Programming Vim

The Vim editor incorporates a full programming language, with which you can reconfigure just about any aspect of its interface and functionality. This half-day tutorial explores the core syntax and semantics of that scripting language including:

• Values and variables

• Comments and layout

• Arithmetic and string manipulations

• Conditionals and control structures

• Lists and dictionaries (a.k.a. arrays and hash tables)

• Built-in functions

• Accessing and manipulating the editor state

• Issuing editor commands

• User-defined functions

• Event-driven Vim scripting

• Multilingual Vim scripting (using Perl or Python in your scripts)

These language features are introduced and demonstrated via a series of real-world examples.

If anything about the way Vim works has ever annoyed or frustrated you, you’ll leave this tutorial with the knowledge and understanding required to fix, augment, replace, simplify, extend, fold, spindle, or mutilate it to your heart’s content.