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

simple replacements - 342 entries

The goal is to see the replacement commands in action.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 3
CSV to MD format - 131 entries

To convert a CSV list to Markdown list

  • Best score: 36
  • Best player score: 40
  • Number of attempts: 3
Python dataclasses - 175 entries

Simple challenge to extract fields from a Python class

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
RUST Cargo.toml version to last - 140 entries

RUST Cargo.toml version to last. rusty practice on vimgolf

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
RUST match with enum for Coin - 92 entries

RUST match with enum for Coin rusty practice on vimgolf

  • Best score: 85
  • Best player score: 88
  • Number of attempts: 4
Modernise code - 445 entries

Modernise and clean up some C++ code.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 35
  • Number of attempts: 3
Enumerate Bullets - 86 entries

We will need to refer to the bullet points in our document explicitly later, so we need to assign them some ID's!

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 3
swap number pairs - 1041 entries

Swap the numbers in a bunch of 2-element arrays.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 2
HS Final exam vimgolf - 467 entries

Change the initial file to a single line containing all names comma-separated with numbers inside parentheses.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 4
Easy modification of ssh config - 130 entries

Just add another alias to each worker

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 2
ssh config skills - 138 entries

Parse output from `kuebctl get no -o wide` into an .ssh/config file!

  • Best score: 41
  • Best player score: 43
  • Number of attempts: 6
Change double quotes to single quotes, but with a twist - 188 entries

Although this challenge is in the context of a Python function, you don't need to know Python to do this challenge. It is to add contexts and interesting constraints. The file contains a function that prints a multi-line string literal. I wrote the string literal with double quotes, but then I decided to use single quotes instead, and that's your challenge. However, interestingly enough, the string itself contains single and double quotes. This means, inside the string literal, the originally escaped double quotes no longer need to be escaped, but the single quotes now need to be escaped. Note that the triple double quotes in the docstring should be left alone.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 4
Turn the x - 126 entries

Turn the x to a +

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 2
Rural Post - 3655 entries

Simple challenge to remove all but the post code on each line

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 4
Satisfy the go linter - 1473 entries

You just came up with this briliant go vars package. But dang, you forgot to add comments to the exported variables. Can you add a comment over each variable with a TODO-placeholder?

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 4
Add quotes to ansible playbook - 487 entries

You created an ansible playbook, but forgot to add quotes. Can you fix it?

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 3
Multiline to Single Line - 295 entries

Convert a multiline, indented file to a single line with no whitespace

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Number of attempts: 1
xrandr outputs and dashes - 499 entries

uh oh, different video drivers identify display outputs with more dashes. Quick, need to change this xrandr script!

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
From a Thunderlink to a Markdown link - 572 entries

ThunderLinks are durable hyperlinks to specific email messages generated from Thunderbird in HTML format. Leverage the power of vim to make them suitable for a markdown-formatted file.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 7
Capitalize the Names - 220 entries

I want to capitalize the names in quotes, but just the people's names, not the file names.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Yo To Hello - 845 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
Replace pattern with 1, 2, 3, ... on each line - 870 entries

For each line replace a search pattern (in this case $) with numbers starting at 1 and then increasing by 1 for each replaced match. a$b$c$ -> a0b1c2

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 8
Simple, Practical, and Common - 32691 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
  • Number of attempts: 4
Hogwarts Email Sorting - 770 entries

Given a list of emails, get the students full name and their associated house.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 3
Get mail address from outlook format - 501 entries

Create a mail list space separated of mail list formatted by outlook

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reconstruct the actual output from my unit test tool report - 116 entries

When a test fails, my unit test tool reports differences between the actual output and the expected output as follow: - line in the expected output but missing in the actual output are prefixed with a dash - unexpected lines in the actual output are prefixed with a plus sign - comments added by the unit test tool are prefixed with a question mark - common lines are showed `as-is` (well, almost;) From that "diff" format, I would like to reconstruct the actual output.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values - 4383 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
prepend * to every non-blank line - 5737 entries

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

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 2
Quote modules - 969 entries

Complete golang import statement.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Number of attempts: 6
Aliases for cd - 778 entries

Create these beautiful aliases with as few strokes as possible. Are you up for the challenge?

  • Best score: 30
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 10
Quote modules (ver.2) - 172 entries

Complete golang import statement.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 27
  • Number of attempts: 1
Swap values inside brackets - 2403 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 3
Unsemantic linewrapping - 805 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: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4595 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2698 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add string initializers to an enum - 725 entries

Change Typescript enum so that it has string initializers.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 1
SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE to Title Case - 1061 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: 20
  • Number of attempts: 6
Add semicolons - 10418 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
Bad Copy Syntax - 1881 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Split line with dots - 2075 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3413 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Com(m)a Trouble - 3271 entries

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

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
Box it - 7619 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Number of attempts: 4
Cool or not? - 725 entries

abc trying to be cool or not...

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 5
multiple cursor alternative - 1410 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: 20
  • Number of attempts: 5
html paragraph to table - 583 entries

reformat html paragraph to table

  • Best score: 48
  • Best player score: 49
  • Number of attempts: 4
From argument to object - 1246 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: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 682 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2775 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 6
Copy three lines - 2751 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 6
Extract argument from function - 2176 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 4
Search and Replace 0 - 4524 entries

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

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 1
Preferably without multi-cursor plugin - 453 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
  • Number of attempts: 3
That hyphen - 2464 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 2
comment and uncomment code inline - 973 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: 3
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 2
Just the middle - 11074 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Number of attempts: 1
Extract HTML option values from tag values - 76 entries

Generate HTML option values from the text in the option tag. If the text contains multiple words, replace the spaces with an underscore and convert all capital letters to small letters.

  • Best score: 34
  • Best player score: 36
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1752 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5393 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 3
Create Leading Zeros - 204 entries

Create leading zeros only for id columns. Please use generic approach!

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 24
  • Number of attempts: 6
Fun With The Diagonal - 96 entries

change the lowercase characters on the main diagonal to uppercase

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Number of attempts: 1
ninja substitution - 1224 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
Vice versa - 7390 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 4
Inner hyphens - 121 entries

Yet another hyphen challenge. Adding 5 hyphens to a file shouldn't be too hard.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
One to Ten - 2047 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: 2
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 590 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 2
Line under headers - 1851 entries

Put a line under each header, and remove the other markdown formatting.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 8
Increment each number - 922 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 5
Delete to the end of the current line - 705 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
Put the months in order - 911 entries

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

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 23
  • Number of attempts: 8
Reorder the groups - 1071 entries

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

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 5
Array transposition - 2234 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 7
convert yml into java pojo field - 800 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
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4146 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 3
Land of the Lost - 71 entries

Enter the tabs below the lyrics

  • Best score: 26
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 10
Space out the alphabet - 1542 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 5
remove all lines in first part - 162 entries

From the second part, remove all lines in the first part. It can be useful when you have done something from a long list, you want to know what is not done yet!

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 4
Config Sections - 38 entries

Section me!

  • Best score: 43
  • Best player score: 45
  • Number of attempts: 6
Square numbers - 81 entries

Boring math puzzle.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 15638 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Number of attempts: 6
-a-b-c- - 3077 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change name of a variable - 154 entries

Replace the name of the $variable with the fastest move possible. The challenge is having a command that allow you to easily change the variable name even if its indented.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 1
Don't know what this is - 1913 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10509 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 3
attr_aligner - 3347 entries

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

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 5
Under the cupola - 45 entries

Taking some liberty about the name and plot of the Stephen King's famous novel (and TV series) to make this challenge. Are you able to recreate graphically the key phrase of the story? (I think is gonna be hard!)

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 34
  • Number of attempts: 4
Letter case trickery - 1515 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: 10
  • Number of attempts: 5
quotes inside quotes - 2996 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: 3
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
Number an outline - 210 entries

The indent and words are right, but the numbers are all wrong.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 31
  • Number of attempts: 8
Words in parens - 12676 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Number of attempts: 2
paste indent correction - JS - 83 entries

You copy some javascript code from a website and paste it into vim, it does not look good!

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Number of attempts: 6
Harder than "abcd > a b c d" - 71 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: 15
  • Number of attempts: 7
Circle of Fifths with Sharps - 71 entries

Display a list of the Circle of Fifths with corresponding solfege syllables with sharps. Handling spaces may be tricky.

  • Best score: 24
  • Best player score: 25
  • Number of attempts: 10
Create a pandoc compatible table - 164 entries

In [this vimcast][1], a featured gist from Tim Pope shows how to quickly make a simple table structure. How fast can you convert it to pandoc's markdown style? [1]: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/aligning-text-with-tabular-vim/

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 33
  • Number of attempts: 6
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1441 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Number of attempts: 3
Chucking wood - 80 entries

An exercise in compressing repetitive text. For this challenge, any entry that uses keys outside the main row (such as arrow keys, Home, End, Delete, etc.) will be removed. (Esc is OK, though you should be using C-[ anyway.)

  • Best score: 51
  • Best player score: 51
  • Number of attempts: 5
Saving the hashes(#) - 1921 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: 32
  • Number of attempts: 1
Alphabet soup - 312 entries

Create a column of all alphabet characters organized in a funky way

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 26
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2740 entries

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

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Number of attempts: 4
Switch function arguments - 1919 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 3
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
switch variable - 4863 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Number of attempts: 1
Format the output - 102 entries

Sometimes your standard out is a little hard to read. Take this multilevel hash and make it human readable.

  • Best score: 35
  • Best player score: 39
  • Number of attempts: 7
Make it more readable - 1847 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
Case preserving word replacement - 397 entries

Half way through my project, my people turned into dogs. Now I have to change everything in my source.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 2
Generate Fibonacci Numbers - 218 entries

Use your super vim powers to generate Fibonacci Numbers.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Number of attempts: 7
expand a list comprehension (python) - 275 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

  • Best score: 42
  • Best player score: 43
  • Number of attempts: 6
Numbering a List - 1774 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reverse and count - 403 entries

Someone typed things upside down and now a Vim ninja needs to reverse the lines and count how many there are.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Number of attempts: 3
Linear congruential generator - 108 entries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 30
  • Number of attempts: 4
Whitespace, empty lines and tabs - 2762 entries

Convert tabs to spaces, strip empty lines and trailing whitespace.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Number of attempts: 7
Simple text editing with Vim - 11334 entries

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

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Number of attempts: 4
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 5782 entries

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

  • Best score: 32
  • Best player score: 43
  • Number of attempts: 2
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