This is my ongoing Vim quick reference. Note that this is in no way meant to be an exhaustive cheatsheet for Vim. This is more a list of things I’m personally constantly forgetting how to do.

Searching, Pattern Matching, and Replacing

Searching for a Pattern

:/pattern

Find and Replace

:%s/searchtext/replacetext/g

Note: Leave off the /g to only replace the first match on each line.

Limit the Range of Affected Lines

:N,Ms/searchtext/replacetext/g

Where N is the first line and M is the last line.

Show All Lines That Match a Pattern

:g/pattern

Delete All Lines that Contains a Pattern

:g/searchpattern/d

Delete All Lines that Do Not Contain a Pattern

:v/searchpattern/d

or

:g!/searchpattern/d

Registers

In Vim, the concept of a clipboard is called a register. Like any other text-editor, Vim has a default register that you can use for copy and paste, but you can also use each letter (a through z) to have multiple named registers.

In Normal Mode

• To copy the current word under the cursor into the default register: yw
• To copy the current word under the cursor into the “a” register: ayw
• To paste from the default register at the cursor: p
• To paste from the “a” register after the cursor: ap

In Edit Mode

• To paste the contents of the default register: <ctrl-r>
• To paste the contents from the “a” register: <ctrl-r>a

Bookmarks

Vim allows you to set bookmarks using the letters a through z so you can more easily refer to a section of a given file.

• Set local bookmark called “a” - ma
• Go to local bookmark called “a” - 'a
• For global bookmarks (spanning multiple files/buffers), use uppercase letters: mA, 'A

Inverting Case

• For a single line: g ~ ~
• For a single character under the cursor: ~
• For a word under the cursor: ~iw