Vim - Tips And Tricks

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Now we got fair idea about Vim. Let us discuss few tips and tricks of Vim to improve productivity. In this section, we will discuss following items −

• Convert spaces to tabs and vice-versa
• Highlight miss-spelled words
• Word completion
• Copy line character by character
• Indent code
• Change file format

Convert spaces to tabs and vice-versa

Convert tabs to spaces

If you are editing a file and you want to convert entered tab character to spaces then execute following command −

:set expandtab

Note that, this command will not change existing tabs to spaces. To achieve this execute following command −

:set tabstop = 4 shiftwidth = 4 expandtab 
:retab

In above command we are instructing Vim to convert tabs into 4 spaces

Convert spaces to tabs

To convert spaces to tabs execute below command −

:set noexpandtab :retab!

Highlight miss-spelled words

We can instruct Vim to highlight miss-spelled words. To do this execute following command −

:set spell

Below image highlights misspelled word in Vim −

Word completion

Vim also provides word completion. For this execute following command in insert mode −

Ctrl + p

Copy character line by line

Use following command to copy and paste line character by character −

Sr.No	Command & Description
1	Ctrl + y Copy and paste text located above the cursor
2	Ctrl + e Copy and paste text located below the cursor

Note the we have to use these commands in insert mode.

Indent code

If you have un-indented code to indent it execute following command −

=%

For instance, if you have un-indented code like this −

Then go to line 4 and execute =% command. It will indent code like this −

Change file format

To change file format to UNIX execute following command −

:set ff = unix

To change file format to DOS execute following command −

:set ff = dos