Tune your ViM

ViM (Vi iMproved) is a standard text editor for UNIX like systems. However, in its default configuration it may be difficult to work with. Below are some of the options that I use in my configuration file to tune it for more comfortable work. The ViM configuration file is ~/.vimrc. To enable any of the options listed below place the command marked in blue in your ~/.vimrc file or copy the whole file that I use to enable them all (whole file is listed at the bottom of this page).

If you are not a long term Vi user and prefer the more flexible ViM you should turn off the Vi compatibility. In this way ViM will behave more like a standard text editor.

set nocompatible

Turn on the syntax highlighting/coloring and pick the color code used by default for all files including syntax recognized by ViM (e.g. c/c++/fortran/tex/html/python).

syntax on
colorscheme default

Turn on highlighting of the searched phrase. You can search your file forward and backward using / and ? respectively. Searched phrase may be highlighting in the whole file after enabling it.

set hlsearch

Set a limit at which lines will be broken instead of wrapped. I use 150 columns which works well for all coding that I do.

set textwidth=150

Use spaces instead of tabs. Every time you use tab ViM can expand it and replace it with spaces. From my experience, replacing tabs to spaces makes the code source more portable between programmers and avoid confusion with indentation. The following options enable replacing and set two spaces per tab limit.

set expandtab
set tabstop=2

Show the more that ViM is currently in. ViM has two main modes that you will be using most often. The insert mode will be marked by showing -- INSERT -- at the bottom left corner.

set showmode

One of the most useful options of ViM is its capability to reopen the file keeping the editing position at which the file was closed. This is the most useful if you are working with very long files. I have experienced problems with this option by default and found a command that always ensures the mentioned behaviour.

set viminfo='10,\"100,:20,%,n~/.viminfo
    au BufReadPost * if line("'\"") > 0|if line("'\"") <= line("$")|exe("norm '\"")|else|exe "norm $"|endif|endif

ViM will make a backup copy of every file you will be editing. Most of the time this option may be rather disturbing since ViM will create file foo~ when you edit file foo. However, the backup copy may safe a lot of work when you accidentally save unwanted changes of delete something.

set backup

Default ViM coloring may not always work for all languages that you may work with. One can define a different syntax coloring scheme for certain file types. The following option will use desert color code for TeX files and default color code for all other file types.

autocmd FileType tex colorscheme desert

Whenever you start a new file ViM may automatically switch to the insert mode by enabling the following.

autocmd BufNewFile * startinsert

Editing a plain text file ViM will try to align the following lines based on the alignment of the previous lines. For example, if you start a line with 5 spaces, type a word and hit enter, the next line will also start with 5 spaced. To prevent ViM to auto-align the next line use the following command.

set noautoindent

Although the indentation for plain text file may be not comfortable to work with, working with various source codes makes the indentation specific for a given language very desirable. One may enable a language specific indentation using ViM syntax definitions using the following command.

filetype plugin indent on

ViM is able to show you what commands and key combinations have you just used. The bottom right corner will show you any combinations like ^w in case you hit ctrl+w. The option may be enabled by the following command.

set showcmd

ViM may display the actual cursor position in the file you are editing by giving you a row and column number in the bottom right corner. To enable a ruler put the following command in your .vimrc file.

set ruler

One may enable an incremental search in ViM allowing to see the results while you are typing the phrase to be found. Otherwise the search will start after putting a whole phrase and hitting enter.

set incsearch

If you want to have a case insensitive search treating equally phrases ABC, abc or aBc.

set ignorecase

Set the limit for command history. In command line arrows up and down will show you a history of the commands you have recently used.

set history=100

A status line with the name of the currently edited file will be always displayed after setting laststatus=2. Giving option 0 will result with never displaying and 1 with displaying it only if two or more files are open.

set laststatus=2

ViM differs from most text editors and some keys default action may be different from their action in WYSIWYG editors. Backspace is one of them. To ensure a classic action of backspace enable the following command.

set backspace=indent,eol,start

My full .vimrc looks like this:

syntax on
colorscheme default
set hlsearch
set textwidth=150
set tabstop=2
set expandtab
set noautoindent
set incsearch
set ruler
set history=100
set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set showmode
set showcmd
set laststatus=2
filetype plugin indent on
autocmd BufNewFile * startinsert
autocmd FileType tex colorscheme desert
set backup

set viminfo='10,\"100,:20,%,n~/.viminfo
    au BufReadPost * if line("'\"") > 0|if line("'\"") <= line("$")|exe("norm '\"")|else|exe "norm $"|endif|endif