Vim has a built-in spell check that you can enable with :set spell. You can also set the language with :set spelllang= followed by the two-letter code of the language and optionally a dash and the region (e.g., :set spelllang=en or :set spelllang=en-GB).

After enabling the spell checker, you can move between different mistakes with ]s and [s.

I knew about the spell check, I knew Vim highlighted spelling mistakes, and I knew how to move between the mistakes. I usually fix them manually and I never bothered to learn how to make Vim fix them for me. Until today.

If you want to use the output of a command inside your file, you don’t need to exit Vim, run the command, copy the output, return to Vim and paste the contents. You can use :read (or abbreviated to :r) and run a command with !. For example, :r !ls -a will insert the output of ls -a at the current cursor position.

You can also insert the content of another file with :r, except this time you don’t use !, just the file name. For example, :r second_file will insert the content of second_file at the current cursor position.

In Vim, while in normal mode, if you type ~, the capitalisation of the letter under the cursor changes and the cursor is advanced to the right.

You can also change the capitalisation of multiple letters at the same time with g command. Type gU and a movement to make every letter corresponding to the movement to become uppercase. gu makes it lowercase and g~ toggles the case. You can repeat the last character to affect the whole line (guu, gUU, g~~).

In Vim, you can type ctrl-a or ctrl-x to increment or decrement the next number in the line. For example, suppose you have the following line:

1. Do something

If you put the cursor on number one and type ctrl-a repeated times, you notice the number will increase to 2, 3, etc. Similarly, if you type ctrl-x, it will decrease going into negative numbers if you do it enough times.

Let’s say you want to create a numbered list. You have a list of people:

If you have a long line in Vim, Vim wraps that line visually at window length. It’s not a hard wrap, no newline character is inserted. Since it’s only one line, if you try moving up or down with j and k, you’ll notice that the cursor moves up or down the group of lines (visually) corresponding to one line in the file. The same happens when you type 0 or ^ to go to the beginning of the line and $ to go to the end.

You can use :normal (or the abbreviated form, :norm) in Vim to execute a normal command on a range of lines.

Example:

:%norm I1. <cr>

Here, <cr> means ‘press enter key’. Also, notice the space after the dot.

That command will act on all line (%) and insert at the beginning of the line (I) the number 1 followed by a dot, followed by a space.

After pressing enter, the command is executed and Vim returns to normal mode.

If you selected part of the text, then did something else, then decided to select the same text again, instead of using v or V and redoing the selection, you can type gv in normal mode to reselect the previous text.

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When in command-line mode in Vim, for example, when typing Ex commands, you can use ctrl-v to type control characters. Usually, if you type the control character, Vim will execute it. For example, if you simply press enter, you’re going to execute whatever you have typed so far in command-line mode. But if you type ctrl-v followed by enter, you will see a ^M inserted and Vim will treat it as if you typed the enter character instead.

If you type a really long line in Vim, Vim soft-wraps it at the end of the window, but in the file it’s still one line. If you type gq or gw followed by a movement, Vim formats the text based on the movement you selected. For instance, gwip will format the paragraph under the cursor (gw inside i paragraph p), gwG will format from the cursor to the end of the file (G).

If you select some lines or characters with V or v and want to change the direction of expansion of the selection, type o.

For example, suppose you have the following text:

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his
ways, and his habits were regular.
It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably
breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning.
Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the
dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him
into the lowest portions of the City.
Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and
again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the
sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from
morning to night.
On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes,
that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic,
had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a
notion.

Suppose your cursor is in the line starting with Sometimes. You pressed V and started selecting down with j. Then you realised you should have started from the line It was rare two lines above your initial choice. If you press k to move up, you deselect what you had selected. However, you can type o, the cursor changes to the beginning of selection and now when you type k, you expand the selection upwards.

If you want to execute a command on all lines matching a pattern, you can use the Ex command :g. For example, if you want to delete all blank lines, you can do

:g/^\s*$/d

It will get all lines that matches this: from the beginning (^), it may contain 0 or more whitespace (\s*) until the end of line ($). In other words, if the line is empty or contain only whitespace.

I decided to compile a list of Vim tips as TIL (Today I learnt), although most of these tips I already knew. The following posts will follow a TIL format.

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