Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8Navigate Inside Files with Motions

Vim provides many ways of moving around within a document as well as commands for jumping between buffers. In this chapter we’ll focus on motions, which allow us to move around within a document.

Perhaps the simplest way of moving around is using the cursor keys. Vim allows us to navigate up, down, left, and right without moving our hands from the home row, as we’ll see in Tip 47. That’s a start, but there are quicker ways of moving around: Tip 49, shows how to move a word at a time; Tip 50, shows how to move with precision to any character within the current line; and Tip 51, shows how to use the search command for getting around.

Motions are not just for navigating around a document. They can ...