Commands tagged vi

Helps when I'm editing a script and want to double check some commands without having to exit out of vi multiple times or having to use another terminal session.

Deletes lines from START to END, inclusive. For example +4,10d will delete line 4, 5, ..., 10. Just like the vi command :4,10d does it.

Deletes lines to of a file. You must put the end line first in the range for the curly brace expansion, otherwise it will not work properly.

French uses accents (???...) which may be badly displayed on computers with the wrong default character set. This command may help (sometimes)

Sort lines within vi editor. In this example sort lines 33-61 and lines 4-9 asciibetically.

I always add this to my .profile rc so I can do things like: "vim *.c" and the files are opened in tabs.

Add this to .vimrc to automatically give scripts with a shebang (e.g., #!/usr/bin/perl) executable permissions when saving.

Found @ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/817060/creating-executable-files-in-linux/817522#817522

% = buffer

d = delete

Open a file directly with execution permission.

Put the function in your .bashrc

You can also put this in your vimrc:

and open a new file like this:

Sprunge.us is a code/text sharing site like pastebin, but it is easy to post stuff from the command line.

How it works:

In vim, w writes the current tab to a file when a filename is given afterwards, but if !command is given, the output is piped to the stdin of command.

curl is an HTTP client. The -F option does an HTTP post to the given address. The data in the quotes is passed in the post. The "sprunge=" part sets up a fieldname - the part that follows is what is associated with the name. The "<" tells curl to send data from the file descriptor that follows it. The "-" in bash is a file descriptor that points to stdin instead of an actual file; in this case, stdin is being piped in from vim. After we send the HTTP post to sprunge.us, it will give back a url that points to the data you just sent.

xclip is a utility that lets you put stuff in your clipboard or selection buffer. This part uses a bash pipe ( | ) to redirect the stdout of the previous command to the stdin of the next command. So, we're capturing the URL that curl gave us and putting it into the selection buffer, ready to paste into IRC or a forum.

Notes:

Of course, for this to work, you must have curl (which comes by default on most distroes), and xclip installed.

When you share the url, you can append "?lang" to highlight and have line numbers. Check out http://sprunge.us/BZXV?log for line numbers and http://sprunge.us/BZXV?ruby for highlighting.

If you prefer to use ctrl-v (paste from clipboard) instead of middle-click (paste from selection buffer), look up options on xclip - you can do that.

Open up vi or vim at the first instance of a pattern in [file]. Useful if you know where you want to be, like "PermitRootLogin" in sshd_config. Also, vi +10 [file] will open up a file at line 10. VERY useful when you get "error at line 10" type of output.

Use sed to comment out any up/down bindings in zsh

For vi(m) users :

Add it in your ~/.bashrc

Add an "exit" @ the end if you are masochist ;)

Whereas ^V is CTRL-V.

converts a dos file to unix by removing 0x13 characters

deletes to the end of the buffer

This is a simple command for jumping to the matching brace, square bracket, or parentheses. For example, it can take you from the beginning of a function to the end with one key stroke. To delete everything between the pairs of {}, [], or (), issue the command:

To replace text between pairs of braces, brackets, or parentheses, issue the command:

You can also use this command to find out if an opening brace has been properly closed.

Reduce the number of keystrokes it takes to open a file in vim. First of all, you just need to type "v", which is less than half the number of characters (!), and second-of-all, you only need to enter a substring of the file you want to open. For example, if you want to open the file, homework.txt, then type "v hom" to open it. Good tip is to use the lowest unique substring, otherwise you'll open multiple files in different buffers (which is sometimes desirable). Use Ctrl-^ to switch between buffers.