I initially felt that a few things in Vim are just…meh. I want my tabs to take up 4 spaces instead of 9. I want syntax highlighting for LESS or TypeScript. There are better ways, right?
You can customize Vim by creating a .vimrc file in your home directory. vim ~/.vimrc
Tab Settings
Quick primer: A “hard tab” is inserting the TAB character (i.e., \t). A “soft tab” is inserting spaces in lieu of a TAB character. I personally prefer soft tabs, but don’t care enough to join the holy war.
Here’s a good article on tabs, spaces, and indents.
- tabstop: Size (in spaces) of a hard tab. Still only inserts a single TAB character.
- softtabstop: Number of spaces inserted when the TAB key is pressed.
- expandtab: Set this option to always use soft tabs.
- shiftwidth: Size (in spaces) of an indent.
So if you want your tabs to be 4 spaces, and to always be soft tabs:
set tabstop=4
set softtabsstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
Syntax Highlighting
If you open a TypeScript file in Vim, you won’t get the nice JavaScript syntax highlighting. Want to configure this? Use BufReadPost.
au BufReadPost *.ts set syntax=js
au BufReadPostd *.less set syntax=css
I don’t like having to hit ESC to switch to Command Mode
Well, good sir or madam, you are in luck! You can also use Ctrl+C. (Better or worse depending on your keyboard. I find this fantastic for keyboards where you can set a thumb button to Ctrl.)
Multiple Files in Split Windows
Use the “Split” command, :sp filename, to open a new file in a split window (horizontally). Use the command Ctrl+wv to split the windows vertically.
vim file1
:sp file2 (opens and splits horizontally)
ctrl+wv (splits vertically)
Or, when you are opening Vim, use the -o switch to open multiple files. -o to split horizontally, -O to split vertically.
vim -o file1 file2 // split horizontally
vim -O file1 file2 // split vertically
