VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 652 entries

You're replying to an email with silly long lines. Clean them up.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #275 / 376
Number of attempts: 1

Search and Replace 0 - 4766 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #698 / 1578
Number of attempts: 5

Interweave two blocks of text - 615 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: 15
Position: #27 / 210
Number of attempts: 10

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 930 entries

A novice Python using prints Hello World! and a pro shows him different way. Using vim to get into pro style from novice, win the challenge.

Best score: 39
Best player score: 39
Position: #5 / 361
Number of attempts: 8

Cartesian product - 218 entries

{1,2,3,4,5} X {1,2,3,4,5}

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #8 / 92
Number of attempts: 7

Sort by sum of numbers in a line(?) - 55 entries

The lines with the biggest sums need to be at the top. The sums are on the right, which makes life hard. Maybe you can find a feature that will do all the work for you...

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #10 / 35
Number of attempts: 3

abcd > a b c d - 279 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #195 / 217
Number of attempts: 1

Readable Rubyhash - 243 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 33
Position: #75 / 91
Number of attempts: 1

Circle of Fifths with Sharps - 93 entries

Display a list of the Circle of Fifths with corresponding solfege syllables with sharps. Handling spaces may be tricky.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #11 / 35
Number of attempts: 10

Dehamlizing - 177 entries

Change this piece of HAML code back into erb

Best score: 32
Best player score: 43
Position: #49 / 68
Number of attempts: 3

Changing URL path in CSS - 123 entries

What's the quickest way to swap out all the URLs in a CSS file? Is it wasted keystrokes using look-behinds and look-aheads? (I'm sorry for the delete/report--I made a mistake with the last one requiring an ugly search for graphic to replace with images. I just intended this to be a simple search and replace that might possibly generate some macros or normals solutions that are quicker)

Best score: 40
Best player score: 40
Position: #21 / 57
Number of attempts: 10

NATO phonetic alphabet - 498 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #49 / 189
Number of attempts: 4

Shuffle and Sort - 201 entries

The values where sorted incorrectly. Get them back to how they are supposed to be

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #12 / 63
Number of attempts: 11

A simple change - 434 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #51 / 187
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: The Quick Brown Fox - 168 entries

Someone has vandalized our text (again). Please fix to read: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #2 / 100
Number of attempts: 4

Convert regular pandoc footnotes to in-line notes - 60 entries

Pandoc extends markdown by allowing footnotes, which are usually represented with a footnote identifier followed later in the document by the footnote itself. But Pandoc also allows inline footnotes without identifiers. How many strokes does it take to convert regular footnotes to inline notes? (NB: I've had trouble figuring out whether text-width makes a difference to Vimgolf in comparing the input and output file. I finally tested this locally using the Vimgolf vimrc and did a "gq" on the entire buffer as the last step. Apologies if I'm making a newbie mistake. First time submitter.)

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #4 / 16
Number of attempts: 9

Extract text from xml - 106 entries

Extract text from xml file (ignoring commented out elements) and create a one line regex.

Best score: 28
Best player score: 40
Position: #26 / 43
Number of attempts: 4

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 398 entries

Someone has vandalized this text file and replaced the beginning character of one word in each line with a Big "X." Please remove the big X's, and fix each line to read "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog."

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #4 / 186
Number of attempts: 2

The name of the game - 643 entries

End up with the name of the game.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #271 / 353
Number of attempts: 2

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1550 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #125 / 435
Number of attempts: 5

Chucking wood - 103 entries

An exercise in compressing repetitive text. For this challenge, any entry that uses keys outside the main row (such as arrow keys, Home, End, Delete, etc.) will be removed. (Esc is OK, though you should be using C-[ anyway.)

Best score: 51
Best player score: 58
Position: #31 / 45
Number of attempts: 3

Stairs Indenting - 442 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 14
Position: #134 / 191
Number of attempts: 4

Python to Ruby - 193 entries

Convert this Python code to Ruby. NOTE: This program likely won't run.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 37
Position: #39 / 57
Number of attempts: 3

Convert pandoc unordered list to a numbered list - 157 entries

I know it's possible to use #. in pandoc to auto-generate numbered lists, but then it's not easy to tell how many items there are when reading it in Markdown. How fast can you make the switch?

Best score: 20
Best player score: 20
Position: #5 / 55
Number of attempts: 11

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1066 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #136 / 436
Number of attempts: 4

you're stuck on jQuery < 1.7 - 335 entries

replace calls to jQuery 1.7+'s `on` with calls to pre 1.7 `bind`

Best score: 25
Best player score: 30
Position: #64 / 110
Number of attempts: 2

Inconsistent real estate paste - 178 entries

Format a hand-typed real estate listing that uses inconsistent punctuation into four sections

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #11 / 53
Number of attempts: 10

Vertical Limit - 2406 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #97 / 728
Number of attempts: 7

Aligning function arguments to match a specific coding style - 218 entries

Most projects have specific coding style guidelines. In this case, the argument list must be broken into a new line for each argument, with the argument names right aligned, taking into account pointers.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #9 / 66
Number of attempts: 11

Exchanging Quotes - 801 entries

Sometimes you need to exchange a choice of quotes in some code.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #12 / 221
Number of attempts: 8

replacing each line of a block selection - 2907 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #127 / 760
Number of attempts: 16

Switch function arguments - 2019 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #185 / 637
Number of attempts: 3

Append semicolon after expressions - 986 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 12
Position: #252 / 397
Number of attempts: 5

Reverse and double space - 475 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

Best score: 14
Best player score: 15
Position: #83 / 191
Number of attempts: 4

Remove noise from HTTP log - 675 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #141 / 266
Number of attempts: 2

constructor - 178 entries

coding a constructor for a simple class

Best score: 59
Best player score: 59
Position: #4 / 57
Number of attempts: 13

Remove semicolons after expressions - 602 entries

A follow-up for http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4fc9d767d3a0d4000100000e.

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #126 / 253
Number of attempts: 4

switch variable - 5012 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #655 / 1728
Number of attempts: 3

The meaning - 543 entries

Numbers are fun!

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #304 / 350
Number of attempts: 1

Format the output - 143 entries

Sometimes your standard out is a little hard to read. Take this multilevel hash and make it human readable.

Best score: 35
Best player score: 35
Position: #6 / 38
Number of attempts: 12

Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 953 entries

convert an ugly spreadsheet copy/paste into a CSV format.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #12 / 184
Number of attempts: 24

Replacing some words - 418 entries

How fast could it be?

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #31 / 147
Number of attempts: 5

PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 1 - 211 entries

Convert this tiny php class to adequate java one.

Best score: 65
Best player score: 65
Position: #3 / 61
Number of attempts: 23

Make it more readable - 1930 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #196 / 636
Number of attempts: 8

PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 2 - 95 entries

Same class but reverse!

Best score: 80
Best player score: 87
Position: #4 / 37
Number of attempts: 11

PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 505 entries

I recently needed to send an e-mail to our marketing department listing allowed merge tags for our MailChimp campaigns. The allowed merge tags were determined from a PHP array in one of our PHP classes. I transformed the PHP class to MailChimp's syntax and sent the e-mail. It was, however, a long, laborious process. I'm still fairly new to Vim and would love to see how an expert Vim user would tackle one of my own, real-world problems. Thanks and have fun!

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #28 / 146
Number of attempts: 20

imports alignment (python) - 657 entries

Align as one import per line.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #48 / 194
Number of attempts: 8

Rotating Philosophers Problem - 386 entries

Can you help the philosophers find a good place to sit before they get five forks and spaghetti?

Best score: 29
Best player score: 29
Position: #30 / 163
Number of attempts: 5

HTML to Haml - 838 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 27
Position: #45 / 201
Number of attempts: 18

expand a list comprehension (python) - 296 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

Best score: 42
Best player score: 42
Position: #16 / 105
Number of attempts: 15

Overall Vimgolf Rank - 161 entries

Suppose you are trying to figure out what your overall rank is at Vimgolf(the sum of all the ranks you got), and as a Vim ninja you decided to use Vim to do the job. Your solution should work for every Vimgolf profile page(The actual input file for this challenge is my Vimgolf profile page). So, direct answer insertion is considered cheating.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #6 / 57
Number of attempts: 19

Insert a Markdown link - 422 entries

Put a link in a markdown document, using the after-the-paragraph format.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #12 / 142
Number of attempts: 7

Numbering a List - 1849 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #73 / 636
Number of attempts: 1

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 - 145 entries

Somebody's got this slightly muddled up. See how quickly you can fix it. (I made this to experiment with buffers. I'm not actually sure whether this is faster with buffers or without.)

Best score: 24
Best player score: 24
Position: #21 / 68
Number of attempts: 4

The holy-grail may help - 339 entries

Can you find it in less than 20 strokes, Arthur?

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #154 / 204
Number of attempts: 5

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1202 entries

Rubyists talk about being cutting edge but how many are using 1.9 in production? Time to convert those verbose 1.8 hashes in to symbolic, succinct 1.9 beauties!

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #106 / 394
Number of attempts: 4

CSV to JSON - 158 entries

A search for shortest vimissh way to convert CSV to JSON.

Best score: 56
Best player score: 63
Position: #9 / 63
Number of attempts: 10

Assignment Alignment - 824 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #56 / 215
Number of attempts: 12

Shebangs for all - 1846 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: 11
Position: #66 / 486
Number of attempts: 6

A Simple One - 978 entries

Here is a very simple one - just to illustrate/introduce a vim feature that some people seem to miss...

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #547 / 636
Number of attempts: 1

Table Reshuffle - 366 entries

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

Best score: 22
Best player score: 23
Position: #29 / 132
Number of attempts: 8

Reverse and count - 432 entries

Someone typed things upside down and now a Vim ninja needs to reverse the lines and count how many there are.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #13 / 168
Number of attempts: 3

Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 236 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #38 / 85
Number of attempts: 8

Ruby 1.9 compat - 608 entries

Remember when Ruby supported `when <expr> :`? Well, it doesn't in 1.9, so let's make sure we use `then`, without ruining our lovely new hash syntax!

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #68 / 229
Number of attempts: 7

Reverse Simple Deletion - 824 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #51 / 450
Number of attempts: 3

Increment, increment, increment.... - 626 entries

Vim likes macros

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #51 / 393
Number of attempts: 4

Indentation - 492 entries

Indent each line according to the right number of spaces it needs.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 35
Position: #141 / 167
Number of attempts: 2

Hatsuyume - 442 entries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsuyume

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #9 / 173
Number of attempts: 10

The Cake is a Lie - 1266 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #268 / 506
Number of attempts: 4

Context insensitive completion 0 - 492 entries

Buried in the lines you're not supposed to add is the line "Add this line!" Add that line to the top of the file.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #113 / 229
Number of attempts: 4

Compile C - 362 entries

You might have to get clever to do this one.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #19 / 131
Number of attempts: 14

Context Insensitive completion 1 - 444 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #152 / 228
Number of attempts: 9

Make Fancy Header - 996 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #122 / 335
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat some Python - 576 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 34
Position: #41 / 227
Number of attempts: 10

Reformat a C golf submission - 547 entries

Take this C golf submission (for the "tiny but standards-compliant Hello World program" category, naturally), and turn it into formatted C code.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #3 / 198
Number of attempts: 13

Reverse characters in a line - 701 entries

You have everything you need, just not in the right order. Mastermind would give you 26 white pegs.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #20 / 248
Number of attempts: 7

Reformat most common surnames - 613 entries

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

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #27 / 193
Number of attempts: 7

Change the content of a string - 1425 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #199 / 542
Number of attempts: 4

Deleting folded text - 325 entries

The text below contains three folds. Delete them (and the text inside them). For example: 123 456 /*{{{*/ 789 /*}}}*/ 012 Should become: 123 012 Also, add `aoeuaoeu` to make sure small solutions don't get flagged as cheating.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 22
Position: #79 / 111
Number of attempts: 6

Sort and add attributes - 1273 entries

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

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #244 / 510
Number of attempts: 6

Add fold markers to a .c file - 526 entries

Fold markers can make it easier to navigate source code. Add them to this .c file.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 34
Position: #80 / 165
Number of attempts: 8

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1265 entries

Get the sentence back in the proper order, remove duplicate lines, and then combine the separate lines into one.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 20
Position: #118 / 366
Number of attempts: 10

Braces or Brackets? - 779 entries

Someone forgot whether to use braces or brackets and you have to clean up their code!

Best score: 34
Best player score: 34
Position: #27 / 268
Number of attempts: 8

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3141 entries

Convert tabs to spaces, strip empty lines and trailing whitespace.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #28 / 700
Number of attempts: 15

Flodder-challenge - 1006 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

Best score: 27
Best player score: 27
Position: #22 / 294
Number of attempts: 12

Simple text editing with Vim - 11970 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #672 / 3505
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6338 entries

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

Best score: 32
Best player score: 37
Position: #547 / 1562
Number of attempts: 4

Qing Liu
Twitter: @poeminlash

吟诗舞鞭，人生几何。