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

Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 5590 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 59
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make HTML List - 917 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 57
  • Number of attempts: 1
Split line with dots - 1946 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 45
  • Number of attempts: 1
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 355 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: 45
  • Number of attempts: 1
Learn some german verbs - 415 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: 37
  • Number of attempts: 5
multiple cursor alternative - 1253 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: 37
  • Number of attempts: 3
Scrambled numbers - 753 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 37
  • Number of attempts: 2
Numbering a List - 1756 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 1
I forgot quotes - 13448 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Array transposition - 1803 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 2773 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
convert yml into java pojo field - 752 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: 36
  • Number of attempts: 2
Copy three lines - 2315 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 5
quotes inside quotes - 2885 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: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2229 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
Vice versa - 6502 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Make it more readable - 1785 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 4346 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 1
Extract argument from function - 2090 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 3954 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 3
Just the middle - 9943 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 2474 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2296 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 2
Collect List - 3730 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 4
Letter case trickery - 1451 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: 15
  • Number of attempts: 4
comment and uncomment code inline - 892 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: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
Array Transposition - 159 entries

Transpose four arrays into two.

  • Best score: 27
  • Best player score: 68
  • Number of attempts: 2
Don't know what this is - 1822 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: 2
replacing each line of a block selection - 2620 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 3
comments galore - 913 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 4
V to the i - 4218 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 4501 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 2419 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 3
Simple text editing with Vim - 10816 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 5
Adam's challenge - 852 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: 30
  • Number of attempts: 1
Words in parens - 11674 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 3
From argument to object - 1184 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: 20
  • Number of attempts: 1
Team names - 1584 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 2
attr_aligner - 3158 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 4
Order and join - 780 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 519 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: 22
  • Number of attempts: 2
Every other line - 2311 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 1
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 9886 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
Space out the alphabet - 1436 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 3
One number per line - 15164 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 7
Fix the XML - 896 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 51
  • Number of attempts: 3
Box it - 5120 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 4
Count both ways - 903 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 28191 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: 4
Basic renumbering - 4905 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 2
Add semicolons - 6225 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Align commas - 907 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: 26
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values inside brackets - 1976 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 5
Swap the operands under comparison - 236 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 2
Switch function arguments - 1866 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Vertical Limit - 2189 entries

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

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 28
  • Number of attempts: 1
Luis Rodriguez
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entered into 56 challenges

contributed 0 challenges