Vimcasts

Profiling Vimscript performance

Vim users are unforgiving of plugins that impair performance. Luckily, Vim provides built-in profiling tools that make it easy to diagnose performance issues. We’ll start by looking at how to profile the vimrc file, then move on to a real world scenario where profiling helped to identify and aleviate a performance bottleneck.

Writing a custom fold expression

With a little bit of Vimscript, you can create a custom folding expression for any filetype. We’ll start by looking at the mechanics of folding with markers, then go on to create a folding expression for markdown documents.

How to fold

Vim’s folding feature enables us to expand and collapse regions of a document. Not only does this allow us to organize our workspace, it also makes it easy to navigate around the document, and to rearrange entire sections as though they were single lines.

VimGolf - Prime Numbers

For the VimGolf challenge “List the first 100 prime numbers”, there’s a solution that uses a regular expression to detect prime numbers. At 43 keystokes, it’s not the winning solution, but I think it’s the most interesting one. It uses a few clever Vim tricks, including macros, control-a to increment, the very magic pattern switch, and the :global command. There’s a lot to learn from those 43 keystrokes, so let’s study it!

Fugitive.vim - exploring the history of a git repository

Git provides tools for searching the contents of files, commit messages, and even whether text was added or removed by a commit. In this episode, we’ll see how fugitive’s Ggrep and Glog commands wrap this functionality up so that we can search the contents and history of a git repo from right inside of Vim.

This is the last of our five part series on fugitive.vim.

Fugitive.vim - browsing the git object database

With the fugitive plugin, you’re not limited to just working with files in your working tree. The :Gedit command allows you to open files in other branches, and to browse any git object, including tags, commits and trees. Plus, if your repository is hosted on github, you can easily bring up the webpage for any git object using the :Gbrowse command.

This is the penultimate of a five part series on fugitive.vim.

Fugitive.vim - resolving merge conflicts with vimdiff

When git branches are merged, there is always the chance of a conflict arising if a file was modified in both the target and merge branches. You can resolve merge conflicts using a combination of fugitive’s :Gdiff command, and Vim’s built in diffget and diffput. In this episode, we’ll find out how.

This is the third in a five part series on fugitive.vim.

Fugitive.vim - working with the git index

The fugitive plugin provides an interactive status window, where you can easily stage and review your changes for the next commit. The :Gdiff command visualizes the changes made to a file, by comparing the working copy with the index. In this episode, we’ll learn how to stage hunks of changes to the index without using the git add --patch command.

This is the second of a five part series on fugitive.vim. In the next episode, we’ll learn how to resolve a git merge conflict by performing a 3-way vimdiff.

Fugitive.vim - a complement to command line git

The fugitive plugin, by Tim Pope, is a git wrapper for Vim. It complements the command line interface to git, but doesn’t aim to replace it. In this episode, we’ll see how some of fugitive’s commands can streamline your workflow.

This is the first of a five part series on fugitive.

Undo branching and Gundo.vim

The undo command is almost universally available in software today. Being able to rollback unwanted changes can be a real timesaver. In most applications you can only go backwards and forwards linearly, but Vim keeps your changes in a tree structure, which means that you can retrieve edits from distant branches in your history. This episode will show you how.