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A List of the Key Commands in Vim

The ^ character denotes holding control then hitting the next key.

Placing a number immediately before any command will repeat that command. For example, typing 4dd will delete the current line and the next 3.

Vim Commands

Action

Command
invoke vim vim filename
save file :w
exit vim :q
command line mode Esc
undo u
Search and Replace
search forward / [string]
search backward ? [string]
find and replace once :s/[string to be found]/[thing to replace it]
find and replace on line :s/[string]/[string]/g
find and replace globally :%s/[string]/[string]/g
Movement Commands
up one line up arrow or k
down one line down arrow or j
right one character right arrow or l
left one character left arrow or h
next word (until first character of next word) w
next word (until end of current word) e
previous word b
beginning of line 0
end of line $
page forward ^d
page backward ^u
Delete Commands
delete current character x
delete current character and replace it with one character r [character]
to end of line d$
entire current line dd
paste what was just deleted p
delete to end of word and put into insert mode ce
delete to end of line and put into insert mode c$

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Last Modified Tuesday, 20-Nov-2006 16:56:54 PDT