There are two main modes in which you will be in vim: Normal and Insert. Most of your movement will be done in Normal mode, and your editing in Insert. In this post I will be talking about different ways of entering and exiting Insert mode.
First off: your standard ways of entering Insert mode: i (insert) and a (append). i lets you start inserting text to the left of the character you were previously on, while a puts you on the right of the character you were on. a is useful when you want to append text to the end of the line.
The following methods will allow you to slip into Insert mode so fast you won’t even realise it. Get used to these, and you’re in for some real speed.
So next, we have o. This key alone is a big reason why I find it so hard to go back to a point-and-click text editor. With your cursor anywhere on a line in Normal mode, pressing o will create a new line under that, properly indented, and put you in Insert mode. From anywhere in the line! You no longer have to go to the end and press enter. Just go to the line, press o, and you’re good to go.
Now all of these keys have their upper case versions. I puts you in Insert mode to the left of the first character of that line, and A puts you in Insert mode to the right of the last character of that line. This is useful when you want to pre-pend or append things to the whole line.
And O does the same thing as o, except it’s on the line above.
The next big thing is c. Let’s say you want to change a word with
another word. You would first go to the front of the word, press dw to delete
the word, then press i and type in the new word. With c, you can
press cw and accomplish the same task as dwi. I remember cw as “change
word.” The neat thing is: you can pair c with any verbs!
ciw will change the word your cursor is on (doesn’t need to be at the front)ci' will delete the text inside single quotes and put you in Insert mode.ca( will delete the text inside the parentheses, including the parentheses,
and put you in Insert mode.(you can think of ci as “change in something” and ca as “change around
something”)
The first way is to simply press Esc. It’s rather far off the home row so I remapped my caps lock key to send escape instead, so exiting Insert mode for me is a well within reach of my left little finger.
Another way is to remap a specific combination of keystrokes to exit Insert
mode. A common choice is jk because it’s right on the home row. This can be
done by adding this to your vimrc or init.vim:
inoremap jk <Esc>
This method saves the trouble of having to remap the caps lock key, or having to reach to the top-left of the board to exit Insert mode. It is also safe to press in Normal mode because it brings the cursor down then up, landing you back where you started.
jk