Vim: vertical motions through full or wrapped lines

In Vim a line is a set of characters ending with a Carriage Return.

What’s so special about that definition?

Think about wrapped lines that exceed the right edge: Vim handles each wrapped line as belonging to one line only.

Standard vertical motions in Vim using j e k keys or the arrow keys occur within full lines.

You can jump through wrapped lines by adding the g key to j e k.

But, did you know that you can have both movements available without adding any keys?

You can remap arrow keys by insering the following code in the .vimrc configuration file:

nnoremap <Down> gj
nnoremap <Up> gk
vnoremap <Down> gj
vnoremap <Up> gk
inoremap <Down> <C-o>gj
inoremap <Up> <C-o>gk

From now you will be able to use the arrow keys for the motions through wrapped lines and the jk keys for the default Vim motions.

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