VIM Commands Cheatsheet

VIM Commands Cheatsheet no water, just straight to the point, such as - how to save and exit vim editor?!

Basic Navigation

Command	Description
h	Move left
j	Move down
k	Move up
l	Move right
w	Jump forward to the start of the next word
b	Jump backward to the start of the previous word
$	Go to the end of the line
0	Go to the beginning of the line
gg	Go to the first line of the file
G	Go to the last line of the file
ctrl + f	Page down
ctrl + b	Page up

---

Editing & Inserting

Command	Description
i	Insert text before the cursor (insert mode)
a	Insert text after the cursor (insert mode)
o	Insert a new line below the current one
O	Insert a new line above the current one
dd	Delete the current line
dw	Delete the current word
x	Delete the character under the cursor
r	Replace a single character
R	Replace mode (overwrites text)
yy	Yank (copy) the current line
p	Paste after the cursor
P	Paste before the cursor

---

Command Mode

To enter command mode, press :.

Command	Description
:w	Save the file
:q	Quit VIM
:wq	Save and quit
:q!	Quit without saving (force quit)
:x	Save and quit (similar to :wq)
:e <filename>	Open a new file
:set nu	Show line numbers
:set nonu	Hide line numbers
:help	Open VIM help documentation

---

Search and Replace

Command	Description
/	Search forward
n	Go to the next search result
N	Go to the previous search result
:%s/old/new/g	Replace all instances of old with new in the entire file
:%s/old/new/gc	Replace all instances with confirmation

---

Undo and Redo

Command	Description
u	Undo the last change
ctrl + r	Redo the last undone change

---

Visual Mode

To enter visual mode, press v. This allows you to select text.

Command	Description
v	Visual mode (character-by-character selection)
V	Visual line mode (select entire lines)
ctrl + v	Visual block mode (select rectangular blocks)
y	Yank (copy) the selected text
d	Delete the selected text