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.

Your VimGolf key: please sign in

$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 32910 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: #1730 / 7271
  • Number of attempts: 8
Swap values - 4440 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #265 / 1241
  • Number of attempts: 4
One number per line - 18385 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #918 / 3789
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values inside brackets - 2433 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #174 / 561
  • Number of attempts: 8
V to the i - 4641 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1349 / 1857
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2751 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #125 / 815
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2098 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #548 / 622
  • Number of attempts: 6
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3454 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #573 / 1121
  • Number of attempts: 3
Com(m)a Trouble - 3379 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #581 / 761
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 7682 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #465 / 1836
  • Number of attempts: 6
Cool or not? - 761 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #24 / 216
  • Number of attempts: 7
html paragraph to table - 583 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 55
  • Position: #48 / 121
  • Number of attempts: 8
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 711 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #69 / 167
  • Number of attempts: 5
Every other line - 2829 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #241 / 686
  • Number of attempts: 6
Copy three lines - 2801 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #122 / 625
  • Number of attempts: 8
Convert Application Output to CSV - 180 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #18 / 50
  • Number of attempts: 5
Extract argument from function - 2215 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #359 / 728
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4654 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #572 / 1542
  • Number of attempts: 4
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 476 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
  • Position: #25 / 116
  • Number of attempts: 6
That hyphen - 2498 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #203 / 683
  • Number of attempts: 9
comment and uncomment code inline - 995 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
  • Position: #187 / 296
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 11140 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2792 / 4113
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1777 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #220 / 570
  • Number of attempts: 7
Stairstep digits - 245 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #96 / 116
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5436 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #166 / 1228
  • Number of attempts: 18
Adam's challenge - 916 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: #77 / 257
  • Number of attempts: 6
ninja substitution - 1302 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #133 / 248
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vice versa - 7522 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #454 / 2044
  • Number of attempts: 5
One to Ten - 2095 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: 13
  • Position: #346 / 642
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 604 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: #29 / 192
  • Number of attempts: 5
Build a six - 267 entries

Just enjoy building "a" floors...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #33 / 89
  • Number of attempts: 8
Increment each number - 946 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #99 / 233
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete to the end of the current line - 713 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #117 / 349
  • Number of attempts: 2
Put the months in order - 915 entries

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

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #54 / 155
  • Number of attempts: 10
move titles next to url, in quotes - 492 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #125 / 129
  • Number of attempts: 2
Array transposition - 2312 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #133 / 431
  • Number of attempts: 10
convert yml into java pojo field - 811 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
  • Position: #115 / 216
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple format (2) - 306 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #61 / 64
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4178 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #419 / 1166
  • Number of attempts: 6
I forgot quotes - 15740 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1819 / 4115
  • Number of attempts: 3
-a-b-c- - 3118 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #251 / 1112
  • Number of attempts: 7
Don't know what this is - 1951 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: 13
  • Position: #263 / 572
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10533 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1376 / 3637
  • Number of attempts: 5
attr_aligner - 3402 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #597 / 685
  • Number of attempts: 6
quotes inside quotes - 3026 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: #311 / 1044
  • Number of attempts: 8
Words in parens - 12736 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #957 / 3919
  • Number of attempts: 5
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: 70
  • Position: #32 / 37
  • Number of attempts: 3
switch variable - 4917 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #545 / 1701
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1350 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #180 / 521
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple text editing with Vim - 11637 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1689 / 3413
  • Number of attempts: 3
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6015 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 47
  • Position: #1159 / 1482
  • Number of attempts: 5
Gitsnik
Twitter:

Security, Development, Administration, https://t.co/ASim2EMMsa

entered into 51 challenges

contributed 0 challenges