as I’m going through the process of learning vim, I’m discovering newfound powers. one of them being to execute commands from vim itself.

below examples might better explain some of them:

  1. want to see what files are in current directory? enter command mode(by typing :) and follow it by a bang(!). then do ls like you’d do in a terminal and press enter. this is not limited to just ls. you can enter any command that you can enter in terminal. for example: :! uname --operating-system (which will output GNU/Linux :))

  2. so you want to quickly save just a certain part of your file into another file? just select everything you need by entering visual mode(v) and do :w filename(actual command you’ll see would be '<,'>:w filename). verify it using 1.(i.e., :! cat filename.

  3. want to quickly paste another file into current one? do :r filename. it’ll paste its contents below your cursor.

  4. or maybe you want to paste results of a command? do :r !ls *.png.

vim is my ~ sweet ~ now. make it yours too.

  • Victor
    6•1 year ago

    I’m personally a kakoune guy now. I used vim for over a decade, but kakoune just makes much more sense to me. And I thought vim made a lot of sense, too.

      • Victor
        1•1 year ago

        Yeah baby! There’s always someone who says that – “huh, need to try that out sometime”.

        I really hope you do, it’s always satisfying finding a tool that you enjoy more than the ones you’ve been using. 😊

    • callyral [he/they]English
      1•1 year ago

      i was wondering, could one customize vim to have kakoune keybindings? if so, has someone already done it

      • Victor
        1•1 year ago

        I’m thinking that would be more effort than simply installing the kakoune executable. If it’s even possible, that is.