usr_20.txt (13693B)
1 *usr_20.txt* Nvim 2 3 4 VIM USER MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar 5 6 7 Typing command-line commands quickly 8 9 10 Vim has a few generic features that makes it easier to enter commands. Colon 11 commands can be abbreviated, edited and repeated. Completion is available for 12 nearly everything. 13 14 |20.1| Command line editing 15 |20.2| Command line abbreviations 16 |20.3| Command line completion 17 |20.4| Command line history 18 |20.5| Command line window 19 20 Next chapter: |usr_21.txt| Go away and come back 21 Previous chapter: |usr_12.txt| Clever tricks 22 Table of contents: |usr_toc.txt| 23 24 ============================================================================== 25 *20.1* Command line editing 26 27 When you use a colon (:) command or search for a string with / or ?, Vim puts 28 the cursor on the bottom of the screen. There you type the command or search 29 pattern. This is called the Command line. Also when it's used for entering a 30 search command. 31 32 The most obvious way to edit the command you type is by pressing the <BS> key. 33 This erases the character before the cursor. To erase another character, 34 typed earlier, first move the cursor with the cursor keys. 35 For example, you have typed this: > 36 37 :s/col/pig/ 38 39 Before you hit <Enter>, you notice that "col" should be "cow". To correct 40 this, you type <Left> five times. The cursor is now just after "col". Type 41 <BS> and "w" to correct: > 42 43 :s/cow/pig/ 44 45 Now you can press <Enter> directly. You don't have to move the cursor to the 46 end of the line before executing the command. 47 48 The most often used keys to move around in the command line: 49 50 <Left> one character left 51 <Right> one character right 52 <S-Left> or <C-Left> one word left 53 <S-Right> or <C-Right> one word right 54 CTRL-B or <Home> to begin of command line 55 CTRL-E or <End> to end of command line 56 57 Note: 58 <S-Left> (cursor left key with Shift key pressed) and <C-Left> (cursor 59 left key with Control pressed) will not work on all keyboards. Same 60 for the other Shift and Control combinations. 61 62 You can also use the mouse to move the cursor. 63 64 65 DELETING 66 67 As mentioned, <BS> deletes the character before the cursor. To delete a whole 68 word use CTRL-W. 69 70 /the fine pig ~ 71 72 CTRL-W 73 74 /the fine ~ 75 76 CTRL-U removes all text, thus allows you to start all over again. 77 78 79 OVERSTRIKE 80 81 The <Insert> key toggles between inserting characters and replacing the 82 existing ones. Start with this text: 83 84 /the fine pig ~ 85 86 Move the cursor to the start of "fine" with <S-Left> twice (or <Left> eight 87 times, if <S-Left> doesn't work). Now press <Insert> to switch to overstrike 88 and type "great": 89 90 /the greatpig ~ 91 92 Oops, we lost the space. Now, don't use <BS>, because it would delete the 93 "t" (this is different from Replace mode). Instead, press <Insert> to switch 94 from overstrike to inserting, and type the space: 95 96 /the great pig ~ 97 98 99 CANCELLING 100 101 You thought of executing a : or / command, but changed your mind. To get rid 102 of what you already typed, without executing it, press CTRL-C or <Esc>. 103 104 Note: 105 <Esc> is the universal "get out" key. Unfortunately, in the good old 106 Vi pressing <Esc> in a command line executed the command! Since that 107 might be considered to be a bug, Vim uses <Esc> to cancel the command. 108 But with the 'cpoptions' option it can be made Vi compatible. And 109 when using a mapping (which might be written for Vi) <Esc> also works 110 Vi compatible. Therefore, using CTRL-C is a method that always works. 111 112 If you are at the start of the command line, pressing <BS> will cancel the 113 command. It's like deleting the ":" or "/" that the line starts with. 114 115 ============================================================================== 116 *20.2* Command line abbreviations 117 118 Some of the ":" commands are really long. We already mentioned that 119 ":substitute" can be abbreviated to ":s". This is a generic mechanism, all 120 ":" commands can be abbreviated. 121 122 How short can a command get? There are 26 letters, and many more commands. 123 For example, ":set" also starts with ":s", but ":s" doesn't start a ":set" 124 command. Instead ":set" can be abbreviated to ":se". 125 When the shorter form of a command could be used for two commands, it 126 stands for only one of them. There is no logic behind which one, you have to 127 learn them. In the help files the shortest form that works is mentioned. For 128 example: > 129 130 :s[ubstitute] 131 132 This means that the shortest form of ":substitute" is ":s". The following 133 characters are optional. Thus ":su" and ":sub" also work. 134 135 In the user manual we will either use the full name of command, or a short 136 version that is still readable. For example, ":function" can be abbreviated 137 to ":fu". But since most people don't understand what that stands for, we 138 will use ":fun". (Vim doesn't have a ":funny" command, otherwise ":fun" would 139 be confusing too.) 140 141 It is recommended that in Vim scripts you write the full command name. That 142 makes it easier to read back when you make later changes. Except for some 143 often used commands like ":w" (":write") and ":r" (":read"). 144 A particularly confusing one is ":end", which could stand for ":endif", 145 ":endwhile" or ":endfunction". Therefore, always use the full name. 146 147 148 SHORT OPTION NAMES 149 150 In the user manual the long version of the option names is used. Many options 151 also have a short name. Unlike ":" commands, there is only one short name 152 that works. For example, the short name of 'autoindent' is 'ai'. Thus these 153 two commands do the same thing: > 154 155 :set autoindent 156 :set ai 157 158 You can find the full list of long and short names here: |option-list|. 159 160 ============================================================================== 161 *20.3* Command line completion 162 163 This is one of those Vim features that, by itself, is a reason to switch from 164 Vi to Vim. Once you have used this, you can't do without. 165 166 Suppose you have a directory that contains these files: 167 168 info.txt 169 intro.txt 170 bodyofthepaper.txt 171 172 To edit the last one, you use the command: > 173 174 :edit bodyofthepaper.txt 175 176 It's easy to type this wrong. A much quicker way is: > 177 178 :edit b<Tab> 179 180 Which will result in the same command. What happened? The <Tab> key does 181 completion of the word before the cursor. In this case "b". Vim looks in the 182 directory and finds only one file that starts with a "b". That must be the 183 one you are looking for, thus Vim completes the file name for you. 184 185 Now type: > 186 187 :edit i<Tab> 188 189 Vim will beep, and give you: > 190 191 :edit info.txt 192 193 The beep means that Vim has found more than one match. It then uses the first 194 match it found (alphabetically). If you press <Tab> again, you get: > 195 196 :edit intro.txt 197 198 Thus, if the first <Tab> doesn't give you the file you were looking for, press 199 it again. If there are more matches, you will see them all, one at a time. 200 If you press <Tab> on the last matching entry, you will go back to what you 201 first typed: > 202 203 :edit i 204 205 Then it starts all over again. Thus Vim cycles through the list of matches. 206 Use CTRL-P to go through the list in the other direction: 207 208 <------------------- <Tab> -------------------------+ 209 | 210 <Tab> --> <Tab> --> 211 :edit i :edit info.txt :edit intro.txt 212 <-- CTRL-P <-- CTRL-P 213 | 214 +---------------------- CTRL-P ------------------------> 215 216 217 CONTEXT 218 219 When you type ":set i" instead of ":edit i" and press <Tab> you get: > 220 221 :set icon 222 223 Hey, why didn't you get ":set info.txt"? That's because Vim has context 224 sensitive completion. The kind of words Vim will look for depends on the 225 command before it. Vim knows that you cannot use a file name just after a 226 ":set" command, but you can use an option name. 227 Again, if you repeat typing the <Tab>, Vim will cycle through all matches. 228 There are quite a few, it's better to type more characters first: > 229 230 :set isk<Tab> 231 232 Gives: > 233 234 :set iskeyword 235 236 Now type "=" and press <Tab>: > 237 238 :set iskeyword=@,48-57,_,192-255 239 240 What happens here is that Vim inserts the old value of the option. Now you 241 can edit it. 242 What is completed with <Tab> is what Vim expects in that place. Just try 243 it out to see how it works. In some situations you will not get what you 244 want. That's either because Vim doesn't know what you want, or because 245 completion was not implemented for that situation. In that case you will get 246 a <Tab> inserted (displayed as ^I). 247 248 249 LIST MATCHES 250 251 When there are many matches, you would like to see an overview. Do this by 252 pressing CTRL-D. For example, pressing CTRL-D after: > 253 254 :set is 255 256 results in: > 257 258 :set is 259 incsearch isfname isident iskeyword isprint 260 :set is 261 262 Vim lists the matches and then comes back with the text you typed. You can 263 now check the list for the item you wanted. If it isn't there, you can use 264 <BS> to correct the word. If there are many matches, type a few more 265 characters before pressing <Tab> to complete the rest. 266 If you have watched carefully, you will have noticed that "incsearch" 267 doesn't start with "is". In this case "is" stands for the short name of 268 "incsearch". (Many options have a short and a long name.) Vim is clever 269 enough to know that you might have wanted to expand the short name of the 270 option into the long name. 271 272 273 THERE IS MORE 274 275 The CTRL-L command completes the word to the longest unambiguous string. If 276 you type ":edit i" and there are files "info.txt" and "info_backup.txt" you 277 will get ":edit info". 278 279 The 'wildmode' option can be used to change the way completion works. 280 The 'wildmenu' option can be used to get a menu-like list of matches. 281 Use the 'suffixes' option to specify files that are less important and appear 282 at the end of the list of files. 283 The 'wildignore' option specifies files that are not listed at all. 284 285 More about all of this here: |cmdline-completion| 286 287 ============================================================================== 288 *20.4* Command line history 289 290 In chapter 3 we briefly mentioned the history. The basics are that you can 291 use the <Up> key to recall an older command line. <Down> then takes you back 292 to newer commands. 293 294 There are actually five histories. The ones we will mention here are for ":" 295 commands and for "/" and "?" search commands. The "/" and "?" commands share 296 the same history, because they are both search commands. The three other 297 histories are for expressions, debug mode commands and input lines for the 298 input() function. |cmdline-history| 299 300 Suppose you have done a ":set" command, typed ten more colon commands and then 301 want to repeat that ":set" command again. You could press ":" and then ten 302 times <Up>. There is a quicker way: > 303 304 :se<Up> 305 306 Vim will now go back to the previous command that started with "se". You have 307 a good chance that this is the ":set" command you were looking for. At least 308 you should not have to press <Up> very often (unless ":set" commands is all 309 you have done). 310 311 The <Up> key will use the text typed so far and compare it with the lines in 312 the history. Only matching lines will be used. 313 If you do not find the line you were looking for, use <Down> to go back to 314 what you typed and correct that. Or use CTRL-U to start all over again. 315 316 To see all the lines in the history: > 317 318 :history 319 320 That's the history of ":" commands. The search history is displayed with this 321 command: > 322 323 :history / 324 325 CTRL-P will work like <Up>, except that it doesn't matter what you already 326 typed. Similarly for CTRL-N and <Down>. CTRL-P stands for previous, CTRL-N 327 for next. 328 329 ============================================================================== 330 *20.5* Command line window 331 332 Typing the text in the command line works differently from typing text in 333 Insert mode. It doesn't allow many commands to change the text. For most 334 commands that's OK, but sometimes you have to type a complicated command. 335 That's where the command line window is useful. 336 337 Open the command line window with this command: > 338 339 q: 340 341 Vim now opens a (small) window at the bottom. It contains the command line 342 history, and an empty line at the end: 343 > 344 +-------------------------------------+ 345 |other window | 346 |~ | 347 |file.txt=============================| 348 |:e c | 349 |:e config.h.in | 350 |:set path=.,/usr/include,, | 351 |:set iskeyword=@,48-57,_,192-255 | 352 |:set is | 353 |:q | 354 |: | 355 |command-line=========================| 356 | | 357 +-------------------------------------+ 358 < 359 You are now in Normal mode. You can use the "hjkl" keys to move around. For 360 example, move up with "5k" to the ":e config.h.in" line. Type "$h" to go to 361 the "i" of "in" and type "cwout". Now you have changed the line to: 362 363 :e config.h.out ~ 364 365 Now press <Enter> and this command will be executed. The command line window 366 will close. 367 The <Enter> command will execute the line under the cursor. It doesn't 368 matter whether Vim is in Insert mode or in Normal mode. 369 Changes in the command line window are lost. They do not result in the 370 history to be changed. Except that the command you execute will be added to 371 the end of the history, like with all executed commands. 372 373 The command line window is very useful when you want to have overview of the 374 history, lookup a similar command, change it a bit and execute it. A search 375 command can be used to find something. 376 In the previous example the "?config" search command could have been used 377 to find the previous command that contains "config". It's a bit strange, 378 because you are using a command line to search in the command line window. 379 While typing that search command you can't open another command line window, 380 there can be only one. 381 382 ============================================================================== 383 384 Next chapter: |usr_21.txt| Go away and come back 385 386 Copyright: see |manual-copyright| vim:tw=78:ts=8:noet:ft=help:norl: