ViM tips and configuration

• My .vimrc file
• Substitutions to transform a css/html page to a latex document
• Frequently used but not-so-known commands

My .vimrc file

Extracted from my .vimrc file. Just copy and paste to your own home folder's .vimrc file.

Highlighted customizations:

• Word expansion with TAB, but a tab '\t' is inserted when at the beggining of the line or after another tab.
  
• Prevent opening of .o and .class files when tabulating at the :edit command.
  
• Repair bad carriage returns (useful for ^M -terminated windows files)
  

" Use Vim settings instead of Vi
set nocompatible
" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set autoindent
" keep 50 lines of command line history
set history=50
" show the cursor position all the time
set ruler
" display incomplete commands
set showcmd
" do incremental searching
set incsearch
" do highlight of matches in search
set hlsearch
" Don't use Ex mode, use Q for formatting
map Q gq
" Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors
" Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.
if ∓t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
  syntax on
  set hlsearch
endif
" Only do this part when compiled with support for autocommands.
if has("autocmd")

  " Enable file type detection.
  " Use the default filetype settings, so that mail gets 'tw' set to 72,
  " 'cindent' is on in C files, etc.
  " Also load indent files, to automatically do language-dependent indenting.
  filetype plugin indent on

  " For all text files set 'textwidth' to 78 characters.
  autocmd FileType text setlocal textwidth=78

  " When editing a file, always jump to the last known cursor position.
  " Don't do it when the position is invalid or when inside an event handler
  " (happens when dropping a file on gvim).
  autocmd BufReadPost *
    \ if line("'\"") > 0 ∓∓ line("'\"") <= line("$") |
    \   exe "normal g`\"" |
    \ endif

endif " has("autocmd")

" enabling colors
set term=builtin_ansi

syntax on

" setting a command to clean up bad carriage returns.
" Remember: user defined commands start with capital letter !
command Repair %s/^M/\r/ge
" WARNING be sure to generate the above char as a control+V+M inside
"         a vim session; it's not just a ^ plus an M character.

" tab complete ignores listed extensions
set wildignore=*.o,*.class

" cancel visualbell
set vb t_vb=

" map j to gj and k to gk, so line navigation ignores line wrap
nmap j gj
nmap k gk

" smart tab completion
function! InsertTabWrapper(direction)
	let col = col('.') - 1
	if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'
		return "\<tab>"
	elseif "back" == a:direction
		return "\<c-p>"
	else
		return "\<c-n>"
	endif
endfunction

inoremap <tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper ("forw")<cr>
inoremap <s-tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper ("back")<cr>
	

Substitutions to transform a css/html page to a latex document

# erase everything between "< " and ">" in all lines
:%s/< \_.\{-}>//g
# replace "<p class=chapter>Something"  to "\chapter{Something}"
:%s/\(<p class=chapter>\)\(.*\)/\\chapter{\2}/g
# replace "<p class=subchapter>Some text" to "{\large Some text} followed by two line breaks
:%s/\(<p class=subchapter>\)\(.*\)/{\\large \2}\r\r/g
# replace back quotes with proper "
:%s/&#8221;/"/g
# replace & with \&
:%s/&amp;/\\\&/g
# replace chapter{XX}, where X is 1 to infinity, with chapter
:%s/chapter{.\{-\}}/chapter/g
	

Frequently used but not-so-known commands

• Control+y and Control+e to copy the characters above and below the cursor, respectively, while in insert mode. So you can copy the line above or below into the current line just by keeping Control+y or Control+e pressed.
  
• :hardcopy will print selected text or all text (no selection) directly to your system default printer.
  
• :Nread ftp://yourserver/path_to/file.html and :Nwrite ftp://yourserver/path_to_file.html for direct access to files in an FTP server.
  
• :noh to remove the search highlighted words.
  
• :set paste! to enable proper pasting with the middle-click under X11, without starting line points being super-indented because of the automatic indentation present in the .vimrc file.
  
• Control+"* to paste the last copied text into vim's command line, such as for searching a specific text.
  
• * over a word outside insert mode to forward-search that word (use # to back-search).
  
• If you backsearched a word, N will forward-search it; if you forward-searched a word, N will backsearch it. n will search next, in whatever direction you started the search.
  
• :set tw=80 will keep lines at a maximum of 80 chars.
  
• gq will text wrap any selected text to the maximum characters per line set with for example :set tw=80 .
  
• :%!sort will sort all lines. Or select first some lines, then :'<'>!sort .
  
• :bufdo %s/this/that/g | update will run the substitution in all open buffers; the call to update writes or updates the file so that the "file not updated error" in switching buffers is not thrown.
  

Of course all comands are documented under :he -the help command.

And please visit the best vim tips webpage ever. Also this one.