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Beyond the basics

By now you have used enough vim to see it's tremendous text editing potential. Out of the box it works very well, but with some additional configuration and a few plugins installed it get's even better. We'll go over all basic aspects of tweaking your ~/.vimrc file from some welcome changes, some aesthetic to a complete IDE. For IDE features we'll focus on python3 and bash but I'll leave some links to point you in the right direction for other languages. The point of this chapter is not to race towards the end but to understand what every step adds to your working comfort. I highly advise to take the changes to your vimrc slowly and see if you actually like the change. If you don't like a feature you don't have to use it, but it's still good to be aware of where you can take vim for future reference.

Which vim to install

A simple sudo apt install vim installs a basic version of vim but when you're on a server and need to do some scripting it's a better idea to install vim-nox. What's the difference? We can get some information about both packages via sudo apt-cache show vim vim-nox.

Classic vim will give you the following description:

Description-en: Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
 Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi.
 .
 Many new features have been added: multi level undo, syntax
 highlighting, command line history, on-line help, filename
 completion, block operations, folding, Unicode support, etc.
 .
 This package contains a version of vim compiled with a rather
 standard set of features.  This package does not provide a GUI
 version of Vim.  See the other vim-* packages if you need more
 (or less).

And vim-nox the following:

Description-en: Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - with scripting languages support
 Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi.
 .
 Many new features have been added: multi level undo, syntax
 highlighting, command line history, on-line help, filename
 completion, block operations, folding, Unicode support, etc.
 .
 This package contains a version of vim compiled with support for
 scripting with Lua, Perl, Python 3, Ruby, and Tcl but no GUI.

I would always install vim-nox but this is personal preference. Some people like the graphical versions of vim, or gvim, but I'm not a fan. Maybe try the vim-gtk package to see if you like it. Do keep in mind that the program you'll invoke is always vim no matter which version you install! For graphical vim you'll invoke gvim.

From here on out I expect a vim-nox installed!

Basic improvements

You'll probably always want to include the following in your vimrc. You can download the file if you want to try it out but do take the time to read the comments.

" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
" basic essentials
" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

" don't make vim vi compatible (if not set you miss out on a lot of features!)
" you'll see this option set in most configuration files found online
set nocompatible

" enable filetype recognition plus indent and plugin (pretty much mandatory)
filetype plugin indent on

" enable syntax highlighting
syntax on

" backspace can be a tricky thing and this setting makes it work a lot better
set backspace=indent,eol,start

" when tab completing on the expert line you don't want to miss out on EDIT vs
" edit or nerdtree vs NERDTree and this setting ignores case completely
set ignorecase

" highlight your search patterns (very handy when building regexes)
set hlsearch

" highlight the search pattern as-you-go (tremendously helpful when
" constructing regexes)
set incsearch

" always show a status line at the bottom of your vim which shows some basic 
" information about the file, which line you're at etc
set laststatus=2

" show files in statusbar when opening via expert mode
set wildmenu

" also show all possible expert mode commands in the statusline
set wildmode=full

" reverse numbering (in the sideline) so you don't have to manually count how
" many lines you have to yank
set rnu

" it's also nice to still have your absolute line number in the sideline
set nu

" can do copy paste from the clipboard
set clipboard=unnamedplus

You can test out the vim configuration above by downloading it to your home directory and telling vim explicitly you want that vimrc by invoking vim -u ~/vimrc_basic test.py where test.py is just an example. Each setting has some information about what it does but vim comes with built-in help. You can invoke this help by pressing :help laststatus.

Getting help

Now, what has happened here? Vim opened it's own documentation in a new horizontal split and moved the cursor there. At first this is very intimidating but there are just a few command you need to know to manage this situation perfectly. Don't worry about messing up the documentation, it's opened in read only mode.

you can read the documentation by pressing j to go down and k to go up
to navigate splits you use CRTL-w j to go down, CRTL-w k to go up, CTRL-w l to to right and CRTL-w h to go left
to close the documentation you need to be inside the documentation split and press :close which means it will close the split you're in (if your cursor is on the other split you can use :only which does the opposite)

The CTRL-w affair is a shortcut to vim's window navigation. You can read up a bit more in the manual at :help window but below is the gist of it. It might sound a bit confusing at the start but think of tmux and it's panes, splits and windows and it might make some more sense.

Summary:
   A buffer is the in-memory text of a file.
   A window is a viewport on a buffer.
   A tab page is a collection of windows.

A window is a viewport onto a buffer.  You can use multiple windows on one
buffer, or several windows on different buffers.

A buffer is a file loaded into memory for editing.  The original file remains
unchanged until you write the buffer to the file.

A buffer can be in one of three states:

							*active-buffer*
active:   The buffer is displayed in a window.  If there is a file for this
	  buffer, it has been read into the buffer.  The buffer may have been
	  modified since then and thus be different from the file.
							*hidden-buffer*
hidden:   The buffer is not displayed.  If there is a file for this buffer, it
	  has been read into the buffer.  Otherwise it's the same as an active
	  buffer, you just can't see it.
							*inactive-buffer*
inactive: The buffer is not displayed and does not contain anything.  Options
	  for the buffer are remembered if the file was once loaded.  It can
	  contain marks from the |viminfo| file.  But the buffer doesn't
	  contain text.

If you actually read the documentation you must have noticed you can make tabs, as in firefox tabs, in vim! I tend to mostly use buffers, based on this philosophy but you do you. As for window navigation I add the following to my vimrc but you will probably not like it too much. This remaps the arrow keys, which you should not be using for navigation text anyway, to window navigation. If the nnoremap makes no sense try :help mapping.

" use the arrows for buffer navigation
nnoremap <down> <C-W><C-J>
nnoremap <up> <C-W><C-K>
nnoremap <left> <C-W><C-H>
nnoremap <right> <C-W><C-L>

Switching quickly from config file to config file

A lot of information about vim online is geared towards programmers and not system administrators but I have a trick for you that will probably help you quite a bit when modifying configuration files. You have to get comfortable with opening and navigating buffers first so a quick rundown on the basics. To do this exercise properly first prepare the following files by executing the commands below.

echo "I am a first file" > ~/first_file.txt
echo "[unit]\nDescription=looks like a config file\nManual=maybe systemd\n" > ~/test.service
echo "import datetime\n\nd = datetime.datetime.now()\nprint(d)" >python_test.py

Part one

Open up vim with my basic vimrc you downloaded above and you should have a blank vim in front of you.
Type :edit ~/first_file.txt to open up the first file.
Type :edit ~/test.service to open up the second file.
Type :edit ~/python_test.py to open up the third file.

You have now opened up all three files in one vim but how do you switch from one to the other? They are loaded in memory and are called buffers. To list all buffers currently opened in vim you type :buffers and you should see a list like the one below.

:buffers
  1      "first_file.txt"               line 1
  2 #    "test.service"                 line 1
  3 %a   "python_test.py"               line 1
Press ENTER or type command to continue

To go back to the buffer you where are just hit enter but if you want to switch to a different one type :b 1. This will take you to the first buffer. As you are opening and editing files in the same instance of vim you can yank and paste from one to the other! Try playing around with this and make some changes to some files. At some point you'll be confronted with the following message.

E37: No write since last change (add ! to override)

This means you're trying to switch to an other buffer but you have unsaved changes in the one you're currently at. I like to add the following to my vimrc to automatically save a buffer upon leaving. Do keep in mind it can be a bit dangerous to overwrite files you're not too certain about.

" automatically save buffers
set autowrite
set autowriteall

Once you feel comfortable move on to the next part.

Part two

OK, quit vim completely and go to your home directory, where you created the three files before. Open vim up again with my basic configuration but instead of :edit use :find tes<TAB> where is your tab complete key. Vim should list all files matching the tes pattern inside the folder you're in. We can supercharge this behaviour by modifying the path vim will search in. To see which paths are searched by default type :set path and you'll probably see path=.,/usr/include,,. This is nice from a programmers point of view but we can change it to suit our administrator's point of view better. To completely override we can change the setting by typing :set path=/etc/** and vim will now search our /etc folder recursively. Try it out with :find ssh<TAB> to see it's full power! This is a setting you can either fix in your vimrc, or change in the fly, your choice.

Don't be greedy and set it to the root of your hard drive. This will slow vim down way too much because there are just too many files and folders!

IDE like features without plugins

We already have syntax highlighting via the set syntax=on feature but we can also have autocomplete for quite a lot of scripting languages out of the box. This is one of the main reasons we install vim-nox and not vim! The shortcut to achieve it is a double whammy <c-x><c-o> which triggers omnicomplete. Have a look at :help omnifunc to learn more about it but first, a hands on example.

Open the python file we made before with vim -u ~/vimrc_basic ~/python_test.py
Navigate to the end of the file, go into insert mode and type datetime.
Remain in insert mode after the . and hit <c-x><c-o>
Stay calm and read on.

The screenshot above is probably very much like what you're confronted with. The dropdown menu is a context aware autocomplete menu meaning these are all functions, methods, classes or variables belonging to this module. The horizontal split window at the top shows the documentation of the menu item you have selected. You can navigate this list either with the arrows or with <c-n> to go down and <c-p> to go up.

I personally don't like the documentation jumping up and down on my screen so you can add the following to remove it all together. Now to be able to view the documentation we'll need to install some plugins. I have not found a clean way of hiding the preview window and adding a shortcut to show documentation.

set completeopt-=preview

Complete more things

Vim can do a lot more than just complete python code. When you press <c-x> you'll see a menu at the bottom along these lines.

-- ^X mode (^]^D^E^F^I^K^L^N^O^Ps^U^V^Y)

Every ^CHARACTER is a different mode of autocomplete! Try out the ^K one just for fun. It will probably say this the following.

'dictionary' option is empty

We can set a dictionary, which is just a list of words, to autocomplete from. Let me walk you through an example.

Open up a blank text file with my basic vimrc.
Go into insert mode and type in hipp.
Stay in insert mode and type <c-x><c-k> which will show the same error message as before.
Exit insert mode with ESC
Set the dictionary by typing :set dictionary=/usr/share/dict/american-english (you should have this file)
Go into insert moder after hipp and type <c-x><c-k> again.

Nice no?

Beyond vanilla vim

TODO

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