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 - 34012 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: 28
  • Position: #4108 / 7513
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4705 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #996 / 1293
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 18903 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #2072 / 3904
  • Number of attempts: 4
Split line with dots - 2175 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #253 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 6
Com(m)a Trouble - 3993 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #376 / 910
  • Number of attempts: 5
From argument to object - 1566 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: 33
  • Position: #460 / 471
  • Number of attempts: 1
Copy three lines - 2923 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #433 / 647
  • Number of attempts: 5
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 584 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: 43
  • Position: #122 / 135
  • Number of attempts: 1
comment and uncomment code inline - 1182 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: 11
  • Position: #231 / 332
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11616 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #182 / 4255
  • Number of attempts: 8
Text to HTML Table - 198 entries

Turn the plain text table to an HTML table.

  • Best score: 52
  • Best player score: 60
  • Position: #40 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 2
Stairstep digits - 426 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #60 / 154
  • Number of attempts: 3
Turn a ninja to case-insensitive [Nn][Ii][Nn][Jj][Aa] regexp! - 75 entries

I bumped into this in a dailywtf code: http://pastebin.com/QApa5ycS I didn't want to translate a string whenever I wanted to be [Ss][Aa][Rr][Cc][Aa][Ss][Tt][Ii][Cc] on slack, so I figured a script (python, sed, whatever) would be helpful. Well, or a few vim keystroke!

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #5 / 42
  • Number of attempts: 2
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 886 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: 18
  • Position: #226 / 297
  • Number of attempts: 3
Nesting SASS - 302 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #6 / 102
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add to end of each line... kinda - 350 entries

Visual-block mode can be used to add something to the end of each line, even if they are of differing lengths. However, what if it's not quite at the end?

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #3 / 180
  • Number of attempts: 2
Combines all items - 322 entries

For each line that starts with the same number I want to combine its contents

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #12 / 143
  • Number of attempts: 2
Wrap text in quotes - 378 entries

All the blocks of text should be wrapped in quotation marks.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #104 / 124
  • Number of attempts: 2
Fun With The Diagonal - 116 entries

change the lowercase characters on the main diagonal to uppercase

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #2 / 86
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 8019 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1040 / 2157
  • Number of attempts: 5
7th Birthday - 237 entries

We have a bunch of numbers written from 0 to 9 in the order present in the text input file. The task is to create 7 by replacing the numbers with dashes.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #59 / 80
  • Number of attempts: 1
Free hyphen! - 199 entries

Just like "Inner hyphens", but I'm giving you a free hyphen to play with. Will your solution be any different?

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #46 / 97
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vim's not included features - 266 entries

Filter not included (-) features in a hypothetical installation of vim.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #68 / 70
  • Number of attempts: 1
Order and join - 1032 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #152 / 265
  • Number of attempts: 6
Paragraph breaks - 550 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #52 / 172
  • Number of attempts: 8
Inner hyphens - 155 entries

Yet another hyphen challenge. Adding 5 hyphens to a file shouldn't be too hard.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #32 / 90
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 830 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #163 / 187
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add Go XML to structure tags - 211 entries

The Go programming language can directly map XML to structure fields. Add the correct XML tag after each field.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #62 / 77
  • Number of attempts: 3
Restore order to the alphabet - 211 entries

The numbers are OK. The letters are wonky.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 56
  • Position: #73 / 74
  • Number of attempts: 4
Mirror Symmetry - 844 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #176 / 272
  • Number of attempts: 1
From A to B - 627 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #153 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 1
Rail fence transposition cipher - 109 entries

Solve a rail fence transposition cipher using vim. This ciphertext was created using two rails. Use vim to transpose the text and recover the original quote.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #27 / 28
  • Number of attempts: 10
Interleave lines - 209 entries

This is some kind of « paste -d'\n' c b a ». There are many ways to achieve this.. just find the shortest!

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 34
  • Position: #42 / 62
  • Number of attempts: 1
Logging with key - 343 entries

Sometimes it is better to log with meaningful key

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #71 / 90
  • Number of attempts: 1
Space out the alphabet - 1693 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #236 / 457
  • Number of attempts: 7
remove all lines in first part - 223 entries

From the second part, remove all lines in the first part. It can be useful when you have done something from a long list, you want to know what is not done yet!

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #65 / 68
  • Number of attempts: 2
Shuffled numbers - 255 entries

Each number is paired with the number it should follow. That's enough information to put them in order.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #86 / 99
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mute the second method of this script - 464 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #158 / 245
  • Number of attempts: 5
Sorting database text output - 236 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: 29
  • Position: #75 / 87
  • Number of attempts: 7
I forgot quotes - 16237 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #2106 / 4224
  • Number of attempts: 1

Contributed Challenges

Format java properties - 105 entries

Format java properties to a different format. The value which is the string following the first '=' cannot & should not change. All periods in the key get replaced with an underscore "_" and get a prefix of "b_".

Anoop Kumar
Twitter:

Aham Brahmaasmi. Ekam sadh vipra bahudha vadanti.

entered into 40 challenges

contributed 1 challenges