VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 32765 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: #1722 / 7241
Number of attempts: 5

Swap values - 4409 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #264 / 1235
Number of attempts: 5

One number per line - 18295 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #508 / 3770
Number of attempts: 8

Swap values inside brackets - 2417 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #28 / 557
Number of attempts: 6

V to the i - 4615 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #642 / 1846
Number of attempts: 2

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2710 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #112 / 806
Number of attempts: 3

Swap the operands under comparison - 251 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #16 / 90
Number of attempts: 5

Split line with dots - 2085 entries

This line is too long, split it.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 21
Position: #431 / 619
Number of attempts: 2

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3436 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #567 / 1113
Number of attempts: 3

Com(m)a Trouble - 3307 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #29 / 746
Number of attempts: 11

Box it - 7657 entries

Create a box around a line.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 23
Position: #584 / 1829
Number of attempts: 6

Triangular Numbers - 82 entries

Generate the first 50 triangular numbers.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #10 / 24
Number of attempts: 4

Cool or not? - 748 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #20 / 214
Number of attempts: 6

multiple cursor alternative - 1441 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: 19
Position: #68 / 368
Number of attempts: 10

From argument to object - 1258 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: #107 / 416
Number of attempts: 3

Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 706 entries

Clean and group.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #16 / 165
Number of attempts: 10

Every other line - 2790 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #34 / 679
Number of attempts: 6

Copy three lines - 2766 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #121 / 620
Number of attempts: 7

Convert Application Output to CSV - 171 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #17 / 48
Number of attempts: 3

Array propagate - 290 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #37 / 102
Number of attempts: 6

Extract argument from function - 2194 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #354 / 723
Number of attempts: 3

Search and Replace 0 - 4585 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #569 / 1519
Number of attempts: 3

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 459 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: 30
Position: #8 / 114
Number of attempts: 8

Number Sort - 282 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: 9
Position: #102 / 150
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2467 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #200 / 675
Number of attempts: 6

comment and uncomment code inline - 976 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: #112 / 291
Number of attempts: 3

Flip the bit - 102 entries

Change the specific 0 to a 1.

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #19 / 62
Number of attempts: 2

Just the middle - 11086 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1219 / 4093
Number of attempts: 4

Team names - 1763 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #218 / 566
Number of attempts: 5

Todo list specification - 359 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: #71 / 164
Number of attempts: 1

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 881 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: 43
Position: #173 / 340
Number of attempts: 2

Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 225 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #99 / 123
Number of attempts: 1

Stairstep digits - 238 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #39 / 113
Number of attempts: 4

Missing Library and a Typo - 826 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: #80 / 202
Number of attempts: 4

Basic renumbering - 5408 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #165 / 1221
Number of attempts: 7

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: #43 / 105
Number of attempts: 6

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: #52 / 73
Number of attempts: 2

Adam's challenge - 906 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: #76 / 254
Number of attempts: 8

Create a table - 293 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #35 / 96
Number of attempts: 4

Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 791 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: #126 / 269
Number of attempts: 3

Nesting SASS - 246 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #40 / 87
Number of attempts: 5

Combines all items - 265 entries

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

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #69 / 121
Number of attempts: 3

Wrap text in quotes - 324 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #39 / 111
Number of attempts: 3

Vice versa - 7450 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #453 / 2021
Number of attempts: 6

C Reformatting - 675 entries

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

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #17 / 156
Number of attempts: 12

Paragraph sort - 396 entries

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

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #33 / 115
Number of attempts: 4

Order and join - 853 entries

There's something special about the input order.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #61 / 235
Number of attempts: 4

Paragraph breaks - 477 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #35 / 158
Number of attempts: 3

Replace and keep the case - 390 entries

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

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #45 / 109
Number of attempts: 5

Alsa configuration - 478 entries

I'm tweaking my ~/.asoundrc file!

Best score: 22
Best player score: 27
Position: #71 / 122
Number of attempts: 2

Align commas - 1010 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: 11
Position: #77 / 232
Number of attempts: 15

Generate a list of numbers - 269 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #52 / 127
Number of attempts: 3

One to Ten - 2071 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
Position: #86 / 634
Number of attempts: 3

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 595 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
Position: #28 / 190
Number of attempts: 3

Build a six - 267 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #32 / 89
Number of attempts: 3

Increment each number - 946 entries

Increment each number individually by one

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #20 / 233
Number of attempts: 9

Delete to the end of the current line - 711 entries

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

Best score: 5
Best player score: 5
Position: #114 / 348
Number of attempts: 1

move titles next to url, in quotes - 474 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #44 / 126
Number of attempts: 3

Array transposition - 2271 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #130 / 427
Number of attempts: 15

convert yml into java pojo field - 801 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: 29
Position: #62 / 213
Number of attempts: 3

Mirror Symmetry - 752 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #82 / 257
Number of attempts: 8

unknown command - 142 entries

I want change 5 words

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #45 / 71
Number of attempts: 1

Collect List - 4155 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #418 / 1161
Number of attempts: 5

VimGolfNight - 482 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #265 / 322
Number of attempts: 5

Space out the alphabet - 1560 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #93 / 426
Number of attempts: 7

Fix the XML - 934 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #55 / 273
Number of attempts: 8

Condensed Cases - 735 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: 12
Position: #54 / 226
Number of attempts: 5

Happy TvvO - 379 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #136 / 190
Number of attempts: 3

I forgot quotes - 15666 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #851 / 4098
Number of attempts: 6

-a-b-c- - 3085 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #250 / 1101
Number of attempts: 3

Count both ways - 935 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #49 / 334
Number of attempts: 5

Lisp Condense - 421 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #48 / 148
Number of attempts: 7

Gray area - 678 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #23 / 253
Number of attempts: 5

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1089 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #68 / 288
Number of attempts: 13

Don't know what this is - 1923 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: 11
Position: #110 / 565
Number of attempts: 9

Two become one - 699 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: 25
Position: #6 / 201
Number of attempts: 7

Where should I put the Newline? - 832 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #204 / 416
Number of attempts: 3

Mess in revision history - 1117 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #55 / 239
Number of attempts: 8

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10513 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #1375 / 3629
Number of attempts: 3

attr_aligner - 3360 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #151 / 679
Number of attempts: 14

Letter case trickery - 1524 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: 9
Position: #25 / 494
Number of attempts: 8

quotes inside quotes - 2998 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: #310 / 1037
Number of attempts: 4

Words in parens - 12690 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #951 / 3906
Number of attempts: 3

Resort and deup a CSV list - 135 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: 44
Position: #5 / 37
Number of attempts: 5

SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1460 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: #99 / 414
Number of attempts: 7

Array Transposition - 166 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

Best score: 27
Best player score: 28
Position: #9 / 49
Number of attempts: 5

Saving the hashes(#) - 1937 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: #58 / 462
Number of attempts: 8

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 985 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #119 / 409
Number of attempts: 2

Vertical Limit - 2319 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #75 / 706
Number of attempts: 6

Exchanging Quotes - 788 entries

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

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #10 / 217
Number of attempts: 10

Switch function arguments - 1952 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #162 / 619
Number of attempts: 6

Append semicolon after expressions - 930 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #117 / 377
Number of attempts: 2

Remove noise from HTTP log - 653 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: #125 / 256
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 4877 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #542 / 1693
Number of attempts: 5

Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 793 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #8 / 169
Number of attempts: 14

Make it more readable - 1860 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #93 / 613
Number of attempts: 5

remove dupes from array - 1266 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: 48
Position: #312 / 322
Number of attempts: 1

HTML to Haml - 778 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #9 / 193
Number of attempts: 23

Numbering a List - 1797 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #39 / 614
Number of attempts: 1

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1123 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: 12
Position: #90 / 374
Number of attempts: 3

Assignment Alignment - 738 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #48 / 203
Number of attempts: 11

Shebangs for all - 1749 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: 11
Position: #52 / 462
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 880 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: #492 / 589
Number of attempts: 2

Reverse Simple Deletion - 740 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #42 / 419
Number of attempts: 2

The Cake is a Lie - 1178 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #247 / 481
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 933 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #115 / 315
Number of attempts: 7

Change the content of a string - 1296 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #179 / 501
Number of attempts: 2

Sort and add attributes - 1134 entries

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

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #216 / 465
Number of attempts: 1

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1077 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: #108 / 333
Number of attempts: 6

Simple text editing with Vim - 11438 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #577 / 3359
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 5864 entries

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

Best score: 32
Best player score: 52
Position: #1271 / 1449
Number of attempts: 2