NerdyRoom™

Name:	Vim (Vi IMproved)
Version:	7.2
URL:	http://www.vim.org/

In the .vimrc file, default options can be set. This file is located in your home directory. e.g. ./home/user/.vimrc. There also is a global vimrc: /etc/vim/vimrc.

• Abandon vi compatibility. Needed to get all the extras of vim.

  set nocompatible

• Backspace is allowed to remove indentions, end of lines and starts.

  set backspace=indent,eol,start

• Do not create backup files.

  set nobackup

• Set the length of the history (accessed through arrow up and down, while typing a :-, /- or ?-command) to 400 entries.

  set history=400

• Show the current cursor position in the status line.

  set ruler

• Display incomplete commands in the status line.

  set showcmd

• Display the current mode in the status line.

  set showmode

• Visually jump to the matching opening bracket for a short time, when typing a closing bracket.

  set showmatch

• Show intermediate search results, while typing a search term.

  set incsearch

• Do not insert two spaces after a ‘.’, ‘?’ and ‘!’ with a join command.

  set nojoinspaces

• Disallow all keys to move to the next line. See :help whichwrap for more information.

  set whichwrap=""

• Use filetype-specific indention, if possible.

  filetype plugin indent on

• Enable syntax highlighting. Vim is able to highlight more than 200 distinct filetypes.

  syntax enable

• Highlight all search hits. Use :nohls to turn it off.

  set hlsearch

• Indent intelligently, automatically – My favourite indention mode.

  set autoindent

• Replace tabs with spaces.

  set expandtab

• How many spaces is a tab?

  set tabstop=4

• How many spaces is an indention.

  set shiftwidth=4

• Show line numbers.

  set number

• Always use the default color scheme.

  colorscheme default

• Highlight trailing spaces and @todos.

  match Todo /\s\+$/
  match Todo /@todo/
  

• Jump to end of the file, if opening a log file.

  :augroup somethinguseful
  :au BufReadPost *.log normal G
  :augroup END
  

set nocompatible                    " deactivated compatibility to vi
set backspace=indent,eol,start      " what is the backspace allowed to delete
set nobackup                        " do not keep a backup files, use versions instead
set history=400                     " keep 400 lines of command line history
set ruler                           " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd                         " display incomplete commands
set showmode                        " show in which mode we are in the status line
set showmatch                       " visually jumps the matching bracket when typing closing brackets
set incsearch                       " do incremental searching
set nojoinspaces                    " do not insert a space, when joining lines
set whichwrap=""                    " do not jump to the next line when deleting
filetype plugin indent on           " if there is an indention plugin matching the filetype, use it
syntax enable                       " syntax highlighting on
set hlsearch                        " highlight all search hits
set autoindent                      " indent intelligently automatically
set expandtab                       " expand tabs to spaces
set tabstop=4                       " how many spaces make one tab
set shiftwidth=4                    " how many spaces to indent, using < and >
set number                          " show line numbers
colorscheme default                                                                                   

match Todo /\s\+$/                  " highlight trailing white spaces
match Todo /@todo/                  " highlight doxygen todos        

:augroup somethinguseful
:au BufReadPost *.log normal G " jump to the end of the file if it is a logfile
:augroup END

Since vim has a multitude of commands, having a cheat sheet is a must. Here is my favorite: Graphical Cheat Sheet.
Disclaimer: The following commands are likely to be more powerful than shown here.
This is only a narrow view on which commands and command combinations I use every day.

Legend

• [] : optional argument
• <> : mandatory argument
• count : any number
• movement : any movement command. e.g.: w,b,e,ge,arrows,^,$,…
• {v} : being in visual mode
• {i} : being in insertion mode

Movement

• w, b : Move to the first character of the next/previous word.
• e, ge : Move to the last character of the next/previous word.
• /<find>/, ?<find>? : Search the term <find> forward/backward.
• //, ?? : Repeat the last search.
• *, # : Search the word under the cursor forward/backward.
• n, N : Jump to the first letter of the next hit. I often use this in conjunction with the . command (The dot will be explained later on.)
• :[no]hls : Switch off/on the highlight for the previous search. Use this when you are done with your search to not get distracted by the highlight.
• % : Jump between matching starting and ending bracket.
• ^ : Jump to the first non-blank character of this line.
• [count]G : Jump to line [count]. Jump to the start of the file if [count] is omitted.
• gg : Jump to the end of the file.

Editing

• i,a : Switch to insertion mode before/after the current position.
• I,A : Switch to insertion mode at the begin/end of the line.
• [count]r<replacementcharacter> : Replace the [count] next characters with [count] <replacementcharacter>s starting at the current cursor position.
• R : Switch to replacement mode.
• c[count]<movement> : Delete the next [count] <movement>s and switch to insertion mode. I very often use cw.
• cc : Change the whole line and preserve the indention.
• d[count]<movement> : Delete the next [count] <movement>s. I very often use dw.
• dd : Remove the current line.
• J : Join the current line with next.
• :0,$ s/<find>/<replace>/g : starting from line 0, ranging to the last line: Replace all appearances of <find> with <replace>.
• . : Repeat the last insertion command. This is a very powerful tool, when you have to change something similarly in multiple places!

Formatting

• [linecount]>>, [linecount]<< : Indent the next [linecount] lines, starting with the current.
• {v} [indentcount]>, [indentcount]< : Indent the selected lines by [indentcount] indents.
• {v} = : Automatically indent the selected lines according to the filetype’s rules.

Copy’n'Paste

Vim has an automatically changing clipboard. It changes on every deletion/change of anything. E.g.: d,x,c,s,…

• y[count]<movement> : yank/copy the next [count] <movements>. I very often use y[count]w to copy whole words.
• yy : Yank the current line.
• p, P : Paste after/before the current position.
• {i} Alt+p : Paste before the current position and leave insertion mode.

Tabbing

• vim -p [files] : Open vim opening one tab for each file specified.
• :tabnew [file] : Open a new tab, loading file [file].
• :tabdo <command> : Execute command <command> in each tab separately.
• :tabmove [count] : Move this tab to position [count] or to the last position if no [count] is specified.
• Ctrl+Page Up, Ctrl+Page Down : Switch between tabs.

Visual Mode

• v : Switch to visual mode.
• V : Switch to visual mode, selecting whole lines.
• Ctrl+v : Switch to visual mode, selecting whole blocks. For example to comment out a block in c++, you just need: Ctr+v (select some lines vertically) I // Esc Esc. This puts // in each of the selected lines at the current column.
• gv : Restore the last selection.

Miscellaneous

• u, Ctrl+r : Undo, Redo
• Ctrl+p, Ctrl+n : Word completion searching forward/backward. This command also searches through included header files in c/c++.
• :mks[!] <file> : Save the current session to file <file>.
• vim -S <sessionfile> : Start vim using session <sessionfile>.
• :set [no]paste : Switch on/off auto indention. Use this when pasting already indented text into vim.

Some fundamental information about the considered tool.

Name:	GNU grep
Version:	2.5.3
URL:	http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/

This section will describe how to set the Default Option Set. For grep its the environmental variable GREP_OPTIONS.

In this section comes a descriptive list of the options.

• ignore binary files

  --binary-files=without-match

• use colored output in terminals

  --color=auto

• ignore special files like fifos, char and block devices

  --devices=skip

• exclude patch *.rej and *.orig files

  --exclude='*.rej'

  --exclude='*.orig'

• exclude common scm directories

  --exclude-dir=.git

  --exclude-dir=.svn

  --exclude-dir=CVS

  --exclude-dir=patches

  --exclude-dir=.pc

• exclude build directories

  --exclude-dir=.libs

  --exclude-dir=.deps

And here is a ready-to-use version of the option set.