A common joke is that beginners need to view the tutorial just to exit the editor!Īmateur hint: if you’re in the Normal editing mode, “:wq” will save your file and exit, whereas “:q!” will exit immediately and without saving. Even the GUI version in Windows, gVim, feels foreign to some Windows users because of the different editing modes. One of the main complaints about Vim is that it has a steep learning curve. With the undisputed speed advantage and a plethora of features available by way of plugins, Vim is still not for everybody. For example, there are a variety of plugins for C++ that offer support for syntax checking, code completion, and debugging. Furthermore, it supports multiple programming languages and can be customized using an extensive plugin system. Vim is popular among programmers because it provides syntax highlighting when writing code or editing scripts. Users can further extend this by creating key mappings to execute complex commands with minimal input. There are keyboard combinations for every action and an adept user can perform functions like search and replace very quickly. After somebody becomes accustomed to the hotkeys and keyboard-based interaction in Vim C++, it is highly efficient at manipulating text, on-par or better than current-day text editors. One of the distinct advantages it has over the typical IDE is speed. Vim C++ is a powerful and lightweight editor that consumes few resources compared to an IDE like Visual Studio. That said, it is a very powerful and widely-used editor and well worth discussing its capability for coding in C++. Vim is not a feature-rich word processor like Microsoft Word and it is not a full-fledged IDE, such as the ones that we have listed as the top C++ IDEs for 2021. For the scope of this article, we will refer to our flavor as Vim C++. Whether it is being used to edit scripts, configuration files, emails, or C++ files, it is highly customizable and can be set up to work in a very simple way. It is often referred to as a “Programmer’s editor” but in practice, it can be used for all kinds of text editing. Thank you for reading.Vim is a well-known and mature text editor that is highly efficient at editing code. Feel free to experiment around and find your best workflow. Just because a certain feature was designed to for X doesn't mean everyone should do X. In addition, you can look at plugins such as ctrlp.vim or fzf.vim to boost your workflows. If after you've tried it and you still don't think it's for you, use the process that suits you most. My personal suggestion is to take your time to use it the way they were designed first. When I started using Vim full-time, it required a significant paradigm shift. In Vim there are 3: buffers, windows, and tabs. In most code editors there are 2 abstractions in their workflows: windows (ex: split screen) and tabs. Like one tab for server codes and one tab for client codes. Use tabs when working on different projects. Like when diffing files, referencing codes, or following code flows. Use windows when you need to view multiple buffers. Vim has designed switching file buffers to be frictionless. Having many buffers opened doesn't effect spatial distribution. Use buffers to open up all required files to get current task done. To learn how to use buffers, windows, and tabs efficiently is to understand what they are designed to do. Using buffers, windows, and tabs efficiently This X-Y-Z movement is possible thanks to Vim's window and buffer features. When we combine window movement with buffer traversal, we are moving in three-dimensional space. Inside each window, you can move along the Z axis with buffer navigation. We can move to top, right, bottom, left with +h/j/k/l.Įarlier I said that Vim buffers are like Z axis. Moving between windows in Vim is like traveling along X-Y axis in cartesian coordinate. In Vim, you can have multiple windows opened. Vim makes it almost frictionless to travel anywhere along this Z axis.Ī window is a viewport on a buffer. The number of file buffers you have is how long your Z axis is. You can jump to any coordinate in Z axis with :buffer. You can traverse the Z axis one file at a time with :bnext/ :bprev. Your buffers files are lined up in the Z axis. Imagine X axis to right, Y axis to top, and Z axis towards screen. The way I see it, buffer is like Z axis in X-Y-Z coordinate. To be honest, in my years of editing with Vim, I almost never needed to delete buffers. If we check with :ls, we'll see that we have 3 buffers. Still in the same vim session, if we want to open a new file, we can do :e file3.js. We have two buffers opened: file1.js and file1.js buffers. Once a buffer is opened, it remains in your buffers list. Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
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