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 - 33354 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: 22
  • Position: #366 / 7358
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4535 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #366 / 1255
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 18615 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #1050 / 3841
  • Number of attempts: 3
vim = 22 / 7 - 447 entries

pi square vim

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #47 / 131
  • Number of attempts: 3
V to the i - 4743 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1132 / 1878
  • Number of attempts: 1
Extract argument from function - 2308 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #156 / 742
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 4790 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #763 / 1585
  • Number of attempts: 4
That hyphen - 2554 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #240 / 694
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 11346 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2114 / 4160
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make HTML List - 1039 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #50 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 5
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 936 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: 41
  • Position: #60 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5584 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #439 / 1257
  • Number of attempts: 5
JS notation to Immutable.js notation - 161 entries

Now Immutable.js made its way into many frontends. This challenge consists of a typical refactoring that many of us are facing now.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #21 / 60
  • Number of attempts: 2
FoodCritic023: Prefer conditional attributes - 178 entries

FoodCritic (www.foodcritic.io) is a lint tool for your Chef (learn.chef.io) cookbooks. FC023 indicates that you should prefer Chef guards over Ruby conditions. This challenge expects you to be able to fix this issue in a sample cookbook, given the FoodCritic output: ================================================================ FC023: Prefer conditional attributes: cookbooks/foo/recipes/default.rb:25 ================================================================ See http://www.foodcritic.io/#FC023 for more details about the changes being made.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #14 / 51
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add to end of each line... kinda - 323 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: #73 / 170
  • Number of attempts: 1
underscore_to_camelCase - 162 entries

Pointy haired boss decided we need to switch to camelCase. Let's get this over with.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #5 / 80
  • Number of attempts: 1
Fun With The Diagonal - 103 entries

change the lowercase characters on the main diagonal to uppercase

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #21 / 79
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7778 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #714 / 2095
  • Number of attempts: 3
Free hyphen! - 159 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: #49 / 85
  • Number of attempts: 1
Convert pasted text into Markdown - 21 entries

I often need to copy/paste text into Markdown files. The challenge here is to wrap the lines in a way that prefers breaks after periods, commas, or other logical demarcations. There should be no spaces at the beginning of a line.

  • Best score: 47
  • Best player score: 83
  • Position: #6 / 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
SQL to YAML - 45 entries

Should be easy with vim, or not?

  • Best score: 72
  • Best player score: 87
  • Position: #12 / 20
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vim's not included features - 210 entries

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

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #27 / 62
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 998 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #141 / 418
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mirrored text - 163 entries

backward and forward, and long enough to be challenging

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #34 / 69
  • Number of attempts: 2
lipsum lines - 251 entries

Convert a quoted block of text into strings in a list.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #34 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 2
Inner hyphens - 124 entries

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

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #33 / 77
  • Number of attempts: 1
Angular naming conventions - 295 entries

In angular, a directive name follows the camelCase convention. When the directive is used in an HTML template, the words are instead separated by a dash. Go from to the other the fastest!

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #55 / 113
  • Number of attempts: 2
Replace and keep the case - 407 entries

Replace all instance of plugin and Plugin to device and Device.

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #58 / 115
  • Number of attempts: 2
Scrambled numbers - 779 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #105 / 182
  • Number of attempts: 1
Manual SQL - 133 entries

Change select and insert queries to simulate inserting a new record.

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 53
  • Position: #11 / 47
  • Number of attempts: 4
ASCII Art - 82 entries

how good are you with simple regex?

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #12 / 52
  • Number of attempts: 1
Restore order to the alphabet - 188 entries

The numbers are OK. The letters are wonky.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #33 / 68
  • Number of attempts: 2
Mirror Symmetry - 798 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #101 / 266
  • Number of attempts: 2
Swap assigned value - 614 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #172 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 2
From A to B - 564 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #69 / 155
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4261 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #554 / 1185
  • Number of attempts: 2
VimGolfNight - 531 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #88 / 342
  • Number of attempts: 1
camel riding - 769 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #118 / 274
  • Number of attempts: 3
readability - 312 entries

Make the code readable by adding some spaces

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #122 / 148
  • Number of attempts: 1
Logging with key - 301 entries

Sometimes it is better to log with meaningful key

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #27 / 86
  • Number of attempts: 5
Space out the alphabet - 1627 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #51 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 4
remove all lines in first part - 190 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: 15
  • Position: #28 / 65
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fix the XML - 996 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #80 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 5
Line 'em up! - 392 entries

It can be so hard to keep everything neatly lined-up. Somebody clearly hasn't bothered here. Tidy it up, please!

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #46 / 110
  • Number of attempts: 4
Shuffled numbers - 234 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: 16
  • Position: #63 / 93
  • Number of attempts: 1
ASCII box - 325 entries

Don't forget to fix typos!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #34 / 104
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mute the second method of this script - 447 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #108 / 237
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sorting database text output - 219 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: 25
  • Position: #47 / 81
  • Number of attempts: 3
Condensed Cases - 788 entries

Apple's new programming language, Swift, allows two style of case statements: 1) one Enum case on each line, or 2) multiple Enum cases on a single line. Convert the following from the first case (no pun intended) to the second type.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #86 / 242
  • Number of attempts: 3
Happy TvvO - 403 entries

Don’t forget the past, learn from it. Happy New Year.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #173 / 200
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 15923 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #1271 / 4159
  • Number of attempts: 3
vim1001 - 275 entries

change number 1001 into a "vim1001 sequence". (My first challenge, hope it is not too bad... )

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #37 / 107
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3170 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #332 / 1127
  • Number of attempts: 2
Count both ways - 997 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #80 / 350
  • Number of attempts: 3
NBCU Weekly Challenge - Test - 243 entries

Just testing.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #49 / 114
  • Number of attempts: 1
Lisp Condense - 438 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #41 / 154
  • Number of attempts: 1
120 Degrees - 468 entries

Rotate that triangle.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #118 / 143
  • Number of attempts: 1
Gray area - 724 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #88 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 2
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1120 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #46 / 293
  • Number of attempts: 6
Don't know what this is - 1978 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #191 / 578
  • Number of attempts: 3
Two become one - 710 entries

We have two c arrays and want to make one two dimensional out of it. Can we do that?

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #40 / 205
  • Number of attempts: 2
Where should I put the Newline? - 859 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #172 / 430
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vim tetris - 352 entries

Vim can play tetris too!

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #40 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 4
Mess in revision history - 1157 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #86 / 245
  • Number of attempts: 4
Shuffle puzzle - 317 entries

Sort the lines in each indent group, and sort the groups. That's the pattern. Or just move lines around manually to get a better score.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #43 / 101
  • Number of attempts: 3
Going underground.... - 330 entries

Simple reformatting: in this case changing from the format London underground supplies its customers with, to the format that Google Calendar likes...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #18 / 124
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 27
  • Position: #25 / 108
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10616 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #2090 / 3663
  • Number of attempts: 1
attr_aligner - 3444 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #212 / 692
  • Number of attempts: 3
Counting in binary - 477 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #18 / 113
  • Number of attempts: 7
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: 11
  • Position: #277 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 3
quotes inside quotes - 3124 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: 16
  • Position: #537 / 1071
  • Number of attempts: 2
Words in parens - 12850 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #2544 / 3944
  • Number of attempts: 1
Pairs of numbers - 349 entries

Line 1 represents x, line 2 y-data. Bring the corresponding pairs in the form "[x,y]\n"

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #60 / 132
  • Number of attempts: 3
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: 18
  • Position: #125 / 302
  • Number of attempts: 2
Minimalist Limerick - 516 entries

Reproduce this lovely poem.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #24 / 171
  • Number of attempts: 4
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: 23
  • Position: #7 / 52
  • Number of attempts: 2
Prefixes and suffixes - 591 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #33 / 192
  • Number of attempts: 4
The name of the game - 646 entries

End up with the name of the game.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #208 / 354
  • Number of attempts: 1
lamb had a little Mary - 582 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #46 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 2
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1569 entries

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

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #222 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 21
  • Position: #84 / 473
  • Number of attempts: 3
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1084 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #283 / 440
  • Number of attempts: 1
Recursively Palindrome - 239 entries

Note that there are 2^6-1 characters.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #29 / 73
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vertical Limit - 2436 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #133 / 735
  • Number of attempts: 5
Exchanging Quotes - 820 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 31
  • Position: #37 / 224
  • Number of attempts: 6
replacing each line of a block selection - 2925 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #141 / 764
  • Number of attempts: 9
Switch function arguments - 2064 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #279 / 647
  • Number of attempts: 1
Append semicolon after expressions - 1002 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #336 / 401
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove noise from HTTP log - 693 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: 16
  • Position: #183 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 5028 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #758 / 1734
  • Number of attempts: 1
Format the output - 145 entries

Sometimes your standard out is a little hard to read. Take this multilevel hash and make it human readable.

  • Best score: 35
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #17 / 39
  • Number of attempts: 4
Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 973 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #20 / 185
  • Number of attempts: 6
Make it more readable - 1952 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #173 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove dupes from array - 1332 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: 18
  • Position: #99 / 330
  • Number of attempts: 5
HTML to Haml - 842 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 27
  • Position: #38 / 202
  • Number of attempts: 5
Numbering a List - 1855 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #8 / 638
  • Number of attempts: 1
Java Array2List - 225 entries

Convert an java array initializer into a list.

  • Best score: 67
  • Best player score: 111
  • Position: #54 / 83
  • Number of attempts: 2
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1216 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: 13
  • Position: #163 / 398
  • Number of attempts: 2
Assignment Alignment - 829 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #39 / 215
  • Number of attempts: 3
Shebangs for all - 1904 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: 12
  • Position: #142 / 497
  • Number of attempts: 4
A Simple One - 996 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: #424 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reverse Simple Deletion - 832 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #320 / 454
  • Number of attempts: 1
The Cake is a Lie - 1284 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #215 / 511
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 1007 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #188 / 337
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remember FizzBuzz? - 653 entries

Output FizzBuzz to 100. Start with nothing.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #38 / 177
  • Number of attempts: 6
Change the content of a string - 1457 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #277 / 552
  • Number of attempts: 3
Sort and add attributes - 1321 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #196 / 527
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1348 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: 21
  • Position: #210 / 379
  • Number of attempts: 1
Braces or Brackets? - 870 entries

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

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #56 / 284
  • Number of attempts: 3
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 3290 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #103 / 729
  • Number of attempts: 6
Flodder-challenge - 1088 entries

Replace the text the most efficient and win!

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 28
  • Position: #61 / 306
  • Number of attempts: 7
Simple text editing with Vim - 12233 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1470 / 3567
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6512 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #229 / 1603
  • Number of attempts: 7
Dimitar Dimitrov
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entered into 114 challenges

contributed 0 challenges