Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

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

Played Challenges

Extract text from xml - 101 entries

Extract text from xml file (ignoring commented out elements) and create a one line regex.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 68
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 31316 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: 26
  • Number of attempts: 5
TAR archive pretty print - 17 entries

Will you use isk ?

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 2
Create a table - 264 entries

Convert the given input into a formatted table

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 1
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 368 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: 46
  • Number of attempts: 1
Unsemantic linewrapping - 698 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: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2561 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Hidden Message - 59 entries

Find the hidden message and replace all other characters with spaces.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 111
  • Number of attempts: 1
Hello ${world} - 255 entries

Migrate a JavaScript String from concatenation to ES6 interpolation.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 61
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 2979 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
Java Array2List - 216 entries

Convert an java array initializer into a list.

  • Best score: 67
  • Best player score: 115
  • Number of attempts: 3
Add semicolons - 8997 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 5
create arrows in a list - 65 entries

Add arrow at same distance

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4261 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
Song Transcription Oops - 197 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: 27
  • Number of attempts: 3
-a-b-c- - 2955 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Increment each number - 814 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 4462 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 2
Bad Copy Syntax - 1733 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 9
Make HTML List - 923 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 56
  • Number of attempts: 1
Copy three lines - 2574 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 2
Fix the XML - 908 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 1
Harder than "abcd > a b c d" - 64 entries

Not as easy as the last challenge. This time, just one space between a and b, up to 25 spaces between y and z. (Removed some lines; diff was too long.)

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
mp3 - Cutlist - 25 entries

An audio CD was accidentally ripped into one single mp3 file. A dummy cue-file now needs to be filled out with the correct values to get single mp3 files.

  • Best score: 67
  • Best player score: 113
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 17283 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 9
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 877 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: 33
  • Number of attempts: 1
Box it - 6826 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 6
Convert Application Output to CSV - 138 entries

Change the application output to comma-separated values

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reorder the groups - 950 entries

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

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
50 factorials mod 97 - 38 entries

List 1! to 50!, but give your answer mod 97.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 35
  • Number of attempts: 2
Simple format (2) - 256 entries

try again!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 40
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Array transposition - 2084 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 1
unknown command - 119 entries

I want change 5 words

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 7
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 4741 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
C Reformatting - 665 entries

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

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 156
  • Number of attempts: 1
Count both ways - 931 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Saving the hashes(#) - 1876 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: 33
  • Number of attempts: 2
Space out the alphabet - 1479 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 12
attr_aligner - 3263 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 44
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 2029 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3171 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
convert yml into java pojo field - 784 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: 37
  • Number of attempts: 2
move titles next to url, in quotes - 406 entries

had trouble with something similar

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 2
For all cases. - 108 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 25
  • Number of attempts: 2
Learn some german verbs - 429 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: 48
  • Number of attempts: 3
Round Round - 242 entries

Round Round

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 152
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shebangs for all - 1687 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: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 656 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 2
Basic renumbering - 5240 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 3
Order and join - 811 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Join 'em - 192 entries

This shouldn't be too tough

  • Best score: 4
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vice versa - 7084 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 12292 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 6
Mess in revision history - 1084 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 29
  • Number of attempts: 2
I forgot quotes - 14977 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
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 ;-)

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 82
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vertical Limit - 2252 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 2
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: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10271 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
prepend * to every non-blank line - 4429 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4008 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 6
Every other line - 2616 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Align commas - 957 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4462 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 1845 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: 4
comments galore - 928 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 4
Stairstep digits - 227 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 764 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 38
  • Number of attempts: 1
Just the middle - 10709 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 4
Delete to the end of the current line - 691 entries

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

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 1
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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Where should I put the Newline? - 830 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Paul Inc
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entered into 76 challenges

contributed 0 challenges