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 - 32746 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: #1131 / 7235
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values - 4390 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #194 / 1230
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18240 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #330 / 3760
  • Number of attempts: 7
V to the i - 4596 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #524 / 1837
  • Number of attempts: 6
Split line with dots - 2075 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #448 / 616
  • Number of attempts: 1
multiple cursor alternative - 1413 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 29
  • Position: #316 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 2
From argument to object - 1250 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #62 / 412
  • Number of attempts: 5
Every other line - 2773 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #203 / 676
  • Number of attempts: 5
Copy three lines - 2751 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #76 / 616
  • Number of attempts: 6
Extract argument from function - 2186 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #192 / 721
  • Number of attempts: 6
Search and Replace 0 - 4534 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #502 / 1507
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2464 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #169 / 674
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 971 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #71 / 290
  • Number of attempts: 5
Just the middle - 11074 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Position: #1008 / 4088
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make HTML List - 982 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #69 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 3
Un"finnish"ed Work - 104 entries

Replace å by a, ä by a and ö by o.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #51 / 54
  • Number of attempts: 2
Todo list specification - 350 entries

The every item on the todo list must be done today. Modify the list to reflect that.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #56 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 1
Text to HTML Table - 156 entries

Turn the plain text table to an HTML table.

  • Best score: 52
  • Best player score: 52
  • Position: #18 / 45
  • Number of attempts: 3
Stairstep digits - 233 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #31 / 111
  • Number of attempts: 3
Missing Library and a Typo - 815 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #59 / 200
  • Number of attempts: 6
Basic renumbering - 5393 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #85 / 1218
  • Number of attempts: 10
Simple addition - 288 entries

The right side of the equation is already there. We just need the left one now.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #33 / 105
  • Number of attempts: 1
Interactive git rebase changing commands - 155 entries

How to change the action of some commits in git rebase dialog.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #43 / 73
  • Number of attempts: 2
Adam's challenge - 903 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #50 / 251
  • Number of attempts: 5
Create a table - 285 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #26 / 94
  • Number of attempts: 4
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 789 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #95 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 2
Nesting SASS - 246 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #34 / 87
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vice versa - 7414 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #321 / 2011
  • Number of attempts: 4
C Reformatting - 675 entries

You may use Visual mode... or not. #uppercase

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #12 / 156
  • Number of attempts: 8
Order and join - 846 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #41 / 233
  • Number of attempts: 6
comments galore - 954 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #236 / 405
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 769 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #28 / 178
  • Number of attempts: 9
Align commas - 1000 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #112 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 4
Hello ${world} - 291 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #48 / 90
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add Go XML to structure tags - 143 entries

The Go programming language can directly map XML to structure fields. Add the correct XML tag after each field.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #10 / 60
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 2234 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #76 / 422
  • Number of attempts: 7
From A to B - 533 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #42 / 149
  • Number of attempts: 7
Collect List - 4146 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #336 / 1159
  • Number of attempts: 2
Space out the alphabet - 1542 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #78 / 421
  • Number of attempts: 3
I forgot quotes - 15639 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #651 / 4095
  • Number of attempts: 4
-a-b-c- - 3077 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #216 / 1099
  • Number of attempts: 5
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1081 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #64 / 286
  • Number of attempts: 9
Don't know what this is - 1913 entries

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

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #89 / 563
  • Number of attempts: 6
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10507 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1193 / 3626
  • Number of attempts: 2
attr_aligner - 3347 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #140 / 677
  • Number of attempts: 15
quotes inside quotes - 2996 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: 3
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #282 / 1037
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12677 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #819 / 3903
  • Number of attempts: 5
Create a pandoc compatible table - 164 entries

In [this vimcast][1], a featured gist from Tim Pope shows how to quickly make a simple table structure. How fast can you convert it to pandoc's markdown style? [1]: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/aligning-text-with-tabular-vim/

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #24 / 49
  • Number of attempts: 3
Saving the hashes(#) - 1929 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: #52 / 461
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vertical Limit - 2300 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #66 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 4
Exchanging Quotes - 781 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #87 / 216
  • Number of attempts: 2
replacing each line of a block selection - 2740 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #186 / 724
  • Number of attempts: 6
Switch function arguments - 1933 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #6 / 617
  • Number of attempts: 2
Append semicolon after expressions - 912 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #143 / 374
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reverse and double space - 433 entries

Reverse the order of the given lines and double space everything

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #28 / 179
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remove noise from HTTP log - 641 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: #15 / 255
  • Number of attempts: 3
constructor - 165 entries

coding a constructor for a simple class

  • Best score: 59
  • Best player score: 98
  • Position: #30 / 56
  • Number of attempts: 2
Remove semicolons after expressions - 511 entries

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

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 6
  • Position: #11 / 225
  • Number of attempts: 3
un-C-escape string - 53 entries

Convert escape sequences to characters

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #26 / 47
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 4863 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #111 / 1688
  • Number of attempts: 5
The meaning - 515 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #101 / 330
  • Number of attempts: 2
Format the output - 102 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: 46
  • Position: #17 / 34
  • Number of attempts: 2
Calculate the table totals - 107 entries

Go ahead... commit the treachery of using vim as a spreadsheet.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 51
  • Position: #20 / 39
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 787 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #38 / 168
  • Number of attempts: 9
Replacing some words - 405 entries

How fast could it be?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #17 / 142
  • Number of attempts: 3
Multiplication table. - 183 entries

Create a multiplication table.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #12 / 60
  • Number of attempts: 3
Make it more readable - 1852 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #22 / 611
  • Number of attempts: 6
Line Zipper - 403 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #38 / 197
  • Number of attempts: 3
remove dupes from array - 1260 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: #36 / 321
  • Number of attempts: 8
Alphabetize the directory - 261 entries

Put the contacts and their information in alphabetical order.

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #8 / 95
  • Number of attempts: 6
Complete the hex array data - 188 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #21 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 3
Complete the hex array data (Part II) - 129 entries

Do not use external tools(e.g. tac, seq) [My interpretation of Rule #7]

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #30 / 63
  • Number of attempts: 3
Sort entries based on date - 315 entries

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

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #32 / 104
  • Number of attempts: 8
Overall Vimgolf Rank - 137 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: 30
  • Position: #28 / 53
  • Number of attempts: 3
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2774 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #97 / 632
  • Number of attempts: 7
Simple text editing with Vim - 11354 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #80 / 3335
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 5804 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 35
  • Position: #358 / 1438
  • Number of attempts: 13
Benoit Mortgat
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entered into 77 challenges

contributed 0 challenges