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

Remove noise from HTTP log - 631 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
  • Number of attempts: 1
Sort and add attributes - 1113 entries

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

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 33
  • Number of attempts: 2
Kolakoski sequence -- level 1 - 51 entries

Generate the Kolakoski sequence as described by its first 75 terms.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 2
Unsemantic linewrapping - 714 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: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Nesting SASS - 241 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Search and Replace 0 - 4479 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Cake is a Lie - 1168 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Santa's naughty / nice list - 75 entries

Christmas is here and Santa hasn't decided who's naughty or nice yet. He's given a list of names to his programmer friend to quickly split the children into naughty and nice. Hint: There's a hidden pattern that might be familiar.

  • Best score: 39
  • Best player score: 39
  • Number of attempts: 5
quotes inside quotes - 2973 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
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 3041 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 2
Create a table - 264 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
xrandr outputs and dashes - 390 entries

uh oh, different video drivers identify display outputs with more dashes. Quick, need to change this xrandr script!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
A Simple One - 860 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
  • Number of attempts: 1
attr_aligner - 3282 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 7
That hyphen - 2411 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
move titles next to url, in quotes - 406 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
Where should I put the Newline? - 830 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
C Reformatting - 665 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 48
  • Number of attempts: 2
Swap the operands under comparison - 240 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 1
Flip the bit - 90 entries

Change the specific 0 to a 1.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Paragraph sort - 343 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
I forgot quotes - 15145 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Space out the alphabet - 1480 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
prepend * to every non-blank line - 4870 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Gray area - 669 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7165 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add string initializers to an enum - 678 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reorder the groups - 976 entries

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

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 30
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make it more readable - 1818 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 1
Yo To Hello - 709 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
Letterbox - 83 entries

Make a box!

  • Best score: 35
  • Best player score: 56
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 17466 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 10
Remove quotes after first field - 225 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple, Practical, and Common - 31722 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: 23
  • Number of attempts: 4
replacing each line of a block selection - 2706 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 29
  • Number of attempts: 1
Todo list specification - 328 entries

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

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 39
  • Number of attempts: 1
Increment each number - 853 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 3
-a-b-c- - 3004 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
Shebangs for all - 1690 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 2
Delete to the end of the current line - 692 entries

Delete to the end of the current line, but keep the character under the cursor.

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 6
  • Number of attempts: 1
Wrap text in quotes - 315 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple text editing with Vim - 11200 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
multiple cursor alternative - 1375 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: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1412 entries

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

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2043 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
Combines all items - 255 entries

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

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
From A to B - 533 entries

Mirror and change this text block

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
HTML to Haml - 758 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 41
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple addition - 261 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 1
change parenthesis - 220 entries

change the pair of braces into a pair of parentheses

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2591 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 4
Build a six - 259 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 1
If-then-else regexp - 37 entries

Rules: - golf is never following golf - vim comes first! Drawing a finite-state machine diagram could help. #regexp

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 46
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 1900 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: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 216 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Label grid cells (6x6) - 13 entries

Label the cells of a grid with its coordinates. Rows are labelled top to bottom from A to F, and columns left to right from A to F. Each cell has a coordinate MN, where M is the row letter and N is the column letter.

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 56
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mirror Symmetry - 739 entries

Add backslashes.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add semicolons - 9339 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 6
camel riding - 731 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
Don't know what this is - 1884 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: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 765 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: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Exchanging Quotes - 779 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 37
  • Number of attempts: 2
Put the months in order - 814 entries

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

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 50
  • Number of attempts: 2
Around the clock - 152 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: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Line under headers - 1681 entries

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

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 30
  • Number of attempts: 1
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 661 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 4
Mess in revision history - 1099 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 1
From argument to object - 1230 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: 19
  • Number of attempts: 4
Hello ${world} - 256 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 6
Reformat Cura settings - 102 entries

Cura settings are weirdly encoded... After mere replacements, you'll have to enquote two strings (infill_pattern & speed_travel) and dont forget booleans in lowercase. #format #json

  • Best score: 50
  • Best player score: 75
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5279 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 2
Extract argument from function - 2138 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Replace pattern with 1, 2, 3, ... on each line - 696 entries

For each line replace a search pattern (in this case $) with numbers starting at 1 and then increasing by 1 for each replaced match. a$b$c$ -> a0b1c2

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 1
Cool or not? - 698 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Bad Copy Syntax - 1778 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1113 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: 3
Learn some german verbs - 437 entries

The list needs to be structured so we can print in verbatim and feel ok about how it looks.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 5
Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 768 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 6
citizen_hacks_2019_challenge5 - 92 entries

For the Citizen Hacks 2019 Vim competition.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 1
Extract wireshark capture filter - 151 entries

Extract wireshark capture filter from IP plan

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 2
Paragraph breaks - 431 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3216 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
Box it - 7115 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
Missing Library and a Typo - 784 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: 19
  • Number of attempts: 8
Adam's challenge - 889 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: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
html paragraph to table - 551 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 66
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4035 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
ninja substitution - 1116 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Alsa configuration - 478 entries

I'm tweaking my ~/.asoundrc file!

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 5
Reconstruct the Sentence - 1042 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: 4
Vertical Limit - 2264 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 1
comment and uncomment code inline - 950 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: 4
Tables, Functions, Sprocs - 91 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: 2
Words in parens - 12379 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values inside brackets - 2313 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
citizen_hacks_2019_challenge4 - 62 entries

For the Citizen Hacks 2019 Vim competition.

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 1
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2733 entries

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

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 2
Replace and keep the case - 369 entries

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

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 5
Data reformat - 132 entries

Reformat this copy-paste data! #csv

  • Best score: 38
  • Best player score: 50
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change the content of a string - 1270 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
Triangular Numbers - 64 entries

Generate the first 50 triangular numbers.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap values - 4300 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Alphabet soup - 222 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 38
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array Transposition - 160 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 45
  • Number of attempts: 1
Python Hello World! Reformatting - 859 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
  • Number of attempts: 4
Numbering a List - 1765 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Rule 110 - 32 entries

Compute the next 5 iterations of Rule 110 with the given starting state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110

  • Best score: 43
  • Best player score: 51
  • Number of attempts: 2
Mute the second method of this script - 420 entries

prepend a # infront of every line of the second method

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Resort and deup a CSV list - 125 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: 58
  • Number of attempts: 3
Array propagate - 268 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 1
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 976 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 3
Scrambled numbers - 764 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4508 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Stairstep digits - 227 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 10829 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 2
citizen_hacks_2019_challenge2 - 140 entries

For the Citizen Hacks 2019 Vim competition.

  • Best score: 6
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array transposition - 2120 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 3
Number Sort - 265 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
Fix the XML - 920 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
Count both ways - 931 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 929 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
Condensed Cases - 729 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple format (2) - 256 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 32
  • Number of attempts: 2
Python challenge - 124 entries

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

  • Best score: 31
  • Best player score: 51
  • Number of attempts: 1

Contributed Challenges

ASCII-art Histogram - 239 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 ;-)

Ivo Blöchliger
Twitter:

Teaching Mathematics and Computer Science, Paragliding, Diving, Android, Linux, Ruby, Photography, Travelling, UND MEHR...

entered into 124 challenges

contributed 1 challenges