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Table Of Contents

Mastering Vim

By : Ruslan Osipov

4.4 (9)

Buy this Book

Mastering Vim

4.4 (9)

By: Ruslan Osipov

Buy this Book

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.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

Get in touch

Free Chapter

Getting Started

Technical requirements

Let’s start a conversation (about modal interfaces)

Installation

Vanilla Vim vs gVim

Configuring Vim with your .vimrc

Common operations (or how to exit Vim)

Moving around: talk to your editor

Making simple edits in insert mode

Persistent undo and repeat

Read the Vim manual using :help

Summary

Advanced Editing and Navigation

Technical requirements

Installing plugins

Organizing workspace

Navigating file trees

Navigating text

Copying and pasting with registers

Summary

Follow the Leader - Plugin Management

Technical requirements

Managing plugins

Deeper dive into modes

Remapping commands

The leader key

Configuring plugins

Summary

Understanding the Text

Technical requirements

Code autocomplete

Navigating the code base with tags

Undo tree and Gundo

Summary

Build, Test, and Execute

Technical requirements

Working with version control

Resolving conflicts with vimdiff

tmux, screen, and Vim terminal mode

Building and testing

Summary

Refactoring Code with Regex and Macros

Technical requirements

Search or replace with regular expressions

Recording and playing macros

Using plugins to do the job

Summary

Making Vim Your Own

Technical requirements

Playing with the Vim UI

Keeping track of configuration files

Healthy Vim customization habits

Summary

Transcending the Mundane with Vimscript

Technical requirements

Why Vimscript?

How to execute Vimscript

Learning the syntax

A word about style guides

Let's build a plugin

Follow the Leader - Plugin Management

Vim plugins are easy to make and the number of available plugins keeps growing every year. Some cater to a very narrow audience and improve on a very particular workflow, while others aim to make Vim more effective to use for the general public. This chapter will take a deep dive into installing plugins and customizing your workflow through remapping keys. This chapter will cover the following topics:

Ways to manage multiple plugins with vim-plug, Vundle, Pathogen, or a home-made solution
A way to profile slow plugins
An in-depth explanation of primary modes in Vim
Intricacies of remapping commands
The leader key and how it's useful for all kinds of custom shortcuts
Configuring and customizing plugins