How to boost your Vim productivity · sheerun

## I. Space is your Leader Leader is an awesome idea. It allows for executing actions by key sequences instead of key combinations. Because I’m using it, I rarely need to press Ctrl-something combo to make things work. For long time I used , as my Leader key. Then, I realized I can map it to the most prominent key on my keyboard. Space. ```plain text let mapleader = "\<Space>" ``` This turned my Vim life upside down. Now I can press Leader with both of my thumbs, and my fingers are always on home row. Leader became so easy to use I began to notoriously use it in various keybindings. ## II. Map your most frequent actions to Leader I identified the actions that consumed most of my time while working in Vim. I mapped them using Leader key. Among others I decided to: ### Type <Space>o to open a new file: ```plain text nnoremap <Leader>o :CtrlP<CR> ``` ### Type <Space>w to save file (a lot faster than :w<Enter>): ```plain text nnoremap <Leader>w :w<CR> ``` ### Copy & paste to system clipboard with <Space>p and <Space>y: ```plain text vmap <Leader>y "+y vmap <Leader>d "+d nmap <Leader>p "+p nmap <Leader>P "+P vmap <Leader>p "+p vmap <Leader>P "+P ``` ### Enter visual line mode with <Space><Space>: ```plain text nmap <Leader><Leader> V ``` I encourage you to identify your most frequent actions, and map them. ## III. Use region expanding I use terryma/vim-expand-region with following mapping: ```plain text vmap v <Plug>(expand_region_expand) vmap <C-v> <Plug>(expand_region_shrink) ``` It allows me to: - Hit v to select one character - Hit vagain to expand selection to word - Hit v again to expand to paragraph - … - Hit <C-v> go back to previous selection if I went too far It seems like vvv is slower than vp but in practice I don’t need to think beforehand what to select, and what key combination to use. This way v replaces viw, vaw, vi", va", vi(, va(, vi[, va[, vi{, va{, vip, vap, vit, vat, … you get the idea. ## IV. Discover text search object I never really enjoyed search-and-replace in Vim until I found the following snippet on Vim wiki: ```plain text vnoremap <silent> s //e<C-r>=&selection=='exclusive'?'+1':''<CR><CR> \:<C-u>call histdel('search',-1)<Bar>let @/=histget('search',-1)<CR>gv omap s :normal vs<CR> ``` It allows me to use the following search-and-replace flow: - I search things usual way using /something - I hit cs, replace first match, and hit <Esc> - I hit n.n.n.n.n. reviewing and replacing all matches P.S. An altenative is to use cgn from Vim 7.4. ## V. Invent more awesome key mappings I use the following shortcuts on a daily basis. They’ve saved me months. ### Automatically jump to end of text you pasted: I can paste multiple lines multiple times with simple ppppp. ```plain text vnoremap <silent> y y`] vnoremap <silent> p p`] nnoremap <silent> p p`] ``` ### Prevent replacing paste buffer on paste: I can select some text and paste over it without worrying if my paste buffer was replaced by the just removed text (place it close to end of ~/vimrc). ```plain text " vp doesn't replace paste buffer function! RestoreRegister() let @" = s:restore_reg return '' endfunction function! s:Repl() let s:restore_reg = @" return "p@=RestoreRegister()\<cr>" endfunction vmap <silent> <expr> p <sid>Repl() ``` - Type 12<Enter> to go to line 12 (12G breaks my wrist) - Hit Enter to go to end of file. - Hit Backspace to go to beginning of file. ```plain text nnoremap <CR> G nnoremap <BS> gg ``` ### Quickly select text you just pasted: ```plain text noremap gV `[v`] ``` ### Stop that stupid window from popping up: ```plain text map q: :q ``` ## VI. Make your unit testing experience seamless I use vim-vroom and properly configured tmux for my tests. Because vim-room uses <Leader>r for executing the test suite, and I use <Space> as my Leader, I press <Space>r, and tests run next to me. And because tests are run in a tmux split, I can always see my code and run my tests while already developing the next piece of it. ## VII. Use Ctrl-Z to switch back to Vim I frequently need to execute random command in my shell. To achieve it I pause Vim by pressing Ctrl-z, type command and press fg<Enter> to switch back to Vim. The fg part really hurt sme. I just wanted to hit Ctrl-z once again to get back to Vim. I could not find a solution, so I developed one on my own that works wonderfully with ZSH: ```plain text fancy-ctrl-z () { if [[ $#BUFFER -eq 0 ]]; then BUFFER="fg" zle accept-line else zle push-input zle clear-screen fi } zle -N fancy-ctrl-z bindkey '^Z' fancy-ctrl-z ``` If you paste it in your ~/.zshrc you’ll be able to switch back and forth between your shell and Vim extremely fast. Try it for yourself. ## VIII. Setup Tmux the Right Way The Tmux + OS X + Vim combination is pretty hard because of: - poor system clipboard handling - difficult navigation between Vim and Tmux windows - difficult execution of tmux commands (C-b) - hard to use copy mode in tmux I spent quite a long time tuning it correctly and here are the results: ### Bind <C-Space> as your new tmux prefix. Some people use <C-a> mapping, but I use this shortcut to go to the beginning of the line, so it’s out of scope. Plus <C-Space> plays much better with bindings I describe later. ```plain text unbind C-b set -g prefix C-Space bind Space send-prefix ``` ### Bind <Space> to enter copy mode. Think about it. <C-Space><Space> takes you directly to copy mode in tmux. ```plain text bind Space copy-mode bind C-Space copy-mode ``` ### Use y and reattach-to-user-namespace (on OSX) For copying to the system clipboard, you’ll need to brew install reattach-to-user-namespace beforehand. ```plain text bind-key -t vi-copy y \ copy-pipe "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy" ``` ### Use vim-tmux-navigator So you can seamlessly switch between any combination of vim and tmux windows using <C-h>, <C-j>, <C-k>, <C-l>. I also recommend using the following key bindings to split tmux windows with <C-Space>l and <C-Space>j which is admittedly faster than pressing <C-Space>% and <C-Space>|. ```plain text bind j split-window -v bind C-j split-window -v bind l split-window -h bind C-l split-window -h ``` See my tmux.conf for more good stuff. ## IX. Make Ctrl-P plugin a lot faster for Git projects Put following in your .vimrc (it configures CtrlP to use git or silver searcher for autocompletion): ```plain text let g:ctrlp_use_caching = 0 if executable('ag') set grepprg=ag\ --nogroup\ --nocolor let g:ctrlp_user_command = 'ag %s -l --nocolor -g ""' else let g:ctrlp_user_command = ['.git', 'cd %s && git ls-files . -co --exclude-standard', 'find %s -type f'] let g:ctrlp_prompt_mappings = { \ 'AcceptSelection("e")': ['<space>', '<cr>', '<2-LeftMouse>'], \ } endif ``` I recommend using vim-scripts/gitignore. ## X. Use package manager neobundle.vim is awesome for managing my Vim plugins: - You don’t need to manually manage git submodules (pathogen) - It installs & updates plugins in parallel - It can build plugins like YouCompleteMe: ```plain text NeoBundle 'Valloric/YouCompleteMe', { \ 'build' : { \ 'mac' : './install.sh', \ }, \ } ``` - Or fetch from custom paths like for pry plugin: ```plain text NeoBundle 'rking/pry-de', {'rtp': 'vim/'} ``` ## XI. Take advantage of Vim plugins Here are a few general plugins I use to boost my productivity: - YouCompleteMe - ack.vim (ag.vim is also good) - tpope/vim-fugitive mainly for :Gblame - vim-airline with following config: ```plain text NeoBundle 'bling/vim-airline' let g:airline_theme='powerlineish' let g:airline_left_sep='' let g:airline_right_sep='' let g:airline_section_z='' ``` I am a Ruby developer, so I use some Ruby plugins: - vim-textobj-rubyblock (var, vir for selecting ruby blocks) ## XII. Speed-up setup of Vim on your server I often need to use Vim on servers to configure them. Unfortunately Vim doesn’t come out of the box with sensible defaults. One can use vim-sensible to achieve it but it was not enough for me. I developed vimrc plugin with really good defaults (especially for Ruby developers) that makes ~/.vimrc a single source of Vim configuration. It also includes a better default scheme, package manger, and multi-language syntax support. That means I don’t need to mangle ~/.vim directory to configure Vim on server-side. The installation of a Vim environment on my server is as simple as: ```plain text git clone --recursive https://github.com/sheerun/vimrc.git ~/.vim ``` I also developed my dotfiles so my development environment can be set up in seconds. ## Introspect! The key to a good Vim setup is continuous recognition of issues you encounter during your development and responding to them. The response can be a quick mapping in the .vimrc, a google for solution, asking a question on IRC, you name it. What boosts your productivity in Vim? ### Want to learn more? Hire me as your Vim consultant and write me an e-mail.