as I'm going through the process of learning vim, I'm discovering newfound powers. one of them being to execute commands from vim itself.
below examples might better explain some of them:
-
want to see what files are in current directory? enter command mode(by typing
:) and follow it by a bang(!). then dolslike you'd do in a terminal and press enter. this is not limited to just ls. you can enter any command that you can enter in terminal. for example::! uname --operating-system(which will output GNU/Linux :)) -
so you want to quickly save just a certain part of your file into another file? just select everything you need by entering visual mode(
v) and do:w filename(actual command you'll see would be'<,'>:w filename). verify it using 1.(i.e.,:! cat filename. -
want to quickly paste another file into current one? do
:r filename. it'll paste its contents below your cursor. -
or maybe you want to paste results of a command? do
:r !ls *.png.
vim is my ~ sweet ~ now. make it yours too.
The good thing about vim or Emacs is that when you know the shortcuts they are so much faster to use than mouse and menu editors (though Emacs has a menu, and supports mouse, which smooths the learning curve)