Vim Tips and Tricks

1. Download the .vim file.
2. Copy it to <vim installation directory>
3. Edit your .vimrc file.
4. Add a line like this: “au BufNewFile,BufRead *.ft set filetype=ft”, where “ft” is the file extension and file type you are installing support for.

If you want to have custom startup setting for Vim in a Cygwin session, do the following:

1. Start a Cygwin Bash session.
2. Go to “/usr/share/vim/vim72″. (You may need to modify the “72″ to match your installed version of Vim.)
3. Copy vimrc_example.vim to ~/.vimrc
4. Go to your home directory, edit the .vimrc file, and modify the settings to your liking.

Sometimes, VIM does not correctly apply syntax highlighting rules. In my case, I found that this happens a lot with Visual Basic files. You can override the syntax highlighting rules, forcing a set of syntax rules to be applied based on a file’s extension, as follows. For example, if you find that .cls (VB class files) are not being handled as Visual Basic files, add the following to your vimrc file:

“au BufNewFile,BufRead *.cls set filetype=vb”

For other file types, just add a line similar to the one above, changing the “*.cls” and “vb” values as needed.

If you want Vim to be automatically maximized when you run it, enter the following as the last statement in your vimrc file: “au GUIEnter * simalt ~x” (without the quotes)

(from here)

The :substitute command searches for a text pattern, and replaces it with a text string. There are many options, but these are what you probably want:

:%s/foo/bar/g

…finds each occurrence of ‘foo’ (in all lines), and replaces it with ‘bar’.

:s/foo/bar/g

…finds each occurrence of ‘foo’ (in the current line only), and replaces it with ‘bar’.

:%s/foo/bar/gc

…changes each ‘foo’ to ‘bar’, but asks for confirmation first.

:%s/\<foo\>/bar/gc

…changes only whole words exactly matching ‘foo’ to ‘bar’; asks for confirmation.

:%s/foo/bar/gci

…changes each ‘foo’ (case insensitive) to ‘bar’; asks for confirmation. This may be wanted after using :set noignorecase to make searches case sensitive (the default).

:%s/foo/bar/gcI

…changes each ‘foo’ (case sensitive) to ‘bar’; asks for confirmation. This may be wanted after using :set ignorecase to make searches case insensitive.