Learn Vim

I switched computers and operating systems a lot during the last 18 months. On every new system, I first install Vim (then comes SVN and coding environment). Vim, however, is a constant factor I cannot live without (well, I can, but I don’t like it).

Aside from being available on every platform I use (and some others), it is a huge timesaver. search/replace over several open files using regular expression is great ( :argdo %s/foo/bar/gce | update ). Repeating the last used command with the “dot” is a feature I miss everytime I have to use another editor. Folding and syntax-highlighting are common to many editors, but the automatic indention during typing allows me to write code much faster.

Fantastic program!

I ran into a little problem regarding pressing CTRL-]

I happen to use a german keyboard layout (with all those umlauts and stuff) which has the ]-character in a different position from the US-layout.

As CTRL-] is used to follow links in the help, I had a problem.

• Look at a keyboard with US-Layout and try a key which looks like it could be in the right position
• on German Keyboards, use: STRG + *
• on any other keyboard, try some key next to enter/return-key.

Strg + * works for me as CTRL-].

[edit]
Other keystroke work as expected with my local keyboard layout. Maybe this only applies to the CTRL-combinations…

Although I use Vim already regularly, I still want to learn it from scratch.

Starting today, I will read at least one chapter of the vim manual per week. As I use it already I hope to be able to skip some parts.

We’ll see.