Tips from Bram, be sure to read them.

Interaction with X

Vim works wonderful together with X. Besides the graphical version (gvim), it's also possible to start vim in a terminal like xterm, konsole, gnome-terminal or Terminal.app on Mac OS X. With the right options, it's still aware of the X clipboard, the mouse, et cetera.

First turn on the mouse with:

  :set mouse=a

vim has one default clipboard, but has an extra one under any a-z character. The two X clipboards are available too, but under a special character. To paste the X clipboards, paste either the + or * clipboard:

The star buffer contains the so-called X 'primary' for which you just select something with the mouse:

  <esc>"*p

The plus buffer contains the so-called X 'clipboard' for which you selected with the mouse, then right-clicked and selected 'copy', or pressed a shortcut like CTRL-C or similar:

  <esc>"+p

If this doesn't work, check the following things:

• You're running vim as a different user, which happens when you start vim with for instance 'sudo'.
• Vim is started in compatibility mode. Solution: don't use 'vi' to start, use 'vim'. On RedHat and CentOS, it's not enough to start 'vim', use 'vimx'. If this program is not present, be sure to install the package 'vim-X11'.
• Vim is not compiled with the right options. To check: 'vim --version | grep xterm', and the output must show '+xterm_clipboard'.
• The mouse is turned off. Type ":set mouse" to check the setting. Type ":set mouse=a" to turn it on.
• You used SSH to log into a remote machine and X11 is not forwarded. To check: start a simple X program like 'xclock'. Solution: start ssh with option '-X'.
• You used SSH with -X and X11 is still not forwarded. To check whether the system administrator has configured the SSH daemon to deny X11 forwarding, add the -v option, and check whether the following line shows up and the request is not denied. If this is the problem, ask your sysadmin to add the line 'X11Forwarding true' to /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

  $ ssh -v -X remotemachine
  ...
  debug1: Requesting X11 forwarding with authentication spoofing.
  ...

• You used SSH with -X and X11 is still not forwarded. Use the -v option as above, and check for the following line. If it appears, ask your sysadmin to install the xauth program.

  debug1: Remote: No xauth program; cannot forward with spoofing.

• You are using Apple Mac OS X. The included vim version does not have the xterm_clipboard option compiled in. There's MacVim for a graphical version.
• You are using Apple Mac OS X and working on a remote server. All the above checks out fine, and in the dock, the X11.app is active. The trick here is that the remote vim instance will put your content in the clipboard when you're using "+y, but you additionally need to press Cmd-C to copy the X11 buffer to your OS X clipboard. Alternatively, you can activate X11.app, go to preferences and on the third tab (Pasteboard), be sure that all options are activated. (On Snow Leopard, the last option by default is off.)

Macros

Put this in your .vimrc to run editor contents through an external program:

  map   <f9>   :w<CR>:!perl -c %<CR> 

Substituting line feeds

To replace line feeds (UNIX line feeds) in a file, use \n. To remove double empty lines in a file, do something like this:

  :%s/\n\n/\n/

Tags

Tags make it possible for vim to jump to function definitions under your cursor. First, you need to have exuberant ctags installed. It comes with most Linux distributions. For debian, install as follows:

  $ apt-get install exuberant-ctags

You have to create a tags file in your project its root directory:

  $ ctags -R

Then, add the following line to your .vimrc:

  set tags=tags;/

To jump to a function definition, put the cursor on the function call and press CTRL-]. To go back, press CTRL-t.

See also Tip 94 - Questions & Answers about using tags with Vim.

For code completion, type a few characters and press CTRL-n. See this blog entry: vim word and code completion.

Some keystrokes

Some commands