A few months back, I stumbled upon a blog post with some interesting VIM shortcuts for within insert mode.
- Ctrl+t and Ctrl-d adjust the current line indent one level to the right and left, respectively.
- Ctrl+w deletes the last word. I already use this one a lot because it’s the same as in Readline’s Emacs mode (which I prefer over its vi mode).
- Ctrl+u deleted all the way to the first non-whitespace character.
But the best stuff was in the comments:
- Ctrl+o enters normal mode for just one command and then returns to insert mode. I find myself very often going to normal mode ‘temporarily’. This should make these occasions pass quicker.
- Ctrl+y repeats the character at this position from the line above in this line. Ctrl+e does the same for the line below.
- Ctrl+x Ctrl+l can be used to copy a whole line, allowing you to cycle through the lines with Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N.
Why didn’t I know this before? I have even complained about the fact that ctrl-w didn’t work in vim, because I often wanted to delete a word and going back to command mode sucks.
Now to incorporate this into my routine.