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

html paragraph to table - 451 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 60
  • Number of attempts: 4
Put the months in order - 603 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 43
  • Number of attempts: 1
Python challenge - 115 entries

Change the types of the variables in the list from str to float, while keeping the truncation.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 38
  • Number of attempts: 1
Braces or Brackets? - 635 entries

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

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 35
  • Number of attempts: 8
Sort and add attributes - 1101 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Number of attempts: 2
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1035 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 32
  • Number of attempts: 2
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 326 entries

Originally asked as question on reddit by kpthunder: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/9fvsro/what_is_the_most_efficient_way_to_go_about/

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 6
Exchanging Quotes - 769 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 8
convert yml into java pojo field - 720 entries

How fast vim can create fields for java pojo i.e class declaration referring to a (simple) yml file

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 30
  • Number of attempts: 4
Extract wireshark capture filter - 132 entries

Extract wireshark capture filter from IP plan

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 5
Two become one - 682 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
  • Number of attempts: 6
Hello ${world} - 238 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 6
Array propagate - 253 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 3
Line under headers - 730 entries

Put a line under each header, and remove the other markdown formatting.

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 7
Hole-in-one - 952 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: 23
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 4474 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 7
HTML to Haml - 738 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 7
Create a table - 251 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
Replace and keep the case - 351 entries

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

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 4
Make it more readable - 1775 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1325 entries

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

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 6
camel riding - 713 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 3
ASCII-art Histogram - 199 entries

Create an ASCCI-art histogram for the given numbers. Make sure not to leave trailing whitespaces. Thanks to VimGolf I recently discovered a feature of Vim thAT blew my mind. I'm curious to see what real ninjas make of it ;-)

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 7
Order and join - 773 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 10703 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Todo list specification - 302 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
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2258 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 9
From argument to object - 1135 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 736 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
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 6304 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Remove quotes after first field - 189 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 9
Build a six - 245 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 6
Condensed Cases - 705 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
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make HTML List - 917 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 6
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1087 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
  • Number of attempts: 1
Resort and deup a CSV list - 122 entries

I'm always adding items to a sorted list. There has to be a better way dedup and resort the lists. There are multiple lists with varying lengths to discourage manual sorting. Also Australia's animals are weird.

  • Best score: 44
  • Best player score: 46
  • Number of attempts: 3
Numbering a List - 1754 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Align commas - 896 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: 12
  • Number of attempts: 8
Gray area - 655 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add semicolons - 4751 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 4451 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mute the second method of this script - 417 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hash staircase - 36 entries

Can you use a strategy to come up with this pattern?

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
From A to B - 514 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Assignment Alignment - 707 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Append semicolon after expressions - 881 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
Where should I put the Newline? - 809 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 205 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array Transposition - 151 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 9
Count both ways - 899 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 6
Add string initializers to an enum - 432 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4150 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
change parenthesis - 192 entries

change the pair of braces into a pair of parentheses

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 945 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 6
Change the content of a string - 1257 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap values inside brackets - 1791 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
move titles next to url, in quotes - 355 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap the operands under comparison - 236 entries

Swap the operands under comparison to prevent null pointer exception (at least in java)

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 2187 entries

Someone was real stupid when placing his commas. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 495 entries

Convert strings in SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case. Examples: EMPLOYEE_NAME -> Employee Name REVENUE_YEAR_TO_DATE -> Revenue Year To Date SALARY -> Salary

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap values - 3790 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap assigned value - 500 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 9762 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 9782 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Cake is a Lie - 1140 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Space out the alphabet - 1420 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 3
Switch function arguments - 1857 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
Unsemantic linewrapping - 482 entries

[Inspired by a blog post I read: https://scott.mn/2014/02/21/semantic_linewrapping/. Text adapted.] Sometimes when editing a Markdown file, I wrap the lines semantically. Instead of inserting a newline at 70 columns (or whatever), or making paragraphs one long line, I put in newlines at a point that seems logical to me. This may seem silly, but it produces better diffs. Semantic linewrapping also makes editing snappier. I can delete, edit or insert sentences easily using linewise operations. Code-oriented text editors like Vim and [REDACTED] are really good at this kind of manipulation. Editing text that hasn't been wrapped semantically is a pain, though:

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 3
Mirror Symmetry - 727 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 5
Number Sort - 255 entries

sort the list of newline-separated numbers incrementally. Numbers are in the range 1 to 1000, with 500 missing

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Combines all items - 245 entries

For each line that starts with the same number I want to combine its contents

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Letterbox - 77 entries

Make a box!

  • Best score: 35
  • Best player score: 41
  • Number of attempts: 6
Song Transcription Oops - 164 entries

When transcribing vocal music to Canjo Tab you can start by finding the lowest note and assigning that to zero and working your way up from there. However, without fail, I tend to miscount the notes and when I am near done I find a lower note. I mark this with a "z". This means I have to increase all the previous ones by 1. just a sting of numbers :)

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 1374 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove noise from HTTP log - 620 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
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1030 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
  • Number of attempts: 2
multiple cursor alternative - 1179 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: 20
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 863 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: 10
  • Number of attempts: 6
Shebangs for all - 1643 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
  • Number of attempts: 4
Array transposition - 1770 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 10
That hyphen - 2263 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 8
Paragraph breaks - 417 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 5570 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 41
  • Number of attempts: 5
Cool or not? - 562 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4226 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 4
replacing each line of a block selection - 2604 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 5
Saving the hashes(#) - 1806 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
  • Number of attempts: 12
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 481 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 3634 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 12863 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 9
Convert Application Output to CSV - 135 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 3
Tables, Functions, Sprocs - 85 entries

In order to load some scripts into my database in the correct order I need to load tables first (t_), then functions (fn_), then stored procedures (sp_). The order of the t_ lines and the order of the sp_ lines should also match. Reorder the lines so they will load correctly.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 4
Missing Library and a Typo - 742 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
  • Number of attempts: 2
Minimalist Limerick - 488 entries

Reproduce this lovely poem.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 32
  • Number of attempts: 7
120 Degrees - 380 entries

Rotate that triangle.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 10
quotes inside quotes - 2844 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: 15
  • Number of attempts: 4
-a-b-c- - 2711 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
Generate a list of numbers - 254 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 2247 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Extract argument from function - 2061 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Angular naming conventions - 270 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: 21
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2036 entries

Remove identical text at the beginning of several lines and the closing parenthesis.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 5
Words in parens - 11443 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reorder the groups - 729 entries

Change the order so that the groups of fruit come before the vegetables.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
Simple, Practical, and Common - 27153 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
  • Number of attempts: 6
Around the clock - 150 entries

You'll want to use 2 special commands to complete this. If you haven't yet, read through 'input.txt', especially :help simple-changes

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
One number per line - 14410 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 9
Stairstep digits - 223 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
ninja substitution - 790 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
Make Fancy Header - 923 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
lamb had a little Mary - 507 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 8
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2603 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 10
Don't know what this is - 1809 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
  • Number of attempts: 8
remove dupes from array - 1253 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
  • Number of attempts: 3
Basic renumbering - 4854 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 11
Wrap text in quotes - 301 entries

All the blocks of text should be wrapped in quotation marks.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 4
Paragraph sort - 333 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fix the XML - 896 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vertical Limit - 2168 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 4
Team names - 1539 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
Prefixes and suffixes - 510 entries

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

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Mess in revision history - 1015 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 7
Lisp Condense - 392 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 540 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Copy three lines - 2256 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 753 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 10
Adam's challenge - 833 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: 19
  • Number of attempts: 5
Increment each number - 605 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 3
Bad Copy Syntax - 1102 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 6
Lory
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entered into 129 challenges

contributed 0 challenges