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 - 34033 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: 25
  • Position: #3322 / 7519
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4707 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #541 / 1294
  • Number of attempts: 6
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6399 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #505 / 1564
  • Number of attempts: 12
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 873 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #176 / 455
  • Number of attempts: 2
Search and Replace 0 - 5167 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #973 / 1677
  • Number of attempts: 4
comments galore - 1101 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #346 / 433
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap assigned value - 696 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #225 / 264
  • Number of attempts: 4
Collect List - 4342 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #1171 / 1200
  • Number of attempts: 4
Fix the XML - 1052 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #120 / 292
  • Number of attempts: 8
I forgot quotes - 16240 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2612 / 4226
  • Number of attempts: 4
quotes inside quotes - 3203 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: 31
  • Position: #1074 / 1094
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 13058 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1238 / 3993
  • Number of attempts: 7
Enumerate words - 279 entries

Enumerate the unique words in order.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #76 / 96
  • Number of attempts: 2
Transposition - 126 entries

Transpose the original lines in separate columns, one for each line.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 97
  • Position: #34 / 34
  • Number of attempts: 1
Groups magic - 175 entries

Regexp or macros for string converting: (a) -> ___ (abc) -> ____ (abcd) -> ______ All in the '(' replace to _ multiply by char count + ()

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #33 / 102
  • Number of attempts: 3
Prefixes and suffixes - 669 entries

Generate all prefixes of "vimchallenge", then all suffixes.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #193 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
abcd > a b c d - 310 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #50 / 232
  • Number of attempts: 1
The name of the game - 704 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #351 / 372
  • Number of attempts: 2
lamb had a little Mary - 659 entries

"Mary" and "lamb" are swapped. Unswap them. Fast as you can.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #58 / 179
  • Number of attempts: 4
Append semicolon after expressions - 1088 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #311 / 427
  • Number of attempts: 6
Remove semicolons after expressions - 687 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #54 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5131 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #762 / 1766
  • Number of attempts: 4
The meaning - 589 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #166 / 369
  • Number of attempts: 1
A Simple One - 1094 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: #300 / 682
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reverse Simple Deletion - 875 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #264 / 467
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment, increment, increment.... - 710 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #263 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 2
Braces or Brackets? - 1209 entries

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

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 65
  • Position: #337 / 365
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 13667 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1148 / 3914
  • Number of attempts: 14

Contributed Challenges

quotes inside quotes - 3203 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 :)

Global Maquereau
Twitter:

entered into 28 challenges

contributed 1 challenges