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

Prime Numbers - 342 entries

List the first 100 prime numbers.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #41 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 6
Word Blender - 146 entries

The insides of long words seem to have been run through the blender. Can you fix this famous tale, brave knight?

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #14 / 55
  • Number of attempts: 6
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 676 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #81 / 384
  • Number of attempts: 2
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #140 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 8
Interweave two blocks of text - 630 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: 17
  • Position: #105 / 211
  • Number of attempts: 3
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 936 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: 40
  • Position: #8 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 5
Return the cow - 71 entries

This cow is too verbose. Give it a lesson.

  • Best score: 52
  • Best player score: 58
  • Position: #12 / 28
  • Number of attempts: 4
Cartesian product - 221 entries

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

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #20 / 92
  • Number of attempts: 6
Recursively Palindrome - 239 entries

Note that there are 2^6-1 characters.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #22 / 73
  • Number of attempts: 7
PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 1 - 212 entries

Convert this tiny php class to adequate java one.

  • Best score: 65
  • Best player score: 68
  • Position: #5 / 61
  • Number of attempts: 7
Multiplication table. - 204 entries

Create a multiplication table.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 50
  • Position: #14 / 63
  • Number of attempts: 4
Sort the cardinal numbers - 293 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #17 / 146
  • Number of attempts: 3
formatted text to markdown - 183 entries

You're converting some posts from an old blog to markdown. The formatted text is far closer to the finished product than the html markup, so it seems like a good place to start. Word wrapping seems to be the main area for optimization.

  • Best score: 70
  • Best player score: 74
  • Position: #11 / 66
  • Number of attempts: 4
Make it more readable - 1952 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #2 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 4
Line Zipper - 450 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #28 / 210
  • Number of attempts: 3
remove dupes from array - 1332 entries

given a random string that contains a ruby-esque array, make sure that there are no duplicate elements

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #8 / 330
  • Number of attempts: 4
PHP <--> Java class conversion Part 2 - 96 entries

Same class but reverse!

  • Best score: 80
  • Best player score: 88
  • Position: #6 / 38
  • Number of attempts: 3
Alphabetize the directory - 283 entries

Put the contacts and their information in alphabetical order.

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #2 / 99
  • Number of attempts: 9
PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 507 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: #2 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 6
Complete the hex array data - 192 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #4 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 4
Case preserving word replacement - 453 entries

Half way through my project, my people turned into dogs. Now I have to change everything in my source.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #32 / 179
  • Number of attempts: 3
Complete the hex array data (Part II) - 154 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #24 / 67
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sort entries based on date - 362 entries

Sort some entries in a Ledger-file based on date.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #12 / 114
  • Number of attempts: 8
Refactor to Helpers - 48 entries

This Rails partial is almost all template escapes. Put it into a helper, and refactor each case to methods so we can build out the controls for each. (I've converted to tabs - fighting with Vimgolf's default config shouldn't be part of the challenge.)

  • Best score: 147
  • Best player score: 423
  • Position: #20 / 23
  • Number of attempts: 1
Here, piggy, piggy... - 75 entries

Youay owknay atwhay otay oday...

  • Best score: 68
  • Best player score: 70
  • Position: #4 / 21
  • Number of attempts: 4
Happy New Year! - 143 entries

This is a simple new year's challenge.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #28 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 3
imports alignment (python) - 661 entries

Align as one import per line.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #25 / 194
  • Number of attempts: 6
Generate Fibonacci Numbers - 260 entries

Use your super vim powers to generate Fibonacci Numbers.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #4 / 97
  • Number of attempts: 6
It'ss tooo coold too typpe todaay - 215 entries

My hands are numb with cold. It's hard to type correctly.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #6 / 96
  • Number of attempts: 5
Rotating Philosophers Problem - 388 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: #16 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 5
Before there was Farmville... - 97 entries

There was old MacDonald. For my toddler. The first Vim sing-a-long?

  • Best score: 156
  • Best player score: 219
  • Position: #23 / 47
  • Number of attempts: 1
HTML to Haml - 842 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #32 / 202
  • Number of attempts: 6
expand a list comprehension (python) - 301 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: #10 / 106
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat long lines - 341 entries

Rearrange this ruby method call to put each parameter on its own line. Could become a useful macro.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #9 / 130
  • Number of attempts: 6
Generate English Alphabets - 463 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #54 / 198
  • Number of attempts: 3
Overall Vimgolf Rank - 170 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: 24
  • Position: #21 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 4
Insert a Markdown link - 431 entries

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

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #30 / 143
  • Number of attempts: 5
Numbering a List - 1855 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #203 / 638
  • Number of attempts: 7
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 - 148 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: #15 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 5
Getters & Setters: Java - 205 entries

Boilerplate getters & setters - it's a tedious fact of life in Java, and probably the only thing that still pulls me back to an IDE. Perhaps someone knows a fast, pure vim way...

  • Best score: 89
  • Best player score: 92
  • Position: #8 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 6
Solve the Sokoban - 161 entries

A wink for all Vimgolfers that play Nethack too.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #31 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 3
Java Array2List - 225 entries

Convert an java array initializer into a list.

  • Best score: 67
  • Best player score: 73
  • Position: #5 / 83
  • Number of attempts: 7
The holy-grail may help - 345 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #102 / 205
  • Number of attempts: 1
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1216 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: #30 / 398
  • Number of attempts: 4
CSV to JSON - 163 entries

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

  • Best score: 56
  • Best player score: 60
  • Position: #6 / 64
  • Number of attempts: 7
Assignment Alignment - 829 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #21 / 215
  • Number of attempts: 11
Shebangs for all - 1904 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: 12
  • Position: #110 / 497
  • Number of attempts: 9
A Simple One - 996 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: #236 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 1
Round Round - 287 entries

Round Round

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #18 / 84
  • Number of attempts: 8
82 bottles of beer on the wall - 302 entries

Take them down. (sorry, only 82 bottles because the problem size is limited!)

  • Best score: 106
  • Best player score: 136
  • Position: #88 / 140
  • Number of attempts: 4
Table Reshuffle - 369 entries

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

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #16 / 133
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reverse and count - 455 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: 33
  • Position: #144 / 172
  • Number of attempts: 5
Letters are numbers - 150 entries

Letters and numbers are interchangeable. A lot of programming languages give you simple ways to convert individual letters to hex, binary and decimal but does Vim?

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #30 / 73
  • Number of attempts: 2
Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 237 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #21 / 85
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ruby 1.9 compat - 609 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: #23 / 229
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reverse Simple Deletion - 832 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #211 / 454
  • Number of attempts: 3
Increment, increment, increment.... - 643 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #205 / 398
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sorting paragraphs - 505 entries

Order the paragraphs correctly, per prefixed index

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #21 / 156
  • Number of attempts: 9
Indentation - 497 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #18 / 168
  • Number of attempts: 9
Hatsuyume - 450 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #64 / 174
  • Number of attempts: 2
Turn this csv list into queries - 204 entries

Transform each line of this csv file into a MySQL-ready INSERT query.

  • Best score: 98
  • Best player score: 100
  • Position: #7 / 95
  • Number of attempts: 10
Dumb to smart - 96 entries

Turn dumb quote to smart vim's way.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #2 / 54
  • Number of attempts: 6
The Cake is a Lie - 1284 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #110 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fix the Haiku - 275 entries

Change this slightly scrambled haiku to its unscrambled form and fix the capitalisation and punctuation along the way.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #15 / 109
  • Number of attempts: 4
Context insensitive completion 0 - 502 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: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #60 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove Accent off the Letter - 106 entries

Remove all the accent from extremely accented statements.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 54
  • Position: #9 / 49
  • Number of attempts: 2
Compile C - 365 entries

You might have to get clever to do this one.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #49 / 132
  • Number of attempts: 1
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 456 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #75 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 1
Almost encrypted - 198 entries

Convert the first paragraph to be even less readable.

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #76 / 144
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 1007 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #47 / 337
  • Number of attempts: 8
Linear congruential generator - 128 entries

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

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #19 / 50
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat some Python - 579 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #15 / 229
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat a C golf submission - 552 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: 35
  • Position: #132 / 199
  • Number of attempts: 4
PEP8 Python Wrapping Comments and Code - 187 entries

According to PEP8, long flowy text and code should have different max line lengths. Code: 79 characters max Long flowy text: 72 characters max

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #25 / 64
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat most common surnames - 644 entries

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

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #43 / 197
  • Number of attempts: 9
Remember FizzBuzz? - 653 entries

Output FizzBuzz to 100. Start with nothing.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #26 / 177
  • Number of attempts: 7
Get rid of html tags - 368 entries

Want to read more about Vim's background? Then get rid of those html tags...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #188 / 217
  • Number of attempts: 4
Change the content of a string - 1457 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #61 / 552
  • Number of attempts: 3
Deleting folded text - 338 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: 19
  • Position: #27 / 113
  • Number of attempts: 6
Sort and add attributes - 1321 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #82 / 527
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add fold markers to a .c file - 550 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #13 / 170
  • Number of attempts: 10
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1348 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: #34 / 379
  • Number of attempts: 3
Braces or Brackets? - 870 entries

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

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 38
  • Position: #62 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 6
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3290 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #155 / 729
  • Number of attempts: 12
Flodder-challenge - 1086 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #45 / 305
  • Number of attempts: 6
Simple text editing with Vim - 12233 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #37 / 3567
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6512 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #200 / 1603
  • Number of attempts: 15
You-Siang Lin
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entered into 87 challenges

contributed 0 challenges