Vim is one of the most powerful open-source editors used by programmers and system administrators around the world. While Vim itself is inherently a powerful editor, personalizing it to suit your needs can be a daunting task. However, it is possible to do so with the help of this book.

This book contains examples that cover everything from personalizing Vim according to the your work cycle to optimizations that will boost the your productivity. The main focus of this book is to make your life, as a Vim user, easier.

Each chapter deals with a different aspect, and provides recipes for easy-to-use hacks to customize and simplify your Vim experience. After an introduction covering the derivation of Vim and its relatives from the vi editor, the author explains basic changes that you can make to the appearance of the Vim editor. Further chapters cover improved navigation through files and buffers in Vim; speeding up your work with templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers; and formatting text and code, including using external formatting scripts. The final comprehensive chapter covers everything about using Vim scripts and scripting to extend functionality.

This book is written for Vim 7.2, the latest stable version. This latest version of Vim includes many new features like spell-checking, code completion, document tabs, current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and much more.

Getting the most out of the Vim editor

What you will learn from this book

• Gain a deep understanding of Vim to master the editor
• Personalize Vim to suit your needs
• Navigate through files faster while editing multiple files
• Boost your productivity by using templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers
• Improve the formatting of your text and code by mastering simple tricks
• Extend Vim with script
• Retain your Vim configuration across computers by storing an online copy

Approach

This book is a tutorial packed with ready-to-use hacks that give solutions for common problems faced by Vim users in their everyday life. Every chapter covers a set of recipes, each of which follows a systematic approach with a self-contained description of the task it covers, how to use it, and what you gain by using it. The minimum version of Vim required for each hack is clearly indicated.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Vim user who wants to get more out of this legendary text editor, this book is for you. It focuses on making life easier for intermediate to experienced Vim users.