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 - 33990 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: #3318 / 7510
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4704 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #540 / 1292
  • Number of attempts: 6
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6392 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #505 / 1561
  • Number of attempts: 12
Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 867 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #176 / 450
  • Number of attempts: 2
Search and Replace 0 - 5131 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #968 / 1672
  • Number of attempts: 4
comments galore - 1079 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #345 / 431
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap assigned value - 681 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #223 / 262
  • Number of attempts: 4
Collect List - 4336 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #1170 / 1198
  • Number of attempts: 4
Fix the XML - 1050 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #119 / 291
  • Number of attempts: 8
I forgot quotes - 16187 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #2609 / 4222
  • Number of attempts: 4
quotes inside quotes - 3201 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: #1072 / 1092
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 13034 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1233 / 3988
  • Number of attempts: 7
Enumerate words - 272 entries

Enumerate the unique words in order.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #75 / 94
  • Number of attempts: 2
Transposition - 109 entries

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

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 97
  • Position: #33 / 33
  • Number of attempts: 1
Groups magic - 168 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #32 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 3
Prefixes and suffixes - 664 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #192 / 206
  • Number of attempts: 2
abcd > a b c d - 300 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #50 / 229
  • Number of attempts: 1
The name of the game - 682 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #345 / 366
  • Number of attempts: 2
lamb had a little Mary - 655 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #58 / 178
  • Number of attempts: 4
Append semicolon after expressions - 1071 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #309 / 425
  • Number of attempts: 6
Remove semicolons after expressions - 676 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #54 / 268
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 5121 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #760 / 1762
  • Number of attempts: 4
The meaning - 581 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #166 / 366
  • Number of attempts: 1
A Simple One - 1079 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 / 677
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reverse Simple Deletion - 870 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #263 / 465
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment, increment, increment.... - 705 entries

Vim likes macros

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #261 / 415
  • Number of attempts: 2
Braces or Brackets? - 1199 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: #334 / 360
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 13603 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1146 / 3897
  • Number of attempts: 14

Contributed Challenges

quotes inside quotes - 3201 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