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 - 33724 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: 24
  • Position: #3035 / 7442
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values - 4643 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #484 / 1274
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap values inside brackets - 2511 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #36 / 583
  • Number of attempts: 10
V to the i - 4813 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #655 / 1897
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 14
  • Position: #384 / 857
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add semicolons - 10881 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #68 / 3072
  • Number of attempts: 4
Bad Copy Syntax - 2044 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #60 / 530
  • Number of attempts: 4
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3604 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #620 / 1169
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 3875 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #250 / 876
  • Number of attempts: 8
Box it - 7916 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #632 / 1881
  • Number of attempts: 9
Cool or not? - 829 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #35 / 230
  • Number of attempts: 3
multiple cursor alternative - 1521 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #167 / 381
  • Number of attempts: 4
html paragraph to table - 606 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 73
  • Position: #102 / 126
  • Number of attempts: 2
From argument to object - 1513 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #113 / 460
  • Number of attempts: 3
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 749 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #75 / 178
  • Number of attempts: 4
Every other line - 2915 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #597 / 704
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: #127 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 10
Convert Application Output to CSV - 203 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #25 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 13
  • Position: #231 / 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: #592 / 1630
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 30
  • Position: #12 / 129
  • Number of attempts: 7
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #211 / 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: 9
  • Position: #120 / 323
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11484 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2849 / 4209
  • Number of attempts: 4
Team names - 1841 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #228 / 589
  • Number of attempts: 2
Learn some german verbs - 533 entries

The list needs to be structured so we can print in verbatim and feel ok about how it looks.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #116 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 16
  • Position: #86 / 214
  • Number of attempts: 8
Basic renumbering - 5683 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #173 / 1269
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 18
  • Position: #82 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 7
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 867 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #131 / 292
  • Number of attempts: 3
ninja substitution - 1420 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #157 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 12
Vice versa - 7945 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #468 / 2138
  • Number of attempts: 8
Angular naming conventions - 320 entries

In angular, a directive name follows the camelCase convention. When the directive is used in an HTML template, the words are instead separated by a dash. Go from to the other the fastest!

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #42 / 118
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 12
  • Position: #120 / 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: 15
  • Position: #105 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
Build a six - 294 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #42 / 95
  • Number of attempts: 3
Increment each number - 1025 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #109 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 6
Join 'em - 251 entries

This shouldn't be too tough

  • Best score: 4
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #81 / 151
  • Number of attempts: 2
Delete to the end of the current line - 829 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #136 / 400
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove quotes after first field - 380 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #8 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 47
  • Position: #109 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 6
move titles next to url, in quotes - 537 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #132 / 142
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 2425 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #143 / 449
  • Number of attempts: 8
Collect List - 4305 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #426 / 1191
  • Number of attempts: 3
Space out the alphabet - 1659 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #95 / 446
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 16022 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #872 / 4189
  • Number of attempts: 14
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #256 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 3
120 Degrees - 493 entries

Rotate that triangle.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #46 / 145
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 11
  • Position: #115 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 6
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10682 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1391 / 3689
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: #319 / 1079
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12967 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #997 / 3969
  • Number of attempts: 6
Minimalist Limerick - 520 entries

Reproduce this lovely poem.

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #81 / 174
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 44
  • Position: #8 / 44
  • Number of attempts: 5
Saving the hashes(#) - 2063 entries

The following file is copied from vimcasts.org(Its only for learning purpose,hope the site owner doesn't mind it), its probably the easiest of challenges.Our goal is to delete every line which doesn't contain a hash signs. The remaining hash signs with numbers are then sorted to get the final output.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #60 / 480
  • Number of attempts: 8
replacing each line of a block selection - 3001 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #113 / 778
  • Number of attempts: 5
switch variable - 5079 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #560 / 1749
  • Number of attempts: 5
Simple text editing with Vim - 12996 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1771 / 3739
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7157 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 38
  • Position: #661 / 1755
  • Number of attempts: 3
mkaminaga
Twitter:

筑波大学大学院 構造エネ 燃焼研究室 / 筑波大学「結」プロジェクト / 趣味：プログラミング、将棋

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