Book Image

Mastering Vim

By : Ruslan Osipov
Book Image

Mastering Vim

By: Ruslan Osipov

Overview of this book

Vim is a ubiquitous text editor that can be used for all programming languages. It has an extensive plugin system and integrates with many tools. Vim offers an extensible and customizable development environment for programmers, making it one of the most popular text editors in the world. Mastering Vim begins with explaining how the Vim editor will help you build applications efficiently. With the fundamentals of Vim, you will be taken through the Vim philosophy. As you make your way through the chapters, you will learn about advanced movement, text operations, and how Vim can be used as a Python (or any other language for that matter) IDE. The book will then cover essential tasks, such as refactoring, debugging, building, testing, and working with a version control system, as well as plugin configuration and management. In the concluding chapters, you will be introduced to additional mindset guidelines, learn to personalize your Vim experience, and go above and beyond with Vimscript. By the end of this book, you will be sufficiently confident to make Vim (or its fork, Neovim) your first choice when writing applications in Python and other programming languages.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Organizing workspace

So far, we've only worked with a single file in Vim. When working with code, you usually have to work with multiple files at once, switching back and forth, making edits across multiple files, and looking up certain bits somewhere else. Luckily, Vim provides an extensive way to deal with many files:

  • Buffers are the way Vim internally represents files; they allow you to switch between multiple files quickly
  • Windows organize the workspace by displaying multiple files next to each other
  • Tabs are a collection of windows
  • Folds allow you to hide and expand certain portions of files, making large files easier to navigate

Here's a screenshot illustrating the preceding points:

Let's understand the content in the screenshot:

  • Multiple files (labeled farm.py, animals/cat.py, and animal_farm.py) are open as windows
  • The bar at the top (listing 3 farm...