Book review: "Practical Vim" by Drew Neil

Published: 2025.01.03 · 3 minutes read

I recently moved from Helix to Neovim. It wasn’t too hard at first, as all the basic motions are very similar, but something didn’t feel right. Because I came from the editor that follows a selection-first approach (motion → action), I blindly kept on replicating the same in the action-first Neovim (action → motion). I have seen crazy efficient Vim programmers before, and I just knew that I needed to level up.

A Mastodon user called trójkąt ▼ recommended the “Practical Vim” by Drew Neil to me. This book helped me a lot to understand the editor’s philosophy. It is a pile of hundreds of bite-sized practical tips, and it is designed to cherry-pick the bits you like. The book assumes working with a Vim core, and apart from very few exceptions, does not require any particular plugin or configuration. It is a good one to have on a bookshelf regardless of proficiency in Vim.

Favourite tips

Let me share with you a few tips that I learned from the book that made me a lot more efficient. I use them all the time! If that’s your thing, I would highly encourage you to get a copy for yourself.

Underused the dot command

One of the most powerful commands is the dot command. It repeats the last change. You can use it to spare yourself from typing multi-keystroke commands multiple times or avoid mental overhead by counting how many times to perform an action.

Instead of >>>>>>>>>> use >>.... to indent a line five times.

Counterintuitively, typing dw.... is easier for me than 5dw because there is no need for counting before performing an operation.

Addition and substraction

The <C-a> and <C-x> perform number addition and substitution respectively. Super handy, and I use this trick all the time. It can also be prefixed with the count.

Increse a number by 40 via 40<C-a> and then decrease usig <C-x>

Do quick maths without ever leaving insert mode

The expression register can be invoked using <C-r>= and allows us to perform simple math calculations without leaving the insert mode.

The expression register is like a tiny calculator built into the insert mode.

Run normal mode command across multiple lines

The normal ex command allows us to run all normal mode commands, but on a range of consecutive lines. This thing gets a lot more powerful with the combination of the dot command or even macros.

Append a semicolon to the first line A; and then repeat this command . across the remaining lines using the normal ex command.