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 Answers
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.
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.
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.
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.
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$
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.
vimtutor
is great. Probably they didn't know about it? – Pryftan