Vi, Vim, Vscode editors

VI or VIM

This section describes both editors however these days vi command is an alias to vim. Therefore bear in mind although all have been tested the test itself was made on VIM.

delete till space

d, t, space   - d(elete) t(ill) space, but you can replace space with any printable character

drop to bash

:!bash   or   :!sh

edit other file

:e file.txt    #autocomplite works

redirect command STDOUT to the current edited file in the cursor position

:r!dir

show line number

:set number    or  :set nu

find and replace in VI called substitute (ref. sed)

:%s/wily/trusty/g    #substitute all wily with trusty in all document
:s/wily/trusty/g     #substitute only in the current line

display only lines matching pattern :global command

:g/string-pattern-search/p  # :g -global search,  /p -print out on a screen
:g/ERROR                    # display only lines with ERROR
:g!/ERROR                   # opposite
:v/ERROR                    # equivalent version

Undo and redo

 u -undo last change
 Ctrl-R -redo changes which were undone (undo the undos). '.' to repeat a previous change, at the current cursor position

Visual mode

v -visual selection using arrows and navigation keys
^v -visual block selection, y-yank, d-delete, i-insert still work

Multi-line insert in visual block selection

Press I to start a special form of insert mode, then type the wanted text (s:). When you press Esc to exit from insert mode, the text will be inserted in the same position on each of the lines affected by the visual block selection.

Insert comments sign # at the begging each line between 10 and 12th line

:set number
:10,12s/^/#

Wrap text

:set wrap    or    :set nowrap

Show current file name

Ctrl+g    -shows the current file name
1, Ctrl+g -shows relative to vim full path. Press '1' then Ctrl+g

VIM only

Split windows, multiple windows

:split   or   :vsplit
C^w, c -close current window
C^w, C^w - switch between windows

Tabs

vim -p file1 file2
# -p[N] :- open a [N]umber of tabs, if omitted opens each file in own tab

Lower or uppercase

Visual select the text, then U for uppercase or u for lowercase. To swap all casing in a visual selection, press ~. Without using a visual selection, gU<motion> will make the characters in motion uppercase, or use gu<motion> for lowercase. So: g~w will change case of a word.

Change colour of dark blue comments

You can do it manually with the command below, where ABCDEF is an appropriate colour hex code.

:hi Comment guifg=#ABCDEF

To make it permanent, add these lines to your ~/.vimrc file (using green as an example):

syntax on
:highlight Comment ctermfg=green

Oneliner

echo "syntax on" >> ~/.vimrc && echo ":highlight Comment ctermfg=green" >> ~/.vimrc

Show special characters

:set list    #and to unset ->   :set nolist

Vimdiff - diff compare

Compare multiple files using Screen program widows like

vimdiff -d file1 file2

Comparison tools

user@server1:/etc/cups# sdiff cupsd.conf -RE cupsd.conf     #side-by-side merge of file differences
LogLevel debug                                                  LogLevel debug
MaxLogSize 0                                                    MaxLogSize 0
# Allow remote access                                           # Allow remote access
Port 631                                                        Port 631
Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock                                  Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock

Another tools:

• colourdiff - this takes the standard diff options like -y for side-by-side compare

Vim plugins

• VimAwesome
  • FUGITIVE.VIM - Git integration
  • Syntastic - syntax and style checker that uses other plugins
  • flake8 - Python syntax checker
  • jedi-vim - Python autocompletion, use ctr+space

Vundle - plugin manager

Follow these steps to installe it Vundle Vim bundle/plugins manager. Just remember to comment out plugin examples otherwise it will not work. As an alternative you can use my .vimrc configuration file.

git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

Use following commands inside Vim

• :PluginList - lists configured plugins
• :PluginInstall - installs plugins; append `!` to update or just :PluginUpdate
• :PluginSearch foo - searches for foo; append `!` to refresh local cache
• :PluginClean - confirms removal of unused plugins; append `!` to auto-approve removal

Read more how to use Vim as Python IDE integrated development environment

my .vimrc

This is my Vim configuration file that uses Vundle as a package manager and has Python syntax autocomplete, checker and style

vim ~/.vimrc
cat << 'EOF' > ~/.vimrc
set nocompatible              " be iMproved, required
filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialise
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

" set indent and pasting text
set expandtab  "affects what happens when you press TAB key, If 'expandtab' is set, 
               "pressing the <TAB> key will always insert 'softtabstop' amount of 
               "space characters. Otherwise, the amount of spaces inserted is minimized 
               "by using TAB characters.
set tabstop=2  "changes the width of the TAB character
set shiftwidth=2  "affects what happens when you press >>, << or ==. 
                  "It also affects how automatic indentation works.
set softtabstop=2 "affects what happens when you press the <TAB> or <BS> keys 
set noautoindent  "copy the indentation from the previous line, when starting a new line
set nosmartindent "automatically inserts one extra level of indentation in some cases
set bg=dark
set paste
"set nowrap

" Syntastic setting - basic settings for beginners  
set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
set statusline+=%{SyntasticStatuslineFlag()}
set statusline+=%*

let g:syntastic_always_populate_loc_list = 1
let g:syntastic_auto_loc_list = 1
let g:syntastic_check_on_open = 1
let g:syntastic_check_on_wq = 0

"disable automatic syntax checking for Python, to allow flake8 do it via F7 or :call Flake8()
let g:syntastic_mode_map = { 'passive_filetypes': ['python'] } 

call vundle#begin()
" alternatively, pass a path where Vundle should install plugins
" call vundle#begin('~/some/path/here')

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'VundleVim/Vundle.vim'

" Keep Plugin commands between vundle#begin/end.
Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
Plugin 'davidhalter/jedi-vim'
"Plugin 'scrooloose/syntastic'
Plugin 'vim-syntastic/syntastic'
Plugin 'nvie/vim-flake8'          " Python lintel
Plugin 'glench/vim-jinja2-syntax'
Plugin 'scrooloose/nerdtree'      " usage :NERDTree then :?

" All of your Plugins must be added before the following line
call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required
" To ignore plugin indent changes, instead use:
"filetype plugin on
" see :h vundle for more details or wiki for FAQ
" Put your non-Plugin stuff after this line
EOF

XML Lintel - pretty

This solution is based on external tool called xmllint that you can call from vim using command :%!xmllint --format - or ! xmllint --format - in normal mode.

• % -scope full file
• - -at the end of the command is for receiving standard input - which, in this case, is the selected text that vim sends to xmllint

sudo apt-get install libxml2-utils

Python

Python is going through transformation from ~2.7 to 3.6+ therefore over time starting around 2012 multiple transitional solutions have been used by Distro vendors to support both versions. Therefore something like syntax checking and highlighting configuration in Vim was also affected and fixes differs over time.

Ubuntu 18.04

• Syntastic is lintel for Python 2.x
• Flake8 is lintel for python 3.x

Install falke8

It is very important to install Flake8 on the correct version of Python for your needs. If you want Flake8 to properly parse new language features in Python 3.5 (for example), you need it to be installed on 3.5 for Flake8 to understand those features. In many ways, Flake8 is tied to the version of Python on which it runs.

python<version> -m pip install flake8

Make sure you have lines like below in your .vimrc

let g:syntastic_mode_map = { 'passive_filetypes': ['python'] } "disable automatic syntax checking for Python
Plugin 'nvie/vim-flake8' "lintel, PEP8 indenting standard PEP8, syntax highlighter

Ubuntu before 16.04

Ubuntu comes with vim-tiny package that has most of things disabled, so get it uninstalled

sudo apt-get purge   vim-tiny
sudo apt-get install vim-nox-py2 #py2 support
sudo apt-get install vim         #py3 support
vim --version | grep python      #verify you should see eg: +python -python3

Optionally you may want to set alternatives

sudo update-alternatives --set vim /usr/bin/vim.nox-py2

Now, open vim and check :python import sys; print(sys.version) you should see similar output

2.7.12 (default, Nov 19 2016, 06:48:10)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609]

References

• Vim Cheat Sheet broken down into editor functionality
• PacVim – A Game That Teaches You Vim Commands

&flake8 Python tool for style guide enforcement