Hidden features of Vim

Question

Over the years, I thought I'm a Vim master! Recently I visited a real Vim master! oops! My knowledge is awfully superficial!

For example I didn't know it's possible to add a \c to make search case insensitive. (instead of :set ignorecase)

I clearly remember when how I'm surprised when I found SuperTab or TagList plugins first time. Vim's official site says "Vim isn't an editor designed to hold its users' hands. It is a tool, the use of which must be learned.", so naturally it should have many undiscovered features.

So I'm asking, what are your favorite features of Vim? What are things you can do with it that you can't or are more difficult in the other editors?

Of course there's some same topics about other editors:

See [Useful Vim features](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20735/useful-vim-features) — Matthew Flaschen, Jul 22 '10 at 16:31
This should be community wiki. (The Eclipse and TextPad questions are as well.) — Cascabel, Jul 22 '10 at 16:38
constantly read and use vim, then you can surprise many people. http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/04/vim-editor-tutorial/ — thegeek, Jul 22 '10 at 17:09
possible duplicate of [What feature is missing or hidden in Vim?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255783/what-feature-is-missing-or-hidden-in-vim) — Luc Hermitte, Jul 22 '10 at 17:12

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited May 24 '20 at 12:24

8

About the "hidden" part... Try these:

:help 42

:help!

:o)

edited May 24 '20 at 12:24

Community

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answered Jul 22 '10 at 20:16

KKovacs

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Cool!! That last one - what did it do exactly, looks like it just gave me a blank file named ")"? – poundifdef Jul 23 '10 at 01:49
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@rascher: I think the last one isn't a vim command, just a smiley in this post. (look how it is not formatted the same as the first two) – Sergio Acosta Jul 24 '10 at 05:39
Yes of course, Sergio is right about that, that's supposed to be a smiley. Sorry for the confusion :o) – KKovacs Sep 08 '10 at 13:51

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 16 '14 at 09:39

6

It took me a few years before I learned about text objects

:help text-object
:nmap cw ciw
:nmap cW ciW

Also nice are ci" and ci (when I want to change a string or function args).

edited Dec 16 '14 at 09:39

bluish

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answered Jul 23 '10 at 01:34

mstearn

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 26 '16 at 08:23

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This is not exactly a hidden feature but it's a little known feature. If you type :X then you can encrypt your file with a password.

answered Jul 26 '16 at 08:23

skywalker

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How do you turn off the encryption of a file? – Quinten C May 13 '22 at 12:31
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@QuintenCabo You use `:X` again with no password and then save the file. – skywalker May 13 '22 at 15:34

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 20 '20 at 01:06

0

You can check the correctness of the text using line:

:set spell

edited Apr 20 '20 at 01:06

Boken

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answered Apr 19 '20 at 21:04

ant_dev

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Hidden features of Vim

4 Answers4