Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

Changelog, Rules & FAQ, updates: @vimgolf, RSS.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

delete swap - 1776 entries

delete all swap

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #19 / 550
  • Number of attempts: 1
Put a newline after every 10 lines in vim - 1657 entries

Goal is to put a newline after every 10 lines in vim.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #131 / 556
  • Number of attempts: 5
Rural Post - 4468 entries

Simple challenge to remove all but the post code on each line

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #33 / 1095
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33609 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: #191 / 7415
  • Number of attempts: 6
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6304 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #668 / 1536
  • Number of attempts: 3
One number per line - 18712 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1348 / 3859
  • Number of attempts: 3
V to the i - 4799 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #7 / 1892
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add semicolons - 10848 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1609 / 3061
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7902 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #395 / 1874
  • Number of attempts: 5
Copy three lines - 2872 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #299 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 3
Extract argument from function - 2355 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #307 / 752
  • Number of attempts: 2
Start coding format - 155 entries

I used to start coding with following format: int main(){ -(cursor here) }

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #47 / 72
  • Number of attempts: 1
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #286 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 11444 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1522 / 4193
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vice versa - 7903 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #675 / 2125
  • Number of attempts: 4
Sorting a glossary - 131 entries

Sort a glossary. Glossary head contains a header phrase ending with ':' and glossary body has multi line text indented with a tab.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #13 / 81
  • Number of attempts: 1
Order and join - 983 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #150 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 3
Manual SQL - 160 entries

Change select and insert queries to simulate inserting a new record.

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 74
  • Position: #36 / 50
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mirror Symmetry - 822 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #174 / 269
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 4298 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #686 / 1190
  • Number of attempts: 2
Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #139 / 444
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sort with uniq OpenEmbedded package names - 45 entries

For each line take 4th dirname of path. For example: "alsa-utils", "gawk-3.1.5", ... But! But if previous result is "files", take 3rd dirname instead. For example: "mktemp", "mklibs" ... If version is present in package name (dash is the separator character), take it. For example: "apt-0.9.9.4" prevails over "apt". And finally, use sort -u to get unique names!

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 61
  • Position: #12 / 15
  • Number of attempts: 6
Fix the XML - 1039 entries

The challenge consists in having a valid xml from an incomplete source.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #114 / 290
  • Number of attempts: 1
ASCII box - 347 entries

Don't forget to fix typos!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #74 / 107
  • Number of attempts: 2
Mute the second method of this script - 455 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #2 / 239
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sorting database text output - 223 entries

Sometimes it is nice to be able to quickly take column-formatted text output from the SQL command line and turn it into a list of useful data. In this case we want a unique, sorted list of the values from the second column combined into one comma-separated list. What is the fewest strokes you can do this in?

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #4 / 83
  • Number of attempts: 5
Condensed Cases - 804 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #102 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 1
Pretty format for variable declarations - 170 entries

Project standards demand the equal signs must be aligned for better readability.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #9 / 64
  • Number of attempts: 3
Happy TvvO - 426 entries

Don’t forget the past, learn from it. Happy New Year.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #63 / 205
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15977 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1995 / 4177
  • Number of attempts: 3
learn vim in short time - 240 entries

so happy to learn vim.because vim is awesome

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #7 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 1
vim1001 - 307 entries

change number 1001 into a "vim1001 sequence". (My first challenge, hope it is not too bad... )

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #46 / 110
  • Number of attempts: 1
Count both ways - 1022 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #139 / 354
  • Number of attempts: 1
NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 253 entries

Just testing.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #7 / 116
  • Number of attempts: 1
Change name of a variable - 179 entries

Replace the name of the $variable with the fastest move possible. The challenge is having a command that allow you to easily change the variable name even if its indented.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #39 / 137
  • Number of attempts: 1
Lisp Condense - 460 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #10 / 158
  • Number of attempts: 2
Gray area - 747 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #188 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 1
Don't know what this is - 2020 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: 12
  • Position: #181 / 584
  • Number of attempts: 5
Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #288 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10658 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #1852 / 3680
  • Number of attempts: 1
quotes inside quotes - 3159 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: 16
  • Position: #599 / 1078
  • Number of attempts: 2
Words in parens - 12929 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2158 / 3961
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #849 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 12740 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1398 / 3680
  • Number of attempts: 3
Eduardo
Twitter:

entered into 44 challenges

contributed 0 challenges