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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vim: Cut, Copy and Paste to and from the system clipboard

Image
Vim: Cut, Copy and Paste to and from the system clipboard Table of Contents 1. Cut, Copy and Paste using the computer keyboard 2. Vim and the clipboard 3. From Vim to the Clipboard 4. From the Clipboard to Vim 5. Some key shortcuts in gVim Figure 1: Vim 1 Cut, Copy and Paste using the computer keyboard Everybody knows how to use the keyboard combinations Ctrl-c , Ctrl-x , and Ctrl-v in Windows and Linux (or Cmd-c , Cmd-x and Cmd-v in macOS) to copy, cut and paste text across applications. Many think that those combinations are universal and work with any application. But Vim and gVim are different, they use another system to exchange information with the rest of the IT world. For example, in Vim under Linux, the key combination Ctrl-v corresponds to the visual block function and does not affect the pasting text. I wrote this article to remind me, as a non-programmer, the key combinations to be used in the Vim world to sha...
Read more

Vim: searching for text containing a slash or a question mark

Vim: searching for text containing a slash or a question mark Vim: the search command To activate a text search in Vim, press one of the following trigger keys in your keyboard: the slash "/" key (do not confuse with the back-slash "\" key) the question mark key. By pressing the slash "/" key will activate a forward search. By pressing the question mark "/" key will activate a backward search. To move the cursor to the results in your document, press the "n" key (mnemonic for “ next ”). To invert the direction of the cursor, press the "N" key, (“upper n”) . What about if you need to search for a slash or a question mark , i.e. the same trigger characters , in your document? You can prepend the Escape character to the trigger key. The Escape character The Escape character is the back-slash key: "\" . Just an example: if you need to forward search (then with / trigger k...
Read more