As others have said, you could use :set list which will, in combination with :set listchars=… display invisible characters. Now, there isn’t an explicit option which you can use to show whitespace, but in listchars, you could set a character to show for everything BUT whitespace. For example, mine looks like this :set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:< so, … Read more
Registers in Vim let you run actions or commands on text stored within them. To access a register, you type “a before a command, where a is the name of a register. If you want to copy the current line into register k, you can type “kyy Or you can append to a register by … Read more
Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi. You mention cutting with yy and complain that you almost never want to cut whole lines. In fact programmers, editing source code, very often want to work on whole lines, ranges of lines and blocks of code. However, yy is only one of many way … Read more
Why not use tabs (introduced in Vim 7)? You can switch between tabs with :tabn and :tabp, With :tabe <filepath> you can add a new tab; and with a regular :q or :wq you close a tab. If you map :tabn and :tabp to your F7/F8 keys you can easily switch between files. If there … Read more
Just the $ (dollar sign) key. You can use A to move to the end of the line and switch to editing mode (Append). To jump the last non-blank character, you can press g then _ keys. The opposite of A is I (Insert mode at beginning of line), as an aside. Pressing just the … Read more
As has been pointed out in a couple of other answers, the preferred method now is NOT to use smartindent, but instead use the following (in your .vimrc): filetype plugin indent on ” show existing tab with 4 spaces width set tabstop=4 ” when indenting with ‘>’, use 4 spaces width set shiftwidth=4 ” On … Read more
yy or Y to copy the line (mnemonic: yank) or dd to delete the line (Vim copies what you deleted into a clipboard-like “register”, like a cut operation) then p to paste the copied or deleted text after the current line or P to paste the copied or deleted text before the current line
Use \r instead of \n. Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things: \n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r … Read more
Use the > command. To indent five lines, 5>>. To mark a block of lines and indent it, Vjj> to indent three lines (Vim only). To indent a curly-braces block, put your cursor on one of the curly braces and use >% or from anywhere inside block use >iB. If you’re copying blocks of text … Read more