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Learn Vim - Module 6: That's not all, Folks!

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A very Happy New Year (2017) to all the readers! This is the concluding module of this tutorial. The aim here is to touch upon some advanced concepts, and introduce you to some good practices. At the end, I will list some resources for further learning and troubleshooting.

Registers

Vim consists of a lot many registers for temporary storage (remember your microprocessor classes?). Registers are used to store something that you yank (copy), to store jump-locations, to store your search-terms, and so on. All the alphabets, numbers and some more special characters are registers in Vim. See :help registers for an exhaustive list.

We will cover two uses of registers: marks and macros.

Marks

You can mark a location in Vim so that you can jump back to it. The syntax to mark a location is m<register>, and to get back to that mark is '<register>.

Let's say you are at line 10 in a file foo, and then suddenly recall that you have to edit something in a file bar. You can mark your location in register k as follows (in normal mode):

mk	" Mark the current location in register k

That's it. You won't see anything happen. Now when you want to go back to the marked location (from the same or any other buffer), press:

'k	" Jump to the location marked in the register k

See the magic!

Macros

Macros are one of the best time-savers of Vim. You can record any key-sequence into a register by typing the sequence once between q<register> and q, and then play the sequence using @<register>.

Let's consider an example scenario. Say you have a big file consisting of several lines that look like this:

A sample line of sample text.
Another sample line of sample text.
Yet another sample line of sample text.
...

Say, you want to change the first occurrence of 'sample' in each line to 'simple'. Reckon that you cannot replace all occurrences using %s, as there are some occurrences that you don't want to replace. For the first line, you can achieve the same using 0fscwsimple<Esc>:w<CR>. Then you realize that you can actually use the same key-sequence for other lines as well. Scope for macros! Do the following:

  • Start recording the macro in register k:
qk
  • Type the key-sequence for the first line:
0fscwsimple<Esc>:w<CR>
  • End the recording:
q
  • Go to next line:
j
  • Play the macro:
@k

Enjoy!

Extra dose:

You can play the previously-recorded macro (in whichever register) using @@.

Autocommands

Autocommands allow us to specify command(s) that we wish Vim to perform automatically when an event happens. For example, say you want spell-check to be enabled by default when you open a markdown file. You can put the following autocommand into your vimrc:

augroup VIMRC
	autocmd!
	autocmd FileType markdown setlocal spell 
augroup END

Notice that we have written the autocommand in a group (using augroup VIMRC ... augroup END). This and the first line (autocmd!) are used to flush the autocommands for a particular group when you reload your vimrc. Otherwise, you will end up having multiple copies of the same autocommand.

The autocommand tells Vim to enable spell-check locally for the current buffer when a markdown file is loaded. See :help autocommand-events for an exhaustive list of events that your version of Vim supports.

Colorschemes

Bored of the default look of your favorite editor? Vim can be made to look entirely different by using colorschemes. To change the default colorscheme to something else, use the following command:

:colorscheme <TAB>

This gives you a list of colorschemes (keep pressing tab); you can press Enter and make the one you like permanent by adding the following line to your vimrc:

colorscheme theme-name

Vim provides another option called background (possible values: light or dark) that is used to choose colors that look good on a dark or a light background. You can set it as follows:

set background=dark		" other option: light

Solarized is an extremely popular low-contrast colorscheme that is available in dark as well as light variations, and is easy on your eyes. Seoul256, Apprentice, base16, and gruvbox are some other well-known carefully-crafted colorschemes. There is also a colorscheme pack to rule them all that packages a large number of colorschemes in a single plugin.

Vim directory hierarchy

Have you ever wondered how does Vim load your plugins?

Vim recognizes a special directory called .vim (hidden) in your home directory (~). You can put your configuration files in a predefined hierarchy inside the .vim directory in order to get them loaded automatically.

The .vim directory may include the following sub-directories (apart from some others):

  • plugin: Files inside this directory are loaded every time you open Vim.
  • autoload: Files that are loaded on-demand (useful for function definitions).
  • ftplugin: FileType specific files. Thus a file markdown.vim inside ftplugin should consist of settings required only for a markdown file (an alternative for the FileType autocommands that we learnt above).
  • colors: Colorscheme files.
  • syntax: Files for specifying syntax-based highlights and/or indentation.
  • doc: Documentation files.
  • after: Files that should be loaded after plugins.

Thus, a naive way to install a plugin is to simply copy the files that exist in corresponding plugin folders to the respective folders inside your .vim directory. Vim takes care of the rest.

Vim8

Vim8 is the major upgrade to Vim in last 10 years, released on September 9th, 2016. Vim8 has given boost to various features that were being explored using several plugins over the last few years. A few of the most interesting ones are:

  • Async support: Lets commands (e.g., compilation) run in the background.
  • Packages: Provides pathogen like in-built plugin-management functionality (see :help packages in Vim8).
  • defaults.vim: A useful vimrc that is enabled by default.

We can hope to see many more plugins taking advantage of the above features to provide an even enhanced and faster Vim in future.

Neovim

Neovim is a fork of Vim that has gained huge popularity recently. It is community-driven, more feature-rich, and claims to have a cleaner code-base.

Many plugins have been created specifically for Neovim, and many others have been advertising themselves to be catering to both - Vim and Neovim.

Neovim is not installed by default on most OSes yet. Further, the releases are sometimes buggy. However, it will be interesting to see the course it takes.

Resources for the enthusiast

  • First and foremost: :help -- the excellent Vim documentation.
  • Awesome screencasts demonstrating various Vim features: vimcasts
  • A very detailed guide on Vim: vim-galore
  • An excellent guideline on sculpting your vimrc: idiomatic-vimrc
  • My articles on advanced features: gists
  • For doubts and queries: vistackexchange
  • For interesting announcements and discussions: vim subreddit

Endnote

That's all from my side, folks! This is the end to the six-part tutorial on Vim. I truly enjoyed writing it. I have been getting many mails that praise the tutorial, appreciate the schedule, and suggest improvements. I am thankful to all of them and to my readers. Stay in touch and ... Keep Vimming.

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