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.

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

Played Challenges

V to the i - 4751 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #206 / 1879
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #245 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 7
Just the middle - 11360 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #278 / 4164
  • Number of attempts: 2
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 938 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: 42
  • Position: #113 / 364
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap assigned value - 624 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #52 / 249
  • Number of attempts: 2
VimGolfNight - 536 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #48 / 343
  • Number of attempts: 2
readability - 312 entries

Make the code readable by adding some spaces

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #49 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 15931 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #179 / 4161
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vim tetris - 352 entries

Vim can play tetris too!

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #56 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 2
Split the words - 356 entries

Add the spaces manually if you must, but if you use Vim's spell checking feature wisely, I think you'll save a LARGE number of strokes.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 41
  • Position: #85 / 108
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10624 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #219 / 3666
  • Number of attempts: 3
attr_aligner - 3444 entries

Two attr keywords. Two separate indentations. Align the colons.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #5 / 692
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ninjas Leaderboard - 85 entries

The two lines in "Start file" has an obfuscated email address. Second line give an index (from 1 to 30) to the chars list of the first line, for example, the first char of email (n) is in position 25, second char (i) is in position 19 and s.o.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #22 / 39
  • Number of attempts: 1
Counting in binary - 477 entries

"a" represents 0; "A" represents 1. Start from zero and count to 15.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #35 / 113
  • Number of attempts: 3
Letter case trickery - 1594 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #41 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 3
Untangle my tail, please! - 57 entries

You know, this words were playing to chase their tails and Oops! What happened? Now we have a complete mess, their tails are totally tangled, can you please help them to untangle their tails?

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #17 / 31
  • Number of attempts: 1
quotes inside quotes - 3125 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: 14
  • Position: #38 / 1072
  • Number of attempts: 4
Top X - 191 entries

The End File is the Top 10 Vimgolf Leaderboard at June 29, 2013. This is a second version, with a great contribution of @udioica. X is ten in Roman,a numeric system in ancient Rome

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #15 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 2
Sort the VimGolf challenges by popularity - 345 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: #15 / 105
  • Number of attempts: 4
Number an outline - 249 entries

The indent and words are right, but the numbers are all wrong.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #4 / 75
  • Number of attempts: 3
Words in parens - 12854 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #64 / 3945
  • Number of attempts: 5
Assign list - 169 entries

Assign list elements to matrix

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #23 / 59
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hole-in-one - 1012 entries

Lets take this golf thing literally.. Drive off the tee into the hole, and of course you don't strike the ball completely clean.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #28 / 302
  • Number of attempts: 3
Delete unwanted lines - 396 entries

Delete all lines which does not end in "o.."

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #73 / 225
  • Number of attempts: 1
Prefixes and suffixes - 591 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #68 / 192
  • Number of attempts: 3
The name of the game - 650 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #137 / 356
  • Number of attempts: 3
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1581 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: #36 / 439
  • Number of attempts: 2
Stairs Indenting - 448 entries

Indent each line with <line number> whitespaces.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #108 / 193
  • Number of attempts: 2
Saving the hashes(#) - 1992 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: #11 / 473
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vertical Limit - 2437 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #11 / 736
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2946 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #252 / 767
  • Number of attempts: 4
Append semicolon after expressions - 1005 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #67 / 403
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove noise from HTTP log - 695 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: #78 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5031 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #192 / 1735
  • Number of attempts: 5
The meaning - 558 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #205 / 356
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove dupes from array - 1336 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: #51 / 331
  • Number of attempts: 4
Numbering a List - 1859 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #236 / 639
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shebangs for all - 1912 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: 14
  • Position: #218 / 500
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reverse Simple Deletion - 832 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #14 / 454
  • Number of attempts: 3
The Cake is a Lie - 1286 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #157 / 512
  • Number of attempts: 4
Change the content of a string - 1475 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #116 / 557
  • Number of attempts: 4
Sort and add attributes - 1327 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #164 / 529
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1363 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: #84 / 383
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 12281 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #185 / 3580
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6557 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 32
  • Position: #67 / 1614
  • Number of attempts: 6
Stephen Drodge
Twitter:

I live in Northern Virginia and play a lot of Bridge.

entered into 45 challenges

contributed 0 challenges