Vim

What it is: A terminal text editor available on basically every Linux system — nano might be missing, vim won’t be.

The fun thing: Once it clicks, you never touch the mouse again. Edit files at the speed of thought.

3 modes — the golden rule

Mode	Enter with	What you can do
Normal	`Esc`	Navigate, delete, copy, search, run commands — default on open
Insert	`i`	Type text
Visual	`v`	Select text, then run a command on just that part

Opened vim and nothing’s working? Press Esc → i. Now you can type.

Save & quit

:w          save
:q          quit
:wq         save and quit
:q!         quit WITHOUT saving
:wqa        save and quit ALL open tabs

Edge cases

:w filename       save with a name (fixes "No file name" error)
:w!               force save read-only file (if you have permission)
:w !sudo tee %    save as root when you forgot sudo on open

:w !sudo tee % — pipes the buffer through tee running as root. % = current file. No need to close and reopen.

“No file name” error — opened vim with no filename (vim not vim myfile.txt). Fix with :w myfile.txt.

Always Esc first, then type : commands.

Key	What it does
`h j k l`	← ↓ ↑ →
`w`	Start of next word
`e`	End of current word
`b`	Back one word
`0`	Start of line
`$`	End of line
`gg`	Top of file
`G`	Bottom of file
`:42`	Jump to line 42

Inserting

Key	What it does
`i`	Insert before cursor
`I`	Insert at start of line
`a`	Append after cursor
`A`	Append at end of line
`o`	New line below + insert
`O`	New line above + insert

Cut, copy, paste

Key	What it does
`x`	Cut character under cursor
`dd`	Cut current line
`d$`	Cut to end of line
`yy`	Copy current line
`2yy`	Copy 2 lines (any number works)
`y$`	Copy to end of line
`p`	Paste below
`u`	Undo
`Ctrl + r`	Redo

Search

/password    search forward for "password"
?password    search backward for "password"
n            next match
N            previous match

/ triggers search mode — type anything after it. It’s not the word “password” specifically, just whatever you want to find.

Find & replace + multi-file search

Find and replace:

:%s/old/new/g    replace every "old" with "new" in the whole file

% = whole file, s = substitute, g = all matches per line (drop g to replace only the first per line).

Search across multiple files:

:vimgrep /pattern/ **/*    search all files recursively
:cn                        next match
:cp                        previous match
:copen                     browse all matches in a list

Results land in the quickfix list. :copen to see them all without leaving vim.

Help

:help           main help file
:help gg        help for a specific command

Key insight

Esc → normal. i → insert. Get those two reflexive — everything else is just memorising shortcuts.

Vim