Vim is a fast and efficient text editor that will make you a faster and more efficient developer. It's available on almost every OS--if you master the techniques in this book, you'll never need another text editor. Practical Vim shows you 120 vim recipes so you can quickly learn the editor's core functionality and tackle your trickiest editing and writing tasks.
Vim, like its classic ancestor vi, is a serious tool for programmers, web developers, and sysadmins. No other text editor comes close to Vim for speed and efficiency; it runs on almost every system imaginable and supports most coding and markup languages.
Learn how to edit text the "Vim way:" complete a series of repetitive changes with The Dot Formula, using one keystroke to strike the target, followed by one keystroke to execute the change. Automate complex tasks by recording your keystrokes as a macro. Run the same command on a selection of lines, or a set of files.
Discover the "very magic" switch, which makes Vim's regular expression syntax more like Perl's. Build complex patterns by iterating on your search history. Search inside multiple files, then run Vim's substitute command on the result set for a project-wide search and replace. All without installing a single plugin!
You'll learn how to navigate text documents as fast as the eye moves--with only a few keystrokes. Jump from a method call to its definition with a single command. Use Vim's jumplist, so that you can always follow the breadcrumb trail back to the file you were working on before. Discover a multilingual spell-checker that does what it's told.
Practical Vim will show you new ways to work with Vim more efficiently, whether you're a beginner or an intermediate Vim user.
All this, without having to touch the mouse.
What You Need:
Vim version 7
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About the Author
Drew Neil is an independent programmer, writer, and trainer. He runs workshops around the world, speaks regularly at conferences, and specializes in making educational screencasts. At vimcasts.org, he publishes articles and video tutorials about Vim.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A. Gardner
TL;DR buy the book, you won't regret it.
Practical Vim is not just the best Vim book I've read, it is also one of the best tech books I've read to date. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but let me explain. Like Tim Pope says in the foreword, I was initially skeptical about the recipe format. I wanted to have a book that took me step-by-step from vim noob to vim master. I wanted it to ramp me up rather than have me dotting about from pro-tip to pro-tip. The thing is that Practical Vim _does_ ramp you up, but it also has the added benefit that it's really easy to go back and find something later on. Puzzled as to why the dot command isn't doing what you expect? Jump back to the recipes for that. Not reached the chapter on search yet but want to know how to do a global replace? Jump forward to that section. Want to build up a solid understanding of how vim works? Follow the book chapter by chapter.
The other great thing about the book is that it doesn't just teach you how to do things in vim; rather it teaches you how vim does things. Instead of being a phrasebook that gives you common snippets to remember, it teaches you how the sentence structure works, the idioms and colloquialisms. In other words it gives you deep knowledge that helps you think like an experienced vim user. It gives you the tools to extrapolate from the given recipes to things not covered by the book.
It has left me wishing that more tech books were written in this format.
Practical Vim is not just the best Vim book I've read, it is also one of the best tech books I've read to date. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but let me explain. Like Tim Pope says in the foreword, I was initially skeptical about the recipe format. I wanted to have a book that took me step-by-step from vim noob to vim master. I wanted it to ramp me up rather than have me dotting about from pro-tip to pro-tip. The thing is that Practical Vim _does_ ramp you up, but it also has the added benefit that it's really easy to go back and find something later on. Puzzled as to why the dot command isn't doing what you expect? Jump back to the recipes for that. Not reached the chapter on search yet but want to know how to do a global replace? Jump forward to that section. Want to build up a solid understanding of how vim works? Follow the book chapter by chapter.
The other great thing about the book is that it doesn't just teach you how to do things in vim; rather it teaches you how vim does things. Instead of being a phrasebook that gives you common snippets to remember, it teaches you how the sentence structure works, the idioms and colloquialisms. In other words it gives you deep knowledge that helps you think like an experienced vim user. It gives you the tools to extrapolate from the given recipes to things not covered by the book.
It has left me wishing that more tech books were written in this format.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By David Morris
I've been getting to grips with vi and vim for something over 20 years now and Drew Neil's excellent Vimcast series of free podcasts made me want to buy the book. Drew's enthusiasm and expertise are clear in the podcasts and it's made the transfer to the book too. This book works well as a reference and if you are only going to buy one book on vim then this is a good one to have and will serve you very well, the tips work well as things to learn when you have a few minutes to spare and if you have more time to spend it's a great reference that explains the how and why of vim also.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By J. M. Adams
Really, I can't fault the book. As a self-proclaimed pragmatic programmer, I picked up using vim as a way to take me beyond learning multiple editors and more into a 'meta-programming'-like state; i.e. globally applying changes to source, macros and all sorts. It makes me smile thinking, "Was that it?!" on some clever way of editing a document. Everyone can and should have this level of power over their editor.
So along comes Practical Vim. I was looking for a cookbook-like reference and this book achieves that goal but is so much more. It is easy to read and while vim is often considered to have a steep learning curve, the book breaks down those barriers and really shows how to adapt to a Zen-like way of thinking about editing. There's plenty to learn like, for me, the shift from hitting Escape to ^[ instead; minor things that economise movement around the keyboard and really shift things up a gear. My hands were already there, why was I moving over to hit Escape!? The book also contains links to vim's own help and other sources of information and even some profile tweaks to up your editing game.
Grab the book and level up your editing skills.
So along comes Practical Vim. I was looking for a cookbook-like reference and this book achieves that goal but is so much more. It is easy to read and while vim is often considered to have a steep learning curve, the book breaks down those barriers and really shows how to adapt to a Zen-like way of thinking about editing. There's plenty to learn like, for me, the shift from hitting Escape to ^[ instead; minor things that economise movement around the keyboard and really shift things up a gear. My hands were already there, why was I moving over to hit Escape!? The book also contains links to vim's own help and other sources of information and even some profile tweaks to up your editing game.
Grab the book and level up your editing skills.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Hana Trefna
Amazon Verified Purchase
I like this book very much. It gives so much more value compared to older o'reilly vim books. I can only recommended it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A. Marandon
Amazon Verified Purchase
I have been using Vim for 10 years and still learnt a lot from this book. It's not an introductory book. If you're new to Vim, type vimtutor at the command line and follow the tutorial. After a few months of using Vim, reading this book should be very useful.
The book intentionally stays focused on out-of-the-box Vim features. There are a few side notes about third-party plugins, just so you know they exist, but what you learn in this book you'll be able to apply on any instance of Vim. It doesn't say a lot about Vim Script either, instead it focuses on interactive usage. This book does one thing and it does it well.
This book doesn't just introduce Vim features, which would be pretty useless since Vim documentation is already good at that. Instead it shows you how to use those features efficiently with a good mix of theory and practice. It explains the logic and the intention behind each feature and it presents quite realistic examples based on editing code or prose. One thing that surprised me is that even off-line reading (for example on the train) proved quite fruitful. Of course just reading off-line didn't make me memorize the details of the commands but it was enough to remember the intention and usage patterns. Then, back at work, I was usually able to just use Vim doc to find out the execution details of the patterns that I was introduced to by the book.
The author's tone is very casual, without being silly. I remember laughing at loud at a couple of his jokes. It's a very pleasant and relaxing read.
If I had one tiny complain it would be that sometimes there are references to other sections of the book using page numbers when those sections actually happen to be on the next page or even on the same page.... Read more ›
The book intentionally stays focused on out-of-the-box Vim features. There are a few side notes about third-party plugins, just so you know they exist, but what you learn in this book you'll be able to apply on any instance of Vim. It doesn't say a lot about Vim Script either, instead it focuses on interactive usage. This book does one thing and it does it well.
This book doesn't just introduce Vim features, which would be pretty useless since Vim documentation is already good at that. Instead it shows you how to use those features efficiently with a good mix of theory and practice. It explains the logic and the intention behind each feature and it presents quite realistic examples based on editing code or prose. One thing that surprised me is that even off-line reading (for example on the train) proved quite fruitful. Of course just reading off-line didn't make me memorize the details of the commands but it was enough to remember the intention and usage patterns. Then, back at work, I was usually able to just use Vim doc to find out the execution details of the patterns that I was introduced to by the book.
The author's tone is very casual, without being silly. I remember laughing at loud at a couple of his jokes. It's a very pleasant and relaxing read.
If I had one tiny complain it would be that sometimes there are references to other sections of the book using page numbers when those sections actually happen to be on the next page or even on the same page.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The only Vim book you'll ever need
This book is superb. The style, the format, the speed at which new concepts are introduced, the author gets everything right.
Published 2 months ago by Andy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy book, keep within arms reach, prosper.
Disclaimer: I'm happy to call Drew one of my friends.
I've been holding off reviewing this book until I'd felt like I'd finished it. Read more
I've been holding off reviewing this book until I'd felt like I'd finished it. Read more
Published 3 months ago by A. Donaldson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for the intermediate Vim user
The best thing you can say about the book is that it changes the way you approach Vim. Your head goes "click" and you start t rethink and finally understand some of the principles... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Jaime Buelta
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the best recipe book for Vim ever written
Drew's no-nosnese and straightforward approach which have made his vimcasts video tutorials an internet phenomenon has made this simply the best Vim recipe book ever written. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Ryan Stenhouse
5.0 out of 5 stars
Step up your text editing game
As a Vim user for over 10 years, I knew it was a powerful tool but I did not realise how learning a few extra commands could save me so much time. Read more
Published 6 months ago by M. Prior
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