CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimtext-editoredit
pbp
pbp

Reputation: 1481

Moving between lines in VIM

Let's say I have a file with N lines. I'm at line X and I'd like to move to line Y, where both X and Y are visible on screen. I can do that by typing :Y<cr>, but if Y>99 that's a lot of typing. I can also do abs(Y-X)[kj] (move up or down by abs(Y-X)), but for big X,Y computing this difference mentally isn't so easy.

Is there a way to exploit the fact, that both X,Y are visible on screen and move between X and Y fast?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1195

Answers (6)

sehe
sehe

Reputation: 393064

Dropping my dime in the pond:

I find that traversing code is exceptionally easy with text objects. I rarely do use jk/JK for larger jumps any more. Instead I navigate for whitespace lines using { and }

Since on any one screen there are usually only so-many whitespace delineations (and they are very easily visually recognized and counted), I find that e.g.

   3}j

lands me on the intended line a lot more often than, e.g., a guesstimated

     27j

To top it all, many 'brace-full' programming languages have opening braces at the start of functions. These can be reached with [[ resp. ]]. So sometimes it is just a matter of doing, e.g.

   2[[}

(meaning: go to start of previous function, after the first contiguous block of lines)

Upvotes: 2

steveha
steveha

Reputation: 76715

Perhaps you can make use of H, M, or L.

These keys jump the cursor to display lines:

H    "Home" top of screen
M    "Middle" middle of screen
L    "Last" last line of screen

With a count, they offset: 4L would go to the third line above the last (1L is the same as just L).

Personally, I make heavy use of the m command to mark a line for navigation. From where I am now, hit mq to mark the position with label q; then navigate to another line, and ma to mark it with label a; and from then on I can hit 'q to jump to position q and 'a to jump to position a. (q and a are arbitrary; I use those mostly due to their position on a QWERTY keyboard.)

One you have the marks, you can use them for commands. To delete from the current position to the line marked with q, you just use: d'q

There is a variant, where instead of single quote you use back quote. This takes you to the exact position on the line where you placed the mark; the single quote uses the start of the line.

Those marks work even for ex (command line) commands. To limit search and replace to a specific set of lines, I mark the beginning and end lines respectively with labels b and e, and then do my search and replace like so:

:'b,'es/foo/bar/g

Upvotes: 2

Facundo Casco
Facundo Casco

Reputation: 10585

You can use H, M or L to go the top, middle and bottom of the screen.

Upvotes: 3

dmedvinsky
dmedvinsky

Reputation: 8336

You can :set relativenumber which does that Y-X computing for you (only in Vim >= 7.3).

Upvotes: 8

shabunc
shabunc

Reputation: 24741

The tougher vimmer you are becoming, the bigger amount of lines you can count at first glance. Don't know, maybe there are some clever techniques, but I just type something like 17k/23j and so on.

also, searching some word on the string you want to jump works.

also, zz (center screen) is sometimes helpful in this cases.

Upvotes: 0

Tallboy
Tallboy

Reputation: 13417

My version of VIM lets you guestimate a number immediately before hitting J or K to go that many lines.

15K goes up 15 lines

Upvotes: 0

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