1287
votes

I know how to generally move around in command mode, specifically, jumping to lines, etc. But what is the command to jump to the end of the line that I am currently on?

15
Basic vim commands covered in less than 10 minutes youtube.com/watch?v=71YTkxUNwmgeomeroff
What's wrong with spending a few minutes running through vimtutor? It's a part of your Vim installation already and shows you the basics.dash-tom-bang
@dash-tom-bang Well they got quite a high score here... :) But yes you're right vimtutor is great. Probably they didn't know about it?Pryftan
This is one problem I've had with SO--folks often say why didn't you read about how to do this in x location (man pages, c++ documentation, etc... ) when a simple question is asked.However, they seem to perhaps forget that after these questions are answered on SO, it provides a nice reference for people like me, who know how to do something, (I've ran through the vimtutor and builtin vim tutorial a couple times*, but just need a quick reminder. SO answers to questions like these can be really quickly googled, and then I can get back to work, without scrolling through pages of fluff.kaifas

15 Answers

2204
votes

Just the $ (dollar sign) key. You can use A to move to the end of the line and switch to editing mode (Append). To jump the last non-blank character, you can press g then _ keys.

The opposite of A is I (Insert mode at beginning of line), as an aside. Pressing just the ^ will place your cursor at the first non-white-space character of the line.

318
votes

As lots of people have said:

  • $ gets you to the end of the line

but also:

  • ^ or _ gets you to the first non-whitespace character in the line, and
  • 0 (zero) gets you to the beginning of the line incl. whitespace
139
votes
  • $ moves to the last character on the line.
  • g _ goes to the last non-whitespace character.

  • g $ goes to the end of the screen line (when a buffer line is wrapped across multiple screen lines)

77
votes

The main question - end of line

$ goes to the end of line, remains in command mode

A goes to the end of line, switches to insert mode

Conversely - start of line (technically the first non-whitespace character)

^ goes to the start of line, remains in command mode

I (uppercase i) goes to the start of line, switches to insert mode

Further - start of line (technically the first column irrespective of whitespace)

0 (zero) goes to the start of line, remains in command mode

0i (zero followed by lowercase i) goes the start of line, switches to insert mode

For those starting to learn vi, here is a good introduction to vi by listing side by side vi commands to typical Windows GUI Editor cursor movement and shortcut keys.

vi editor for Windows users

47
votes

If your current line wraps around the visible screen onto the next line, you can use g$ to get to the end of the screen line.

31
votes

I can't see hotkey for macbook for use vim in standard terminal. Hope it will help someone. For macOS users (tested on macbook pro 2018):

fn + - move to beginning line

fn + - move to end line

fn + - move page up

fn + - move page down

fn + g - move the cursor to the beginning of the document

fn + shift + g - move the cursor to the end of the document

For the last two commands sometime needs to tap twice.

15
votes

Press A to enter edit mode starting at the end of the line.

14
votes
13
votes

The advantage of the 'End' key is it works in both normal and insert modes.

'$' works in normal/command mode only but it also works in the classic vi editor (good to know when vim is not available).

13
votes

In many cases, when we are inside a string we are enclosed by a double quote, or while writing a statement we don't want to press escape and go to end of that line with arrow key and press the semicolon(;) just to end the line. Write the following line inside your vimrc file:

imap <C-l> <Esc>$a

What does the line say? It maps Ctrl+l to a series of commands. It is equivalent to you pressing Esc (command mode), $ (end of line), a (append) at once.

13
votes

Also note the distinction between line (or perhaps physical line) and screen line. A line is terminated by the End Of Line character ("\n"). A screen line is whatever happens to be shown as one row of characters in your terminal or in your screen. The two come apart if you have physical lines longer than the screen width, which is very common when writing emails and such.

The distinction shows up in the end-of-line commands as well.

  • $ and 0 move to the end or beginning of the physical line or paragraph, respectively:
  • g$ and g0 move to the end or beginning of the screen line or paragraph, respectively.

If you always prefer the latter behavior, you can remap the keys like this:

:noremap 0 g0
:noremap $ g$
8
votes

Or there's the obvious answer: use the End key to go to the end of the line.

6
votes

Possibly unrelated, but if you want to start a new line after the current line, you can use o anywhere in the line.

3
votes

The easiest option would be to key in $. If you are working with blocks of text, you might appreciate the command { and } in order to move a paragraph back and forward, respectively.

2
votes

I was used to Home/End getting me to the start and end of lines in Insert mode (from use in Windows and I think Linux), which Mac doesn't support. This is particularly annoying because when I'm using vim on a remote system, I also can't easily do it. After some painful trial and error, I came up with these .vimrc lines which do the same thing, but bound to Ctrl-A for the start of the line and Ctrl-D for the end of the line. (For some reason, Ctrl-E I guess is reserved or at least I couldn't figure a way to bind it.) Enjoy.

:imap <Char-1> <Char-15>:normal 0<Char-13>
:imap <Char-4> <Char-15>:normal $<Char-13>

There's a good chart here for the ASCII control character codes here for others as well:

http://www.physics.udel.edu/~watson/scen103/ascii.html

You can also do Ctrl-V + Ctrl- as well, but that doesn't paste as well to places like this.