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Counts have two jobs in commands , based upon where they are located in the command . When placed in front of the motion counts are multipliers of that motion . For example, to delete a word one can use dw (short for delete word ). Step 1 Step 2 Initial Conditions I have always believed, and I still believe, t hat whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Delete text dw I have always believed, and I still believe, w hatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Step 1 shows the initial conditions, while Step 2 shows the result of executing dw . As expected, one word was deleted. To delete multiple words, we can add a count in front of the motion . For example, let's try executing d4w (literally, "delete 4 words"): Step 1 Step 2 Initial Conditions I have always believed, and I still believe, t hat whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Delete text d4w I have always believed, and I still believe, b ad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 When the count is placed in front of the entire command , it means "repeat the entire command count times". So, let's try executing 4dw , which means "delete a word, repeating 4 times": Step 1 Step 2 Initial Conditions I have always believed, and I still believe, t hat whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Delete text 4dw I have always believed, and I still believe, b ad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Counts can also be located in both places. For example, we can achieve the same result a 3rd way using 2d2w , which means "delete two words, repeating twice": Step 1 Step 2 Initial Conditions I have always believed, and I still believe, t hat whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 Delete text 2d2w I have always believed, and I still believe, b ad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:1 The end result of these examples were the same, which can be common for simple commands such as these, through in general commands can have very different results based upon which count location is used. The important thing to take away from this section is that counts can appear in multiple locations of the command , and they preform slightly different tasks based on where they are located.

We learned in the previous section that operators define the action that the command will take. Motions , on the other hand, define the direction or movement over which that action will take effect. Some motions can take effect without an operator . For example, in normal mode the j and k motions move the cursor up and down. In general, however, an operator is required for the motion to take effect. Motions come in two varieties: Line-wise Line-wise motions are those that effect an entire line. Line-wise motions are inclusive , meaning that they always include the lines that contain the start and end positions. Character-wise Character-wise motions operate on characters within a line. Examples of character-wise motions are the horizontal motions . Character-wise motions are further split into two sub-types: Inclusive Inclusive character motions are those that include the start and end positions in the text over which the operator operates. Exclusive Exclusive motions are those that exclude the end position (the character that is closest to the end of the buffer) from the text over which the operator operates. Overriding You can convert a line-wise motion to a character-wise motion , or vice-verse by inserting one of the following characters after the operator , and before the motion : Command Action v force operator to work charwise V force operator to work linewise C-V force operator to work blockwise Additionally, if v is used with a character-wise motion , it changes inclusive motions to exclusive motions , and vice-versa. Let's take a look at a few common commands using character-wise motions to see how they behave. Starting with the following buffer and cursor position: Initial Conditions I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha t ever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:9 Let's first take a look at an exclusive motion , such as w : Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Select Text vw I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha t ever g ood or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. VISUAL 40% 2:15 Delete text dw I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha g ood or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:9 Delete with Forced Inclusive dvw I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha o od or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:9 In Step 1 we execute vw to highlight the text over which this motion will operate. In Step we first hit Esc to return to normal mode, then execute dw to delete a word. Note that although the g was highlighted in Step 1, it was not deleted. Now, lets :undo and repeat that command but forcing inclusive behavior by executing dvw . Comparing the results in Steps 2 and 3 shows that forcing inclusive behavior causes the g to be deleted. Now let's look at an inclusive function, such as e : Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Select Text ve I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha t eve r good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. VISUAL 40% 2:13 Delete text de I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:9 Delete with Forced Exclusive dve I have always believed, and I still believe, that wha r good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. NORMAL 40% 2:9 As in the previous example, in Step 1 we execute ve to highlight the text over which the motion will operate. In Step 2 we return to normal mode, then execute de to delete to the end of the word. Finally, in Step 3 we return to the starting point, then call this command with exclusive behavior. In this case, the last letter of the word (r) is omitted from the delete operation.

Interacting with content in Vim is generally performed using commands . "Command" is a fairly broad term in Vim, and applies to a wide variety of commands , used for navigation, editing, etc. Commands can take several forms depending on the context such as the current mode : In normal mode Commands are made up of one or more operators, counts, motions, and text objects, and general follow one of the following patterns: [count]{operator}{[count]motion} or [count]{operator}{text object} In command-line mode commands are issued in the command-line, and are typically of the form: :[range]{command} [args] Commands are less-common in insert mode, but those that are available are typically of the form: <C- { operator } > This format is also common for commands that affect menus and the like. When working with windows in Vim, commands take the form: <C-W> { operator } Individual commands will be discussed in their respective sections, but the purpose of this section is provide some information about their constituent parts.

Within the command , the operator defines the action to be taken, which generally involved changing of deleting text in some way. Here is a quick summary of the available operators: Command Action c change operator d delete operator y yank operator ~ swap case (if `tildeop` is set) g~ swap case gu change to lowercase gU change to uppercase ! filter through an external program = filter through 'equalprg' or C-indenting if empty gq text formatting gw text formatting with no cursor movement g? ROT13 encoding > shift text right < shift text left zf define a fold Some operators are so commonly used that Vim allows an entire command to be comprised of just the operator . When an operator is repeated twice, then that operation is performed over the current line of text. Here are few common examples: Command Action yy Yank the current line cc Delete the current line then enter INSERT mode dd Delete the current line

When we write a page of text, that page is typically made up of several paragraphs of text. Each of those paragraphs is made up of several sentences, and finally each of those sentences is made up of words. Likewise when we code, depending on the language we might have blocks of code, chunks of code wrapped in parentheses, etc. Each of these nouns represents a logical grouping (or object) of text, and Neovim understands (more or less) what each of them are, providing a "higher-level" abstraction that provides some pretty powerful capabilities. Our goal for the moment is to simply introduce text objects and provide some examples, then we will get into more details about how to work with them shortly . Words The first text objects we will review are some of the most common, words . Neovim provides not one, but two definitions for words, and distinguishes between them using the notation "word" and "WORD" . word A sequence of letters, digits, and underscores, separated by either non-word characters or whitespace. WORD A sequence of non-blank characters, separate by whitespace. To help distinguish between the two definitions consider the following line of text: one two three-four five/six The words in this sentence are: one, two, three, four, five, and six The WORDs in this sentence are: one, two, three-four, and five/six From these definitions we can see that (as we might expect) both types of words encompass characters separated by whitespace, where words take a more conservative approach and consider only "word-characters", while WORDs take a more liberal approach and consider most types of characters. To further demonstrate these two text objects , let's start from the following buffer , and visually-select a word and a WORD : Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Initial Condition that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I'v e known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 70% 7:5 Select word viw that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I' v e known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 70% 7:5 Select WORD viW that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I'v e known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 70% 7:5 Note that in Step 1 the word selected the text up to, but not including, the quotation mark. On the other hand, the WORD selected the entire sequence of text, from the start of the line to the space. The ability to choose between word and WORD provides additional flexibility to fine-tune which text is ultimately selected. Sentences Sentences are the next higher-order logical chunk of text that we work with, and Neovim is able to identify those as well. In Neovim, a sentence is defined as: sentence a sequence of words and WORDs that end with a ".", "!", or '?', followed by either a space, tab, or EOL. To help demonstrate, let's visually-select a sentence in the following text: Step 1 Step 2 Initial Condition that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for t his hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 20% 2:1 Select Sentence vis that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for t his hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman . Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 20% 2:60 Note that the cursor is initially positioned in the middle of the sentence , then the selected text extends both back to the start of the sentence , as well as forward to the end of the sentence . The content of the sentence additionally consists of both types of word . Paragraphs As you might expect, the next logical progression after sentences are paragraphs . paragraph: sequences of sentences that begin and end with empty lines. Let's take a look at paragraph in action: Step 1 Step 2 Initial Condition that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for t his hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 20% 2:1 Select Paragraph vip that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for t his hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's e nough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke V-LINE 30% 3:1 As with sentences , this example starts with the cursor in the middle of the paragraph , then after selecting the paragraph the selection extends from the start of the paragraph (which is currently not visible), to the end of the paragraph . Text objects do not take into account whether or not the object is visible or not, they are purely concerned with the text itself. Quotes Now that we have reviewed the common components of prose, let's look at the remaining text-objects, which allow us to pin-point specific groups of text within sentences and paragraphs , as well as within programming code. In the first example, we look at quotes . quotes sequences of text contained within quotes "", ', or ` Quotes are common in prose, as well as in programming languages, so the ability to pin-point those areas of text can be very convenient. Let's take a look at a few examples to see how these work: Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Initial Condition that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I'v e known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 70% 7:5 Select Quotes vi" that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. " I'v e known it , " he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 70% 7:15 Move Cursor <ESC> fd that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it , " he sai d quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 70% 7:24 Select Quotes vi" that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he sai d quietly. "You'll go into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 70% 7:34 Move Cursor <ESC> fg that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll g o into the forests?" "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke NORMAL 70% 7:43 Select Quotes vi" that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waiting for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Now it's enough. Farewell, but, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!" Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell. "I've known it," he said quietly. " You'll g o into the forests ? " "I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke VISUAL 70% 7:62 We start with the cursor on the e of I've , then in Step 1 selected the quoted text. Note that Neovim was smart enough to extend past the apostrophe in I've and select the entire quoted chunk of text. In Step 3 we move the cursor to between the two quoted chunks of text, and select again. In this case, Neovim selected all of the text between the two chunks of quoted text. Finally, after moving the cursor into the second chunk of quoted text in Step 4, the text inside of the second chunk of quoted text is selected in Step 5. Note As we will learn shortly Text objects come in two flavors, inner and around . We are using the "inner" text-objects to select the text inside the quotes. The "around" text-objects do the same thing, but would include the quotation marks. For now, just be aware that both options are available. Blocks In many ways blocks extend the concept of quotes . Just as specific chunks of text can be surrounded by quotation marks, they can also be surrounded by parentheses, brackets, etc. In Neovim, these section are called blocks : block sequences of text contained within {}, [], <>, or () While parenthesis are common in prose, the various types of brackets are common in programming language, and convey different meanings depending on the language. In any case, Neovim has the ability to isolate those blocks of text. As a simple example, let's look at the following snippet of Python code: Step 1 Step 2 Initial Condition t he_list = [ "one", "two", ] NORMAL Top 1:1 Select Block vi[ t he_list = [ "one", "two", ] VISUAL 60% 3:11 In this example, the cursor starts at the top of the buffer, which contains the opening bracket [ . In Step 1 we instruct Neovim to select the contents of that block with the command vi[ . Similar operations can be use to work with each of the other types of blocks . Tags Finally, Neovim defines an additional text-object, which comes in handy when working with XML or HTML tags. Let's take a quick look: Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Initial Condition <ul> <li>one</li> <li>two</li> <li>three</li> <li>four</li> </ul> NORMAL 29% 2:1 Select Inner Tag vit <ul> <li> on e </li> <li>two</li> <li>three</li> <li>four</li> </ul> VISUAL 29% 2:11 Select Around Tag vat <ul> <li>on e </li > <li>two</li> <li>three</li> <li>four</li> </ul> VISUAL 29% 2:16 In this example, the cursor starts on a line containing an HTML tag, and the tag text-object allows us to quickly move the cursor inside the tag and select the associated text, which can be very convenient when working with these types of files. As mentioned previously we also had the option to select the text around the tag, as demonstrated in Step 2. This section was intended to provide just an introduction to the concept of text-objects, to provide useful background as we continue to learn the fundamentals of Neovim. If you would like to learn more about working with text objects, jump forward to our text objects section.

Up to now, we have learned that buffers are in-memory representations of files, and windows provide viewports that allow one or more buffers to be viewed at a time in splits . This brings us to the final concept in this section, Tabs . Thinking back to our discussion about windows , we started with a single window , then added a few splits to create a layout. The collection of windows in the layout fills up the screen, and the full screen could be considered "a page of windows ". Neovim allows you to define and switch between multiple pages of windows by organizing them into " tabs ". Here is a list of some of the more common tab -related commands . Command Action :tabnew edit a file in a new tab page :tab create new tab when opening new window :tabs list the tab pages and what they contain :tabclose close current tab page :tabonly close all tab pages except the current one :tabprevious go to previous tab page :tabnext go to next tab page :tabNext go to previous tab page :tabmove move tab page to other position :tabfirst go to first tab page :tablast go to last tab page :tabfind find file in 'path', edit it in a new tab page

To start vim with an empty buffer , simply type: nvim To open an existing file in Vim, simply add the path to the file: nvim [path/to/file] You can also include multiple files, to open them all at once: nvim [path/to/file/one] [path/to/file/two] ... Neovim also supports " globbing ", which allows you to open multiple files by specifying a simple pattern. For example, to open all python files located in the current directory, simply type: nvim *.py In additional to opening files, Neovim supports a variety of options to control how it starts and which features are enabled. While these may not be used on a daily basis, it is good to know that they exist and how to find them. List some of the common options from the terminal with the command: nvim --help or visit the Neovim docs for the complete list. To start with options, specify one or more options when the nvim command is invoked. For example, use the -R option to open a file in read-only mode: nvim -R [path/to/tile] Finally, as a terminal program Neovim can be called from command-line scripts to implement some types of powerful workflows. For example, suppose you want to edit the current directory listing you could execute: ls -a | vim - this command lists the current directory ( ls -a ), then pipes ( | ) the result to Vim which is listening on stdin ( - ). While this example is a bit contrived, this demonstrates a simple way to leverage a wide range of command-line tools to get content into Vim.

Neovim includes an extensive help system, which provides a significant amount of detail about virtually any vim-related topic. To open the help system, from Normal mode enter the command : :help Which splits the current window and displays a buffer containing the main help page. We will review splits shortly in the windows chapter. navigate the help window as you would any buffer , for example using j , k , etc. Help for a specific topic The help contents for a specific topic or command by adding the topic or command when invoking the help system. For example, to review the documentation for the help system itself: :help help Following links Help contents often contain links to other help topics. To review the linked content, move the cursor over the link and type C-] . Changing topics Once in the help system you can manually jump to other topics using the tag command: :tag [topic] where topic refers to the help topic you want to jump to. Returning to topics Return to the previous help topic by invoking C-T . Exiting the help window Exit the help window and return to the original window by typing C-W c or :quit .

Although the various ways to exit Vim might not be obvious to new users, it is actually quite simple. The basic command for exiting is :quit , which has several variations, summarized in the table below: Command Action Alias :quit quit current window (when one window quit Vim) :q :quit quit current window (when one window quit Vim) :q! ZQ close window without writing :wq write to a file and quit window or Vim ZZ write if buffer changed and close window :wqall write all changed buffers and quit Vim :wqa

Neovim originated as a fork of Vim and while it continues to maintain backward-compatibility with Vim, the two projects have slightly different goals which has led them to evolve down slightly different paths. While Vim continues to be a great project with a great community, Neovim has added several new features that in our opinion significantly upgrade the user experience: Lua First and foremost, one of the major advantages of Neovim over Vim is the inclusion of Lua as a first-class alternative to Vimscript for plugins and configuration . Lua is easy to learn, read, and write, executes quickly, and allows Neovim to benefit from a lot of great work being done by Lua's extensive community. Tree-sitter Tree-sitter is a fast document parser that maintains a syntax tree for each document as it is edited, which basically replaces slow and often-inaccurate regular expressions when implementing a variety of features. Prior to Tree-sitter, syntax-highlighting, indentation, and folding were implemented using regular expressions, which was often slow, inaccurate, and lacked features such as the ability to handle nested code blocks. By leveraging Tree-sitter's syntax tree, Neovim gains additional contextual information about the document that can be leveraged to provide accurate and consistent syntax highlighting, indentations, and folds, improved navigation between classes, functions, parameters, conditional statements, as well as some useful extensions to text objects . You can learn more Neovim's Tree-sitter integration at the nvim-treesitter and nvim-treesitter-textobjects repos. Language Server Protocol (LSP) Neovim includes a built-in Language Server Protocol client, which provides a wide range of functionality. Whereas Tree-sitter improves the experience of working with documents, LSP provides similar benefits to projects , to provide improved code-completion, snippets, formatting, jump to definition, refactoring, etc. Learn more about setting up Neovim's LSP at the nvim-lspconfig repo. More Information This is just a brief summary of the key improvements that Neovim offers vs Vim. If you are transitioning from Vim to Neovim you can find a complete list of the differences here Neovim.io Github Home Github Releases Documentation