Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 9

Compose Repeatable Changes

Vim is optimized for repetition. In order to exploit this, we have to be mindful of how we compose our changes.

In Vim, we always have more than one way of doing something. In evaluating which way is best, the most obvious metric is efficiency: which technique requires the fewest keystrokes (a.k.a. VimGolf^[3]). But how should we pick a winner in the event of a tie?

Suppose that our cursor is positioned on the “h” at the end of this line of text, and we want to delete the word “nigh.”

normal_mode/the_end.txt

The end is nigh

Delete Backward

Since our cursor is already at the end of the word, we might begin by deleting backward.

Keystrokes	Buffer Contents
{start}	The end is nigh
db	The end is h
x	The end ...