If you are using Linux and haven’t familiarized yourself with the world of VIM yet…then you need to rethink your text editing habits. Alright, so that’s a little harsh, but did you know that with a few changes to your .vimrc file (stored in your home directory) you can mold VIM into a very powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE)?! Then if you stack on a few plugins like ‘Nerd Tree’ and ‘Exuberant C-Tags’ you have an development environment that rivals any paid application.
Here are a few of my favorites:
" First turn on the plugins for the tabs and syntax highlighting " Enable loading filetype and indentation plugins filetype plugin on filetype indent on " Turn syntax highlighting on syntax on " Use 2 spaces for (auto)indent set shiftwidth=2 " Don't highlight results of a search set nohlsearch " When a bracket is inserted, briefly jump to a matching one set showmatch
Here’s a full text copy of my .vimrc file. Keep in mind I have Exuberant C-Tags, Omni-Complete and Nerd Tree also in use so those are in my mappings.
" " MAIN CUSTOMIZATION FILE " " Enable loading filetype and indentation plugins filetype plugin on filetype indent on " Turn syntax highlighting on syntax on " " GLOBAL SETTINGS " " Define Color scheme color delek " Write contents of the file, if it has been modified, on buffer exit set autowrite " Allow backspacing over everything set backspace=indent,eol,start " Insert mode completion options set completeopt=menu,longest,preview " Use UTF-8 as the default buffer encoding set enc=utf-8 " Remember up to 100 'colon' commmands and search patterns set history=100 " Enable incremental search set incsearch " Always show status line, even for one window set laststatus=2 " Jump to matching bracket for 2/10th of a second (works with showmatch) set matchtime=2 " Don't highlight results of a search set nohlsearch " Enable CTRL-A/CTRL-X to work on octal and hex numbers, as well as characters set nrformats=octal,hex,alpha " Use F10 to toggle 'paste' mode set pastetoggle=<f10> " Show line, column number, and relative position within a file in the status line set ruler " Scroll when cursor gets within 3 characters of top/bottom edge set scrolloff=3 " Round indent to multiple of 'shiftwidth' for > and < commands set shiftround " Use 4 spaces for (auto)indent set shiftwidth=2 " Show (partial) commands (or size of selection in Visual mode) in the status line set showcmd " When a bracket is inserted, briefly jump to a matching one set showmatch " Don't request terminal version string (for xterm) set t_RV= " Use 2 spaces for <tab> and :retab set tabstop=2 " Write swap file to disk after every 50 characters set updatecount=50 " Remember things between sessions " " '20 - remember marks for 20 previous files " "50 - save 50 lines for each register " :20 - remember 20 items in command-line history " % - remember the buffer list (if vim started without a file arg) " n - set name of viminfo file set viminfo='20,"50,:20,%,n~/.viminfo " Use menu to show command-line completion (in 'full' case) set wildmenu " Set command-line completion mode: " - on first <tab>, when more than one match, list all matches and complete " the longest common string " - on second <tab>, complete the next full match and show menu set wildmode=list:longest,full " Go back to the position the cursor was on the last time this file was edited au BufReadPost * if line("'"") > 0 && line("'"") <= line("$")|execute("normal `"")|endif " Fix my <backspace> key (in Mac OS X Terminal) set t_kb= fixdel " Avoid loading MatchParen plugin let loaded_matchparen = 1 " netRW: Open files in a split window let g:netrw_browse_split = 1 " " MAPPINGS " " save changes map ,s :w<cr> " exit vim without saving any changes map ,q :q!<cr> " exit vim saving changes map ,w :x<cr> " switch to upper/lower window quickly map <c-J> <c-W>j map <c-K> <c-W>k " use CTRL-F for omni completion imap <c-F> " map CTRL-L to piece-wise copying of the line above the current one imap <c-L> @@@<esc>hhkywjl?@@@<cr>P/@@@<cr>3s " map ,f to display all lines with keyword under cursor and ask which one to " jump to nmap ,f [I:let nr = input("Which one: ")<bar>exe "normal " . nr ."[t"<cr> " use <f6> to toggle line numbers nmap <silent> <f6> :set number!<cr> " page down with <space> nmap <space> <pageDown> " open filename under cursor in a new window (use current file's working " directory) nmap gf :new %:p:h/<cfile><cr> " map <alt-p> and <alt-P> to paste below/above and reformat nnoremap <esc>P P'[v']= nnoremap <esc>p p'[v']= " visual shifting (does not exit Visual mode) vnoremap < <gv vnoremap > >gv " Generic highlight changes highlight Comment cterm=none ctermfg=Gray highlight IncSearch cterm=none ctermfg=Black ctermbg=DarkYellow highlight Search cterm=none ctermfg=Black ctermbg=DarkYellow highlight String cterm=none ctermfg=DarkGreen highlight treeDir cterm=none ctermfg=Cyan highlight treeUp cterm=none ctermfg=DarkYellow highlight treeCWD cterm=none ctermfg=DarkYellow highlight netrwDir cterm=none ctermfg=Cyan " Set the <leader> for combo commands let mapleader = "," nmap <silent> <c-n> :NERDTreeToggle<cr>