Contents:

• Editing C programs
• Editing local HTML files (WWW)
• Editing paragraphs without a line break
• Switching screens in an xterm
• Scrolling in Insert mode
• Correcting common typing mistakes
• Renaming files
• Compressing the help files

• Automatically set the indent of line while typing text.
• Re-indent a few lines.
• Format comments .

• Search for identifier under cursor in current and included files.
• Jump to match for "[i"
• List all lines in current and included files where identifier under the cursor matches.
• Search for define under cursor in current and included files.

• Jump to tag under cursor.
• Jump back from tag.

• Go to Declaration of local variable under cursor.
• Go to Declaration of global variable under cursor.

• Go to file name under the cursor.
• Show all recursively included files.

• Go to match ing (), {}, [], /* */, #if #else #endif.
• Go to previous start of comment.
• Go to next end of comment.
• Go back to unclosed #if, #ifdef or #else.
• Go forward to unclosed #else or #endif.
• Go back to unclosed '('
• Go forward to unclosed ')'
• Go back to unclosed '{'
• Go forward to unclosed '}'

• Select current block from "[(" to "])"
• Select current block from "[{" to "]}"

Vim has some features which can help simplify the creation and maintenance of HTML files, provided that the files you are editing are available on the local file system. The "]f", "gf" and "CTRL-W f" commands can be used to jump to the file whose name appears under the cursor, thus not only checking that the link is valid (at least the file name part of the URL) or providing a quick and easy way to edit many related HTML pages at once.

Editing paragraphs without a line break

If you are typing text in Vim that will later go to a word processor, it is useful to keep a paragraph as a single line. To make this more easy use:

• set 'wrap' on, to make lines wrap
• set 'linebreak' on, to make wrapping happen at a blank
• use "gk" and "gj" to move one screen line up or down

(From comp.editors, by Juergen Weigert, in reply to a question)

>> Another question is that after exiting vim, the
>> screen is left as it was, i.e. the contents of
>> the file I was viewing (editting) was left on
>> the screen. The output from my previous like "ls"
>> were lost, ie. no longer in the scrolling buffer.
>> I know that there is a way to restore the screen
>> after exiting vim or other vi like editors, I
>> just don't know how. Helps are appreciated. Thanks.

>I imagine someone else can answer this. I assume though
>that vim and vi do the same thing as each other for a
>given xterm setup.

They not necessarily do the same thing, as this may be a termcap vs. terminfo problem. You should be aware that there are two databases for describing attributes of a particular type of terminal: termcap and terminfo. This can cause differences when the entries differ *and* when of the programs in question one uses terminfo and the other uses termcap.

In your particular problem, you are looking for the control sequences ^[[?47h and ^[[?47l. These switch between xterms alternate and main screen buffer. As a quick workaround a command sequence like

Also consider setting 'scrolloff' to a larger value, so you can always see some context around the cursor. If 'scrolloff' is bigger than half the window height, the cursor will always be in the middle, the text is scrolled when the cursor is moved up/down.

Correcting common typing mistakes

When there are a few words that you keep on typing in the wrong way, make a few abbreviations that correct them: