Editing with gVim

Ashley J.S Mills

<[email protected]>
Copyright © 2002 The University Of Birmingham

Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 1
2. Installation .................................................................................................................................................. 2
2.1. .vimrc .............................................................................................................................................. 2
2.2. gVim - Easy ...................................................................................................................................... 2
3. Core Commands ........................................................................................................................................... 2
3.1. Modes .............................................................................................................................................. 2
3.2. Text Navigation ................................................................................................................................. 3
3.3. Inserting text ..................................................................................................................................... 4
3.4. Cutting and pasting text ....................................................................................................................... 4
3.5. Performing the same operation more than once ........................................................................................ 5
3.6. System Commands ............................................................................................................................. 5
4. Searching .................................................................................................................................................... 5
5. gVim regular expressions - Search and Replace .................................................................................................. 6
6. gVim and DocBook ...................................................................................................................................... 7
6.1. Useful key mappings ........................................................................................................................... 7
7. gVim and Java ............................................................................................................................................. 7
7.1. Automatically generate getter and setter methods ..................................................................................... 7
7.1.1. Install .................................................................................................................................... 7
7.1.2. Use ....................................................................................................................................... 7
8. References (and links you may find useful) ........................................................................................................ 8

1. Introduction

Vi pronounced vee-eye was written by William Joy in around 1976 at The University of California, Berkeley. Vi was created by
hacking various other editors around at the time and writing new code. Here is an interview with the creator:
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html. Here is the original documenation for Vi:
http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/12.vi/paper.html.

Vi is available on VMS and Unix systems, it is a small, fast, full-screen editor for terminals. Vi comes with most, if not all, distri-
butions of Unix, Linux, and BSD. Vi is also present on other Unix-like operating systems.

VIM (VI IMproved) is a Vi clone created mainly by Bram Moolenaar, who owns the copyright. VIM is charityware, in that, it is
freely distributable but the user is asked to make a donation to charity. VIM can operate in a text based environment but there is a
version known as gVim which operates in a GUI environment. The latest version of gVim is available for many operating systems
and has full mouse support, clipboard support is available where applicable. Here is the gVim homepage: http://www.vim.org/.

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This tutorial will focus on using gVim because it is thought that the target audience will get most utility out of it compared to VIM
and Vi. The basic commands are the same with VIM and Vi but Vi lacks certain functionality such as multiple levels of undo.
Here are a few benefits of using gVim over Vim and Vi:

• It has menu support which is useful for begginers.

• It directly competes with xemacs.

• It has an "easy" mode for begginers.

Within the file editing community there is somewhat of a feud between users of gVim and users of (ughh!) Emacs. This rivalry is
not to be taken too seriously since none of the editors are THAT good, see
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/holy-wars.html.

This document does not intend to cover the subject matter to any significant degree. Its intent is to provide a simple introduction to
editing in gVim that is consistent in style with the rest of the tutorials in this tutorial collection. Only a handfull of the most useful
commands are introduced. The user is referred to the gVim manual for further information. The gVim manual comes with the
gVim installation and is located in the doc directory.

2. Installation
Installation of gVim is as easy as following the instructions on the download page: http://www.vim.org/download.php.

2.1. .vimrc
gVim is configured via a file called .vimrc on Unix machines and a file called _vimrc on Windows machines. Here is an exam-
ple .vimrc which provides a basic working environment with syntax highlighting:

set nocompatible " Use gVim defaults

" set tw=80 tw to specify a default text width
set fo=tcrq " fo to specify default formatoptions
" t auto-wraps text using textwidth
" c auto-wraps comments using textwidth
" r auto-inserts the current comment leader
" q allows formatting of comments
" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=2
set tabstop=1 " Each Tab has 1_spaces equivalent width
set shiftwidth=2 " Indentation width when using >> and << re-indentation
set nobackup
set expandtab " Tabs are expanded to spaces
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin

Notice that the configuration file "sources" an example vimrc file that comes with the gVim distribution called
vimrc_example.vim; this file defines the syntax highlighting colours. The last two lines are specific to Microsoft Windows ma-
chines and should be removed for other systems.

2.2. gVim - Easy

gVim-Easy, which is installed with gVim, has all the functionality of normal gVim but lacks modes. This is especially useful for
begginers and people who do not want to, or do not have the time to, learn how to use gVim. Users can benefit from gVim's supe-
rior syntax highlighting and auto-indentation while not having to have to learn the, often deemed complex, command set of gVim
in order to edit a simple document. It is recommended that readers of this tutorial at least try to learn how to use gVim in normal
mode, the learning curve is steep, but, the benefits in speed and usability this confers is worth the investment.

3. Core Commands
3.1. Modes
gVim is a modal editor. There is some discrepancy over how many modes gVim has, some consider gVim to have two modes;
command mode, and input mode whereas some consider vi to have three modes; command mode, input mode, and 'last line' mode.
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This tutorial will assume the latter.

• Input mode is used to input text into the editing "buffer". This means that whatever is typed appears on the screen, verbatim, as
it were. To get into input mode from command mode, press escape then press 'i'. To get into input mode from last line mode,
press escape to enter command mode then follow the instructions for entering input mode from command mode. There are
some other ways of entering input mode from command mode, these will be discussed later.

• Command mode is used to perform operations on text and to navigate quickly around the document being edited. To enter
command mode from input mode or last line mode, press the escape key.

• Last line mode is used to toggle gVim options, perform system operations such as saving, and to perform abstract operations
on text such as regular expression search-and-replace. To enter last line mode from input mode, first, press escape to enter
command mode, then, press Shift-:. To enter last line mode from command mode, just press Shift-:.

3.2. Text Navigation

One of the most important skills needed to use gVim efficiently is the ability to navigate a document being edited quickly and pro-
ficiently. In insert mode, "standard" navigation applies, one may use backspace to delete characters, use the mouse to move the
cursor position, and use the cursor keys to move through sentences. One may also use the cursor keys to position the cursor in
command mode too.

The cursor keys are intuitive and familiar but their use requires the movement of the users hands away from the 'home' keys of the
keyboard thus slowing the user down. It is thus preferable to use the command mode navigation keys:

It can be quite frustrating getting used to the keys but it is well worth the effort. There is a Unix game called hack where the aim of

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the game is to navigate ones way through some dungeons down to below level 20 where it is rumored that the Amulet of Yendor
lies. The aim of the game is to find the Amulet and get it back out. The keys used to navigate ones character in "hack", in the four
primary directions, are the same as those used by gVim hence one could use this game as a fun way to learn the navigational keys
of gVim. "hack" comes with the games package of the FreeBSD operating system and is present on decent Unix systems. There is
a more recent version called Nethack, which is available for many operating systems, but it does not appear to support the same
navigational methods, if I am wrong about this please inform me.

Table 1. gVim Navigation

Key sequence Effect
k move cursor up
j move cursor down
h move cursor left
l move cursor right
b move cursor to beggining of current word
e move cursor to end of current word
Shift-h move cursor to top of current screen
Shift-l move cursor to bottom of current screen
Shift-] move cursor to beggining of next paragraph
Shift-[ move cursor to beggining of previous paragraph

3.3. Inserting text

Besides basic navigation, there are other important concepts; entering insert mode from command mode can be accomplished in a
number of different ways, depending on where one wants to begin inserting characters. The table below shows some of the ways
to enter insert mode, the key sequences specified must be performed from command mode.

Table 2. Entering insert mode

Key sequence Effect
i insert text before cursor position
a insert text after cursor position
Shift-i insert text at beginning of line (before first blank)
Shift-a insert text at end of line
o insert text after current line (creates new line)
Shift-o insert text before current line (creates new line)
g-i insert text at last insert position

There are also a couple of special ways to insert text which don't really fit into the table above, these are shown in the table below:

Table 3. Entering insert mode

Key sequence Effect
r-AnyCharacter replace character at cursor position (stays in command mode)
x deletes character at cursor position (also copies it to clipboard)
s deletes character at cursor postion then enters insert mode at
that position
Shift-r enters replace mode where every character typed overwrites the
character under the current cursor position

3.4. Cutting and pasting text

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gVim has support for native cut and paste where applicable. For instance, on Windows, one may use CTRL-X, CTRL-C, and
CTRL-V to cut, copy and paste text respectively. gVim also provides it's own commands for cutting and pasting areas of text.

Table 4. Cutting and pasting in gVim

key sequence Effect
Shift-Y 'yank' current line (copies current line)
d-d deletes current line (and also copies it to clipboard)
p paste yanked line(s) after current line
Shift-p paste yanked line(s) before current line
y-w 'yank' from cursor position to beggining of next word
d-w delete from cursor position to beggining of next word
p paste yanked word(s) after current cursor position
Shift-p paste yanked word(s) before current cursor position

3.5. Performing the same operation more than once

Most of the gVim commands can be prefixed with an integer to specify that the command should be performed the number of
times indicated by the integer, some examples are shown below.

Table 5. Examples of [count] prefixed command usage

Key sequence Effect
5-j move cursor down 5 lines
3-d-w delete from cursor position to beggining of third word after cur-
rent word
5-Shift-y 'yank' 5 lines from current line (current line counts as one of the
5)
5-p paste the yanked text 5 times (in manner depending on whether
lines or words were yanked)
3-s delete the three characters from current cursor position and en-
ter insert mode (substitute)

3.6. System Commands

gVim has menus for performing system operations such as opening files and saving files and so on, however, the system com-
mands are usually quicker. Opening a file from the menu is preferable when one finds it quicker to find the file through the edit-
file dialog box than to specify it at the command line. The commands below are all entered in last line mode hence the prefixed ':'.

Table 6. System commands

Key sequence Effect
:w write the current file
:wfilename write the current file as filename
:efilename edit filename, file does not need to exist

4. Searching

1. Enter search mode by typing / from command mode. '/' will appear at the bottom of the screen.

2. Enter a regular expression to search for. Any gVim supported regular expression may be entered, this includes normal words
like "dog". Each time the user adds an extra character to the regular expression, gVim will highlight the first match it finds in
the document from the character after the cursor position from which search mode was entered. Backspacing is allowed.
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3. Press Enter to confirm expression to search for. All instances of the expression in the document will be highlighted or if no
expression is found "Pattern not found: pattern" will be displayed.

4. Use n and Shift-n to cycle forward backwards through all matches found respectively.

Note
Thespian correctly begins with a capital 'T'.

In the image above, the first row shows gVim matching the first occurance of the expression as more characters are added. The
first image of the second row shows the string "the" has been highlighted (backspace was pressed twice from the last image of the
first row). The second image of the second row shows the effect of pressing enter to confirm the expression to search for; all the
instances of the expression have been highlighted. The last image of the second row illustrates the pressing of n to cycle through
the instances of the expression found.

5. gVim regular expressions - Search and Replace

Regular expressions are one of the most powerful tools available to the gVim user; they can be used to search and replace on sec-
tions of text, saving the user much time. The general form of a gVim Search and Replace expression is shown below:

:start_point,end_points/search_pattern/replacement_pattern/g

The start point can either be an absolute line number, or be relative to the current line. The same applies for the end point. Com-
mands are entered from last line mode. The 'g' at the end is optional, if it is ommited only the first occurance of the pattern will be
replaced.

• To represent the current line use '.'

• To represent an absolute line number just use the number.

• To represent n lines before the current line use -n.

• To represent n lines after the current line use +n.

• The character '%' can be used to indicate global replacement, it replaces "start_point,end_point".

• Special characters must be escaped with a backslash if their literal meaning is desired. For example, if one wants to replace "/"
one must use "\/".

Table 7. gVim search and replace examples

Command Effect
:-1,+1s/love/live/g replaces every occurance of "love" on the line before the current
line, the current line and the line after the current line with "live
:.s/pie/potato/ replaces the first occurance of "pie" on the current line with
"potato"
:10,30s/</\&lt;/g replaces every occurance of "<" between lines 10 and 30 inclu-
sive with "&lt;"
%s/Chapter5/Chapter6/g replaces every occurance of "Chapter5" within the file with
"Chapter6".
-1,.s/\//\/\//g replaces every occurance of "/" on the line before the current
line and the current line with "//"

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For more complex regular expression examples, and mode general information about regular expressions, see: Regular Expres-
sions - Ashley J.S Mills [../regexp/regexphome.html].

6. gVim and DocBook

6.1. Useful key mappings
One can write DocBook documents at an incredably faster rate if one maps element entry to key bindings. A directory called xml
was created in the ftplugins directory of the gVim installation. Into this was placed a vim file that contained macros to map key
combinations to element insertions. Comma preceeds each mapping, this is convenient because if the user types comma followed
by space, nothing happens, but if the user types comma followed by one of the mapped key combinations an element is inserted.
Most of the mappings are intuitive, for example, ulink is mapped onto ,-u-l. The mappings are very easy to customise and the im-
provement in document creation speed is amazing.

I wanted to go through the file and add mappings for every single element, and make the mappings more intuitive since I felt that
the previous mappings, on occasion, deviated from intution somewhat. I have not done this yet.

I am not the creator of the file, this information is specified in the file header. I modified some of the mappings from the original
and added some new ones, here is the file: dbhelper.vim [files/dbhelper.vim]. It would be nice if somebody created a comprehen-
sive version of this file with mappings for every tag installed, let me know if you do.

Download the file (on Windows) to where/you/installed/gvim/vimXX/ftplugin/xml, where XX is the version number
with a dot removed, for example 61. On Unix variants, save the file to your home directory and add something like the following
to your .vimrc file:
augroup BEGIN
au! BufRead,BufNewFile *.xml source ~/dbhelper.vim
augroup END

Next time you use gvim to edit an XML file dbhelper.vim will be sourced and the mappings enabled. Of course, it may not al-
ways be desireable to have such mappings enabled for every XML file but different mappings for different types of XML could be
sourced manually from gvim by going into lastline mode and typeing "source fileName". Or one could use the gvim macro lan-
guage to write something which scans the XML doctype and loads the appropriate helper file.

The mappings are used in insert mode by typing ',' followed by the mapping chars, typing ",pp" causes the following to be in-
serted:

<para>
</para>

Usually the cursor will be appropriately positioned.

7. gVim and Java

7.1. Automatically generate getter and setter methods
7.1.1. Install

1. Download the script from http://www.vim.org/script.php?script_id=490.

2. Place in ftplugins directory of gVim installation. If there are already files that begins with java, create a directory called
java in ftplugins and put all the files that begin with java in that directory.

7.1.2. Use

1. Select the variables to create getter/setter methods for.

2. Press \-p

The getter and setter methods for the selected variables will be generated. For example, selection of the following:
private int age;

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Followed by executing the keystroke sequence \-p, brings up the dialog box shown below:

Clicking on Both generates the two methods shown below:

/**
* Get age.
*
* @return age as int.
*/
public int getAge() {
return age;
}
/**
* Set age.
*
* @param age the value to set.
*/
public void setAge(int age) {
this.age = age;
}

One can modify the templates in the script to produce custom output, for example, the above output shows an indentation of 3 and
has the opening bracket of a method on the same line as the method name.

8. References (and links you may find useful)

• http://octopus.cdut.edu.cn/~yf17/unix/unixcd/vi/index.htm

Online version of Learning the vi Editor by Linda Lamb and Arnold Robbins.

• http://www.thomer.com/vi/vi.html

Vi Lovers Home Page

• http://www.moesworld.com/vim/usr_toc.html

Online version of the VIM user manual by Bram Moolenaar