VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters - 664 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #178 / 379
Number of attempts: 1

Search and Replace 0 - 4771 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #209 / 1581
Number of attempts: 2

Interweave two blocks of text - 615 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: 15
Position: #3 / 210
Number of attempts: 4

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 930 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: #18 / 361
Number of attempts: 3

Swap assigned value - 600 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #11 / 244
Number of attempts: 3

Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 344 entries

"Sort by popularity" is a good order to play the challenges. Not perfect, but you could do a lot worse. ;) Input is a sample copy-pasted from vimgolf.com. Some of the challenge names have digits that will get in your way, so read ":help :sort" for hints on sorting with a regex. When you're done, try your solution on the full list!

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #10 / 104
Number of attempts: 3

Words in parens - 12824 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 15
Position: #1169 / 3939
Number of attempts: 4

Draw the Go board - 140 entries

which is a 19×19 lines board. Here we use ascii characters only for simplicity. See diff file to get a sense. (See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game))

Best score: 50
Best player score: 64
Position: #16 / 48
Number of attempts: 3

paste indent correction - JS - 102 entries

You copy some javascript code from a website and paste it into vim, it does not look good!

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #5 / 57
Number of attempts: 2

Parsing with CSV: Unify lines and result. - 165 entries

col1;col2;col3;col4 A;1;4;5 A;3;4; A;1;4; # New output: col1;col2;col3;col4 A;1(2x);3;4(3x);5 any ideas?

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #15 / 73
Number of attempts: 2

Word frequency alignment - 273 entries

You've got to align the second column, but the spacing is inconvenient and there are nasty tabs in the way. If you're a "real Vim ninja," this could be very quick indeed...

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #62 / 156
Number of attempts: 1

Minimalist Limerick - 514 entries

Reproduce this lovely poem.

Best score: 31
Best player score: 31
Position: #3 / 170
Number of attempts: 2

XML to JSON - 44 entries

Convert this xml file into json.

Best score: 75
Best player score: 87
Position: #4 / 17
Number of attempts: 3

Coordinates placeholder - 62 entries

Place coordinates instead of target search.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 25
Position: #17 / 36
Number of attempts: 1

Define to require - 118 entries

When JSHint is enabled, there's a rule that doesn't let you have more than 6 arguments in a function, so the moment you need to add a 7th argument, you need to do a refactoring.

Best score: 62
Best player score: 65
Position: #10 / 48
Number of attempts: 6

fib.c cleanup - 66 entries

cleanup the file

Best score: 15
Best player score: 16
Position: #29 / 54
Number of attempts: 1

REDRUM - 149 entries

If you remember "The Shinning", the first time you saw the bloody word REDRUM you probably thinked "What the Hell is that?" Well, then you know that you need a little help from a looking-glass to make sense of it. Now it's time to use vim like a mirror to reveal the message.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #12 / 61
Number of attempts: 3

Enumerate words - 242 entries

Enumerate the unique words in order.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 25
Position: #10 / 87
Number of attempts: 5

Execute immediate SQL - 85 entries

Sql string tranformation ...

Best score: 60
Best player score: 67
Position: #6 / 30
Number of attempts: 8

Circle in a square - 140 entries

Probably looks more like "Egg in a rectangle" in most fonts, but it's actually 23x23.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 34
Position: #20 / 52
Number of attempts: 2

Block Fun 1 - 188 entries

Manipulate the columns to produce desired result.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #10 / 72
Number of attempts: 5

Groups magic - 146 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: 13
Position: #9 / 88
Number of attempts: 3

Prefixes and suffixes - 591 entries

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

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #5 / 192
Number of attempts: 4

abcd > a b c d - 279 entries

transform the single spaces into 4 spaces repeat for each line

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #90 / 217
Number of attempts: 3

Readable Rubyhash - 243 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: 23
Best player score: 26
Position: #21 / 91
Number of attempts: 4

Checkerboard case pattern - 144 entries

All the squares are white. Make some of them black. But only the right ones.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 20
Position: #34 / 57
Number of attempts: 1

NATO phonetic alphabet - 498 entries

Transform the series of words into a list.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #10 / 189
Number of attempts: 3

Shuffle and Sort - 201 entries

The values where sorted incorrectly. Get them back to how they are supposed to be

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #7 / 63
Number of attempts: 5

A simple change - 434 entries

Just change the numbers in the most efficient way ...

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #13 / 187
Number of attempts: 1

SFD-ROC: The Quick Brown Fox - 168 entries

Someone has vandalized our text (again). Please fix to read: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 25
Position: #6 / 100
Number of attempts: 3

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Vim - 398 entries

Someone has vandalized this text file and replaced the beginning character of one word in each line with a Big "X." Please remove the big X's, and fix each line to read "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog."

Best score: 8
Best player score: 10
Position: #51 / 186
Number of attempts: 2

The name of the game - 643 entries

End up with the name of the game.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #101 / 353
Number of attempts: 3

lamb had a little Mary - 570 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #8 / 160
Number of attempts: 6

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1550 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #21 / 435
Number of attempts: 6

SFD-ROC: Pipe Dreams - 99 entries

Move the pipes so they match the output.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #4 / 44
Number of attempts: 4

Stairs Indenting - 442 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #2 / 191
Number of attempts: 6

Unwrap the text of an email message - 182 entries

Reverse of "Wrap the text of an email message to 79 characters". gq and gw are great for wrapping paragraphs. But sometimes other programs choke on your wrapped lines. What's the best way to un-gq?

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #16 / 72
Number of attempts: 1

Python to Ruby - 195 entries

Convert this Python code to Ruby. NOTE: This program likely won't run.

Best score: 24
Best player score: 25
Position: #5 / 58
Number of attempts: 7

Saving the hashes(#) - 1978 entries

The following file is copied from vimcasts.org(Its only for learning purpose,hope the site owner doesn't mind it), its probably the easiest of challenges.Our goal is to delete every line which doesn't contain a hash signs. The remaining hash signs with numbers are then sorted to get the final output.

Best score: 20
Best player score: 20
Position: #5 / 471
Number of attempts: 4

SFD-ROC: ROT13 Phonics - 96 entries

A is for apple, b is for ball, etc... This familiar phonics poem has been rotated 13 characters. Make the letter match the word.

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #37 / 70
Number of attempts: 1

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1068 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #27 / 436
Number of attempts: 3

you're stuck on jQuery < 1.7 - 335 entries

replace calls to jQuery 1.7+'s `on` with calls to pre 1.7 `bind`

Best score: 25
Best player score: 25
Position: #7 / 110
Number of attempts: 3

Vertical Limit - 2409 entries

transform a succession of one word lines to a an array of strings

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #4 / 730
Number of attempts: 6

Aligning function arguments to match a specific coding style - 218 entries

Most projects have specific coding style guidelines. In this case, the argument list must be broken into a new line for each argument, with the argument names right aligned, taking into account pointers.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #27 / 66
Number of attempts: 3

Exchanging Quotes - 801 entries

Sometimes you need to exchange a choice of quotes in some code.

Best score: 30
Best player score: 31
Position: #28 / 221
Number of attempts: 5

replacing each line of a block selection - 2912 entries

replace each line's ../assets/js with /javascripts

Best score: 18
Best player score: 19
Position: #131 / 761
Number of attempts: 4

Switch function arguments - 2035 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #54 / 641
Number of attempts: 2

Append semicolon after expressions - 995 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #38 / 399
Number of attempts: 4

Reverse and double space - 475 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #44 / 191
Number of attempts: 3

Remove noise from HTTP log - 677 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #61 / 267
Number of attempts: 2

Remove semicolons after expressions - 607 entries

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

Best score: 6
Best player score: 6
Position: #58 / 254
Number of attempts: 2

un-C-escape string - 55 entries

Convert escape sequences to characters

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #31 / 49
Number of attempts: 1

switch variable - 5016 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #145 / 1729
Number of attempts: 2

The meaning - 548 entries

Numbers are fun!

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #178 / 351
Number of attempts: 30

Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 953 entries

convert an ugly spreadsheet copy/paste into a CSV format.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 20
Position: #17 / 184
Number of attempts: 11

Replacing some words - 418 entries

How fast could it be?

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #19 / 147
Number of attempts: 2

Sort the cardinal numbers - 288 entries

Maybe a simple challenge.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #34 / 145
Number of attempts: 2

Make it more readable - 1940 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #31 / 637
Number of attempts: 4

Line Zipper - 450 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #4 / 210
Number of attempts: 4

remove dupes from array - 1324 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: #46 / 328
Number of attempts: 9

PHP Array Syntax -> MailChimp Merge Syntax - 506 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: 24
Position: #38 / 147
Number of attempts: 3

Case preserving word replacement - 444 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: #48 / 178
Number of attempts: 3

Sort entries based on date - 359 entries

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

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #36 / 113
Number of attempts: 2

Happy New Year! - 139 entries

This is a simple new year's challenge.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 24
Position: #29 / 56
Number of attempts: 5

imports alignment (python) - 657 entries

Align as one import per line.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #34 / 194
Number of attempts: 3

Generate Fibonacci Numbers - 256 entries

Use your super vim powers to generate Fibonacci Numbers.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #13 / 97
Number of attempts: 5

Rotating Philosophers Problem - 386 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: #22 / 163
Number of attempts: 2

HTML to Haml - 838 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 31
Position: #71 / 201
Number of attempts: 2

expand a list comprehension (python) - 297 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: #12 / 106
Number of attempts: 5

Generate English Alphabets - 456 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

Best score: 19
Best player score: 25
Position: #125 / 198
Number of attempts: 1

Overall Vimgolf Rank - 161 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: 23
Position: #2 / 57
Number of attempts: 6

Insert a Markdown link - 429 entries

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

Best score: 22
Best player score: 24
Position: #60 / 143
Number of attempts: 1

Numbering a List - 1849 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 17
Position: #83 / 636
Number of attempts: 2

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 - 146 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: #18 / 69
Number of attempts: 5

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1203 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: #50 / 395
Number of attempts: 6

Assignment Alignment - 824 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #31 / 215
Number of attempts: 10

Shebangs for all - 1860 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: 11
Position: #8 / 488
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 990 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: #319 / 639
Number of attempts: 1

Table Reshuffle - 366 entries

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

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #3 / 132
Number of attempts: 9

Reverse and count - 435 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: 24
Position: #68 / 169
Number of attempts: 3

Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 236 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #30 / 85
Number of attempts: 3

Ruby 1.9 compat - 608 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: #39 / 229
Number of attempts: 2

Reverse Simple Deletion - 825 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #8 / 451
Number of attempts: 2

Increment, increment, increment.... - 639 entries

Vim likes macros

Best score: 10
Best player score: 12
Position: #249 / 397
Number of attempts: 1

Indentation - 494 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #3 / 168
Number of attempts: 6

Hatsuyume - 442 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 18
Position: #16 / 173
Number of attempts: 5

The Cake is a Lie - 1278 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #141 / 509
Number of attempts: 3

Fix the Haiku - 273 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: 29
Position: #6 / 109
Number of attempts: 7

Context insensitive completion 0 - 500 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: #80 / 231
Number of attempts: 3

Context Insensitive completion 1 - 451 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #103 / 229
Number of attempts: 1

Almost encrypted - 196 entries

Convert the first paragraph to be even less readable.

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #97 / 144
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 998 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #68 / 336
Number of attempts: 3

Reformat some Python - 577 entries

Fix some very bizarrely laid-out code.

Best score: 34
Best player score: 34
Position: #27 / 228
Number of attempts: 5

Reformat a C golf submission - 547 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: 40
Position: #165 / 198
Number of attempts: 1

Reverse characters in a line - 701 entries

You have everything you need, just not in the right order. Mastermind would give you 26 white pegs.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #5 / 248
Number of attempts: 6

Reformat most common surnames - 625 entries

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

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #8 / 194
Number of attempts: 5

Get rid of html tags - 356 entries

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

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #2 / 213
Number of attempts: 3

Change the content of a string - 1442 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #107 / 546
Number of attempts: 1

Sort and add attributes - 1287 entries

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

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #151 / 515
Number of attempts: 2

Add fold markers to a .c file - 531 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: #34 / 167
Number of attempts: 3

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1281 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: #78 / 367
Number of attempts: 3

Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3206 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #73 / 710
Number of attempts: 9

Flodder-challenge - 1038 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

Best score: 27
Best player score: 27
Position: #11 / 298
Number of attempts: 11

Simple text editing with Vim - 12050 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #135 / 3530
Number of attempts: 2

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6374 entries

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

Best score: 32
Best player score: 33
Position: #219 / 1573
Number of attempts: 5

Marco Hinz
Twitter: @_mhinz_

Curious.