Ask HN: What is your favorite lesser known VIM shortcut you can share

6 points by irishmansevilla 8 hours ago

:earlier 10m → Moves your buffer state 10 minutes earlier. :later 5m → Moves your buffer state 5 minutes later.

Why it's helpful: It acts like a time machine for your edits! If you regret changes but don’t want to undo manually, you can jump back in time.

You can also use it with changes, e.g., :earlier 5c (5 changes earlier).

riddley 3 hours ago

When I'm showing people the power of vim, I often use the `i` verb, like `ci"` and how it's not a "shortcut" but instead a sentence: change in quotes. If you start thinking about vim as a language instead of a collection of things to memorize, it becomes much easier, IMO.

scrapheap 3 hours ago

Favorite is hard, but if you use vim and don't know that `.` repeats the last change then you're missing out. It's really useful for those times where you need to make the same change in lots of places in a file, but not everywhere.

zeke 3 hours ago

:Lexplore opens a split window with a directory listing you can navigate.

:33Lexplore opens the split with a slimmer, 33% width, window. :Lex<tab> to autocomplete if you do not want to type as much.

croo 3 hours ago

I never know what is lesser known but my faviourite is: * searches for the word under the cursor, # searches backwards. You can also use n for next and N for previous hit.

pizza 7 hours ago

not a shortcut but still tremendously useful when I need it:

    # open some files in vertical splits

    > ls $FILES | nvim -O

    # -o does horizontal splits
  • riddley 3 hours ago

    nvim -o $FILES