VimGolf - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke!

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 32983 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 / 7282
Number of attempts: 5

Swap values - 4482 entries

Well, swap the values...

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #264 / 1245
Number of attempts: 5

One number per line - 18426 entries

Just give me the numbers.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #508 / 3799
Number of attempts: 8

Swap values inside brackets - 2437 entries

Easy challenge.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #28 / 562
Number of attempts: 6

V to the i - 4645 entries

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

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #642 / 1859
Number of attempts: 2

Applying same text modification in several lines - 2763 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 13
Position: #120 / 818
Number of attempts: 3

Swap the operands under comparison - 259 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #16 / 94
Number of attempts: 5

Split line with dots - 2111 entries

This line is too long, split it.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 21
Position: #433 / 624
Number of attempts: 2

remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3475 entries

easy stuff

Best score: 9
Best player score: 10
Position: #576 / 1125
Number of attempts: 3

Com(m)a Trouble - 3438 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #29 / 768
Number of attempts: 11

Box it - 7685 entries

Create a box around a line.

Best score: 21
Best player score: 23
Position: #590 / 1837
Number of attempts: 6

Triangular Numbers - 88 entries

Generate the first 50 triangular numbers.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #10 / 25
Number of attempts: 4

Cool or not? - 761 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #20 / 216
Number of attempts: 6

multiple cursor alternative - 1448 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 / 370
Number of attempts: 10

From argument to object - 1433 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 / 437
Number of attempts: 3

Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 711 entries

Clean and group.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #16 / 167
Number of attempts: 10

Every other line - 2839 entries

AaAaAaA

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #34 / 688
Number of attempts: 6

Copy three lines - 2815 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 / 628
Number of attempts: 7

Convert Application Output to CSV - 180 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #17 / 50
Number of attempts: 3

Array propagate - 312 entries

Complete the array with the keys as part of the value

Best score: 23
Best player score: 24
Position: #38 / 111
Number of attempts: 6

Extract argument from function - 2257 entries

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

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #363 / 733
Number of attempts: 3

Search and Replace 0 - 4695 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #569 / 1556
Number of attempts: 3

Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 501 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 / 119
Number of attempts: 8

Number Sort - 291 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 / 155
Number of attempts: 1

That hyphen - 2512 entries

"vim vi improved"

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #200 / 685
Number of attempts: 6

comment and uncomment code inline - 1014 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 / 298
Number of attempts: 3

Flip the bit - 111 entries

Change the specific 0 to a 1.

Best score: 8
Best player score: 8
Position: #19 / 65
Number of attempts: 2

Just the middle - 11261 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #1219 / 4135
Number of attempts: 4

Team names - 1780 entries

The team names are misspelled.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #218 / 571
Number of attempts: 5

Todo list specification - 368 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 / 169
Number of attempts: 1

Python Hello World! Reformatting - 907 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: #176 / 353
Number of attempts: 2

Remember VimGolf Rules ! - 239 entries

Rules, ... and don't forget !

Best score: 7
Best player score: 8
Position: #101 / 129
Number of attempts: 1

Stairstep digits - 357 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #39 / 135
Number of attempts: 4

Missing Library and a Typo - 838 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 / 206
Number of attempts: 4

Basic renumbering - 5449 entries

Renumbering Basic.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #165 / 1231
Number of attempts: 7

Simple addition - 297 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 / 111
Number of attempts: 6

Interactive git rebase changing commands - 156 entries

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

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #52 / 74
Number of attempts: 2

Adam's challenge - 917 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 / 258
Number of attempts: 8

Create a table - 306 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #35 / 99
Number of attempts: 4

Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 801 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 / 274
Number of attempts: 3

Nesting SASS - 255 entries

Move a block inside another block and indent it

Best score: 9
Best player score: 9
Position: #40 / 89
Number of attempts: 5

Combines all items - 279 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 / 126
Number of attempts: 3

Wrap text in quotes - 342 entries

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

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #39 / 116
Number of attempts: 3

Vice versa - 7563 entries

Little role switching.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #453 / 2054
Number of attempts: 6

C Reformatting - 686 entries

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

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #17 / 159
Number of attempts: 12

Paragraph sort - 416 entries

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

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #33 / 120
Number of attempts: 4

Order and join - 884 entries

There's something special about the input order.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #61 / 243
Number of attempts: 4

Paragraph breaks - 488 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #35 / 161
Number of attempts: 3

Replace and keep the case - 395 entries

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

Best score: 26
Best player score: 26
Position: #45 / 111
Number of attempts: 5

Alsa configuration - 481 entries

I'm tweaking my ~/.asoundrc file!

Best score: 22
Best player score: 27
Position: #72 / 123
Number of attempts: 2

Align commas - 1041 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 / 237
Number of attempts: 15

Generate a list of numbers - 278 entries

Please generate list of numbers from 1 to 20.

Best score: 14
Best player score: 14
Position: #52 / 132
Number of attempts: 3

One to Ten - 2113 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 / 645
Number of attempts: 3

Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 606 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 / 193
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 - 951 entries

Increment each number individually by one

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #20 / 234
Number of attempts: 9

Delete to the end of the current line - 715 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 / 350
Number of attempts: 1

move titles next to url, in quotes - 492 entries

had trouble with something similar

Best score: 19
Best player score: 21
Position: #46 / 129
Number of attempts: 3

Array transposition - 2312 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

Best score: 16
Best player score: 17
Position: #132 / 431
Number of attempts: 15

convert yml into java pojo field - 820 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 / 218
Number of attempts: 3

Mirror Symmetry - 781 entries

Add backslashes.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #82 / 262
Number of attempts: 8

unknown command - 144 entries

I want change 5 words

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #45 / 73
Number of attempts: 1

Collect List - 4190 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #418 / 1169
Number of attempts: 5

VimGolfNight - 507 entries

Based on "The name of the game".

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #265 / 332
Number of attempts: 5

Space out the alphabet - 1595 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #93 / 434
Number of attempts: 7

Fix the XML - 958 entries

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

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #55 / 279
Number of attempts: 8

Condensed Cases - 758 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 / 231
Number of attempts: 5

Happy TvvO - 392 entries

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

Best score: 12
Best player score: 12
Position: #136 / 195
Number of attempts: 3

I forgot quotes - 15769 entries

Oops.

Best score: 10
Best player score: 10
Position: #851 / 4119
Number of attempts: 6

-a-b-c- - 3125 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #250 / 1114
Number of attempts: 3

Count both ways - 964 entries

Right AND down.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #49 / 342
Number of attempts: 5

Lisp Condense - 432 entries

Reduce 4 cons selection operations down to one function call.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #48 / 152
Number of attempts: 7

Gray area - 707 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #23 / 261
Number of attempts: 5

Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1107 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

Best score: 15
Best player score: 15
Position: #68 / 292
Number of attempts: 13

Don't know what this is - 1955 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 / 573
Number of attempts: 9

Two become one - 703 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 / 202
Number of attempts: 7

Where should I put the Newline? - 845 entries

Help me put the newline.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #204 / 422
Number of attempts: 3

Mess in revision history - 1144 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

Best score: 17
Best player score: 17
Position: #55 / 243
Number of attempts: 8

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10555 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #1375 / 3642
Number of attempts: 3

attr_aligner - 3402 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #151 / 685
Number of attempts: 14

Letter case trickery - 1553 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 / 500
Number of attempts: 8

quotes inside quotes - 3051 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 / 1050
Number of attempts: 4

Words in parens - 12769 entries

We should all ace this, right?

Best score: 13
Best player score: 14
Position: #959 / 3925
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 - 1522 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 / 428
Number of attempts: 7

Array Transposition - 168 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

Best score: 27
Best player score: 28
Position: #9 / 50
Number of attempts: 5

Saving the hashes(#) - 1972 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 / 468
Number of attempts: 8

Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1022 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

Best score: 7
Best player score: 7
Position: #119 / 422
Number of attempts: 2

Vertical Limit - 2383 entries

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

Best score: 21
Best player score: 21
Position: #75 / 721
Number of attempts: 6

Exchanging Quotes - 800 entries

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

Best score: 30
Best player score: 30
Position: #10 / 220
Number of attempts: 10

Switch function arguments - 1993 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #162 / 630
Number of attempts: 6

Append semicolon after expressions - 968 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #117 / 391
Number of attempts: 2

Remove noise from HTTP log - 666 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 / 263
Number of attempts: 2

switch variable - 4963 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #542 / 1712
Number of attempts: 5

Ugly spreadsheet copy/paste to CSV - 905 entries

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

Best score: 19
Best player score: 19
Position: #8 / 176
Number of attempts: 14

Make it more readable - 1915 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #93 / 628
Number of attempts: 5

remove dupes from array - 1308 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: #317 / 327
Number of attempts: 1

HTML to Haml - 837 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

Best score: 23
Best player score: 23
Position: #9 / 200
Number of attempts: 23

Numbering a List - 1834 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

Best score: 13
Best player score: 13
Position: #39 / 629
Number of attempts: 1

Ruby 1.9 hashes - 1177 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 / 387
Number of attempts: 3

Assignment Alignment - 823 entries

line up the operators. Use spaces, not tabs.

Best score: 18
Best player score: 18
Position: #48 / 214
Number of attempts: 11

Shebangs for all - 1787 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 / 470
Number of attempts: 5

A Simple One - 957 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 / 624
Number of attempts: 2

Reverse Simple Deletion - 787 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

Best score: 11
Best player score: 11
Position: #42 / 437
Number of attempts: 2

The Cake is a Lie - 1234 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

Best score: 3
Best player score: 9
Position: #248 / 497
Number of attempts: 2

Make Fancy Header - 983 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

Best score: 16
Best player score: 16
Position: #115 / 331
Number of attempts: 7

Change the content of a string - 1364 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

Best score: 22
Best player score: 22
Position: #179 / 525
Number of attempts: 2

Sort and add attributes - 1217 entries

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

Best score: 33
Best player score: 33
Position: #216 / 492
Number of attempts: 1

Reconstruct the Sentence - 1168 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 / 350
Number of attempts: 6

Simple text editing with Vim - 11705 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 / 3430
Number of attempts: 4

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6066 entries

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

Best score: 32
Best player score: 52
Position: #1307 / 1496
Number of attempts: 2