This is a cheat sheet for Windows keyboard junkies who feel as out of place in vi as I do. I got most of the vim commands from the rather useful IBM vi tutorial. dd was the only one I ever learnt (and I didn’t know that I could paste after deleting it). There’s loads more vim commands, I’ve just listed the ones that are most similar to Windows ones.
Alot of the vim commands are two letters together e.g. dd. To do these just tap the two letters quickly. N.B. capitalisation matters. So moving to line 100 in vi is type 100 then hit Shift+G quickly. But capital G, V & P are the only three capitals we use.
Update: I’ve just come across this excellent article on learning to speak vim, to get a more in depth understanding.
Quick start
Ctrl+Home = gg Ctrl+End = G Ctrl+x = dw / dd / dG Ctrl+c = yw / yy / yG Ctrl+v = p
Moving around
| Command | Windows (Notepad) | Vi (command mode) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| First line | Ctrl+Home | gg | |
| Last line | Ctrl+End | G | |
| Line N | Ctrl+g, N, Enter | Ngg | e.g. 100, g, g quickly |
| End of the line | End | $ or End | |
| Start of the line | Home | 0 or Home | |
| Next word | Ctrl+Right | w | |
| Previous word | Ctrl+Left | b | |
| Page up | Pg Up | Ctrl+u or Pg Up | Ctrl+u acts more similarly to Pg Up in Windows as Pg Up won’t take the cursor all the way to the top in vi. |
| Page down | Pg Dn | Ctrl+d or Pg Dn | |
| Find text | Ctrl+f, [text], Enter (forward) |
/[regex] (forward) |
regex (regular expression): so you need to escape dots and backslashes e.g. \. \/ |
| Replace text | Ctrl+h, [search], [replace], Enter (forward) |
|
The vi search and replace are regex |
Cut, Copy, Paste
| Command | Windows (Notepad) | Vi (command mode) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delete | Delete | x or Delete | x does a cut too |
| Select Word |
|
vw | |
| Select Line |
|
V | |
| Select All |
|
gg, VG | |
| Delete Word | Select Word, Delete | dw | |
| Delete Line | Select Line, Delete | dd | |
| Delete rest of line | Shift+End, Delete | d$ | |
| Delete New line |
|
J (next) | |
| Delete All | Select All, Delete | gg, dG | |
| Copy Word | Select Word, Ctrl+c | yw | Select Word, right-click, yw, p/P |
| Copy Line | Select Line, Ctrl+c | yy | y aka ‘Yank’ |
| Copy All | Select All, Ctrl+c | gg, yG | |
| Cut Word | Select Word, Ctrl+x | Delete Word | |
| Cut Line | Select Line, Ctrl+x | Delete Line | |
| Cut All | Select All, Ctrl+x | Delete All | |
| Paste | Ctrl+v |
|
Undo, Redo
| Command | Windows (Notepad) | Vi (command mode) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Undo | Ctrl+z | u | |
| Redo | Ctrl+y | Ctrl+r |
Ian Channing 
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