VIM 7 :: turn off paren/parenthesis/whatever highlighting

Put that line into .gvimrc:

NoMatchParen

Seems like due to serious Q&A problem that shit creeped into release of VIM7.

:help hl-MatchParen for more info on how to wear down your eye in under 5 minutes with minimum of options set. [sarcasm off]

Edit1: seems like that feature is automatically enabled only for GUI vim, in other words NoMatchParen is accepted only in .gvimrc.

Edit2: The solution is not reliable. Proper fix!

Dangers of Wikipedia

That damm Wikipedia thing is addictive. It must be outlawed. Once you start reading it - page after page, link after link - you cannot stop.

Anyway. Pretty nice opinion from Tim O'Reilly about why he is vi guy.

Replace "emacs" with "random Wind0ze GUI IDE" - and what he said would be true to me too.

P.S. As for me, "Emacs vs. VI " holy war really comes down to "all-in-one v. modularized" debate. Or from another POV it can be seen as "shell vs. emacs lisp": to Emacs lisp is what shell to Unix. I like VIM since it works with shell directly - it does not have any layers distancing user from OS. I guess if one doesn't like shell but likes elisp instead - then Emacs may be the way to go.

Cult of vi

Cult of vi has among other interesting references the chart of vi commands.

P.S. :g/^/m0/ and ZZ look like fun!

VIM @ Wikipedia

VIM's Wikipedia Page

Off-Topic: dumping gcc/cpp predefined macros

echo | gcc -dM -E -

-dM tells cpp to out #define for every variable it has.

-E tells gcc to run cpp only

P.S. I dead tired to dig documentation every time I need to find how platform is identified by GCC. So putting that stuff here in hope that it would be easier locatable.

vim :: repetition counter (and period command)

One of the funniest (and obscure) VIM features is repetition counter. Most of the commands allow the counter. Consider example (that needs to be typed in in normal mode):

20l

The VIM's command 'l' is the command to move left (VIM supports motion keys as in old time games - 'h', 'j', 'k' and 'l' are correspondently left, down, up and right.) Prepended to it '20' is the repetition counter. If cursor was in position 1, after the command it would be in position 21 (or on end of line if it is shorter).

1000dd

Would delete 1000 lines starting from current.

3f<Space>

Would move cursor to third space in line, counting from current cursor position. (:help f for find motion command.)

It is very useful at times for example combined with command '.' which is used to repeat last command(s). Example how to make a nice C comment with 50 dashes.

<Insert>/*<Space><Space>*/
<Esc>lll
<Insert>-
<Esc>49.

I intentionally made typing of dash separate, thus it can be later repeated with '.' command. I yet to gain complete understanding on how '.' works precisely, but in most obvious cases it works as expected. :help . for more info. Experimentation plus 'u' undo command could help to get it right.

More info can be found in VIM under :help count & :help repeat.txt.

vertical selection from Nth to Mth character

ZOMG! I got e-mail. That stuff apparently got indexed by Google. So. Here we go.

I do have a question for you, however. When performing a vertical selection, is there any way to advance the screen other than the arrow keys? For instance, if a file were thousands of lines long, is there a way to quickly select characters 10 through 20 for the entire length?

All motion shortcuts must work as usual. (:help motion.txt) In other words. To select vertically across all lines in the file chars 10 to 20 you need something like that (those " are comments):

gg      " move to beginning of file, beginning of line
9l      " move to 10th symbol in line (l == move 1 char left, 
        "   9l == move 9 times chars left)
^V      " start vertical selection
G       " move to last line of file, beginning of line
19l     " move to 20th symbol in line.

now y/d/whatever to yank/delete/etc. IOW, no magic - standard shortcuts. I hope that answers your question.

Though there might be problem: if last line of file shorter than 20 characters, or if first line shorter than 10 characters, or tab character is sitting somewhere there - VIM wouldn't be able to do precisely what you want it to do.

P.S. For later case shell comes in handy: man cut for -b & -c options. Using redirection and intermediate file you can get you part into separate file and then open it (along with original) in VIM - and use normal line blocks. With combination of head and tail (man head & man tail) you can get from file lines you need.

vim :: turn that 'showmatch' crap off

I have just waisted hour to find that sucker:

set noshowmatch

SUSE (as well RedHat) have long tradition of shipping f*cked up configs for all major editors and terminal emulators. SUSE 10 (in addition to unusable xterm config and vim's "set backspace=0" (which renders backspace key in vim totally borken)) now started adding "set showmatch" to default exrc. As if anybody over there at SUSE/Novell actually used once xterm or vim. Why they keep crapping in the configs?? Are GNOME/KDE configs not enough for distros to shit into???

set showmatch, if you have just typed parens/bracket/comment opening/etc, makes cursor to jump shortly to its counterpart. That shit is creping off Wind0ze over-bloated unusable IDEs. It distracts your attention of what you were doing. It forces you to move your eye - as if you do not know your own source code - needlessly, wearing and tiring them down. Might it be OS vendors have a secret contract with ophthalmologists??? I have no other guess.

P.S. Linux Productivity Magazine, Volume 1 Issue 5, December 2002 "VI and Vim" - http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200212/200212.htm - lots of vi/vim basics.

Edit1 Related: matching parens highlighting. Mistakenly attributed to VIM7, but also present in VIM6.

Edit2 Proper fix

vim :: tags keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts used to work with tags. There are really few of them. All of them work in control/normal mode.

• :set tags? needless to remind that VIM must be told which tag files to use. It can be done automatically as for example shown here.
  
• :tag word is main one. Opens file and goes to line with first tag entry matching word.
• ^] same as above, but uses word under cursor.
• :tag /word is similar to :tag word. Opens file and goes to line with first tag entry matching regular expression in word.
• :tselect word is what I use most often. The function - tag select - displays list of matching tags allowing you to select one to go to. Without word, it will display list of matching tags for word used last time.
  
• g^] same as above, but uses word under cursor. Also, omits displaying list if only single match is found.
• :tnext goes to next matching tag entry.
  
• :tprev goes to previous matching tag entry.
• :tlast goes to last matching tag entry.
• :tfirst goes to first matching tag entry.
• ^T Every time you do :tag word, the word with current file position is put on stack and vim goes to new file/position as it is told by tag file. To restore the previous file position you use ^T. The shortcut removes tag stack top element and moves to the file position saved there. So if you wandered off far away with ^] - to return back where you started you need to press ^T until vim would complain that it is at bottom of tag stack.
  

That's about it. Both :tag word and :tselect word support wildcard key (Tab/^D) to show list of tags matching partially the word. That will work with regilar expressions too. But be warned that often tag files can host millions of entries: displaying list of thousands items can take some time. Use wildcard key carefully.

syntax highlight for non-standard file types

Following line once put into vimrc will tell vim which syntax highlighting to use:

au BufReadPost SCons* set syntax=python
au BufReadPost Cons* set syntax=perl
au BufReadPost *.mke set syntax=make
au BufReadPost make*.inc set syntax=make
au BufReadPost *.fcc set syntax=cpp
au BufReadPost *.fhh set syntax=cpp

This is selfexplanatory. e.g. SCons files are in fact python scripts - so tell vim to use python syntax highlighting on everything what matches 'SCons*'. Same goes for Construct - but done in perl.

:au BufReadPost <mask> tells vim to execute something right after file read into buffer. In that particular case we use that to set buffer local variable 'syntax' to name of one of standard syntax highlightings (perl, make, cpp, etc). :help :au for more info.

P.S. One can check what syntax module vim has loaded by looking at 'syntax' variable value: do :set syntax? after opening file recognized by vim.

P.P.S. Of course, :syntax on has to be put somewhere in the vimrc for syntax highlighting to work automatically. VIM 6.x doesn't have problem of previous versions (I experienced that in VIM 5.x), where loading of syntax from vimrc was slowing launch time, even if file had no syntax highlighting assigned. Hm.. or probably my PC now fast enough for me not to notice that launch time. Who cares. It works.