attempts: 6
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: 15
  • Position: #105 / 211
  • Number of attempts: 3
Increment each number - 1062 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #72 / 257
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: #126 / 415
  • Number of attempts: 2
Separating firstname & lastname - 172 entries

Seperate named with equal tabs.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #12 / 60
  • Number of attempts: 6
move titles next to url, in quotes - 558 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #19 / 147
  • Number of attempts: 8
I forgot quotes - 16127 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1860 / 4208
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10720 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2392 / 3703
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: #313 / 1086
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 13005 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1735 / 3979
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 48
  • Position: #23 / 45
  • Number of attempts: 9
switch variable - 5101 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #549 / 1756
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sort and add attributes - 1557 entries

Sort the states and add the attribute country to each record.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #217 / 601
  • 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: #1786 / 3846
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7506 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #403 / 1846
  • Number of attempts: 5
Arno
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entered into 39 challenges

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