You and Your Editor: Data from vim-logging (2 of N)

Saturday, December 5. 2009

You and Your Editor: Data from vim-logging (2 of N)

Remember when I blogged about vim-logging? Well, I've finally gotten around to interpreting the results.

First, I will cover what I believe to be the most important thing to know about vim: the normal mode commands.

Below is a chart of my 39 (why 39? I can't remember - when I created the graph, that's the number I chose) most-frequently-used normal-mode commands:

(many - see discussion)	g
(ex mode command)	:
(delete)	d
(find in line)	f
(move forward word)	w
(insert mode at beginning of line)	I
(change)	c
(move to beginning of line)	^
(insert mode at end of line)	A
(move back word)	b
(undo)	u
(move to next search match)	n
(search)	/
(move left)	h
(z[nm]): close/open folds, z[tbz]: scroll window)	z
(insert mode before character)	i
(move to end of line)	$
(c_w-c_[wljh_] - window commands)	Ctrl_W
(insert mode after character)	a
(find backwards in line)	F
(insert node in next line)	o
(move cursor half screen down)	Ctrl_D
(move line down)	j
(move line up)	k
(enter normal mode)	ESC
(repeat previous find in line)	;
(substitute character)	s
(delete character)	x
(put from register)	p
(delete line)	D
(}} - move to next blank line)	}
({{ - move to previous blank line)	{
(enter visual-line-mode)	V
(go to bottom of file)	G
(replace)	r
(visual mode)	v
(yank text)	y
(change line)	C
(insert mode on previous line)	O

Posted by David Wolever in Vim at 19:19 | Comments (11) | Trackback (1)

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You and Your Editor: Vim normal mode commands g, : and d (3 of N)
In my last post, I showed off some normal-mode data from vim-logging. In this (and the next few) posts, I'll go though my most-used commands and describe how I use them. (Don't use Vim? This post won't be too interesting… Although you may pick up somethi

Weblog: Code Kills
Tracked: Dec 05, 21:28

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How do these commands change w.r.t. what you're editing? I'm guessing email != C != Python, but that's just guessing...

#1 Greg Wilson (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 20:46 (Reply)

Ah, interesting question Greg. In vim-logging version 2.0 I'll also keep track of the file type I'm editing. Any other metrics that might be worth keeping track of?

#1.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 20:56 (Reply)

What did you wind up using for the graph?

#2 Daniel Grace (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 20:55 (Reply)

A little Python script and some Vim macros (read: did it myself).

#2.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 20:57 (Reply)

Also, I cannot figure out what 'see discussion' is referring to...

#3 Daniel Grace (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 21:10 (Reply)

Err, yes, that link is coming…

#3.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 21:18 (Reply)

I was surprised to see 'h' (move left) that high up in the list, higher up than 'j' and 'k'. And am I reading it right that 'l' (move right) did not make it onto the list?

Of course I just realized while writing this that they don't show up because you are remapping to 'gj' and 'gk', which I did not know about those but now that I do I'll probably add that to my vimrc.

#4 Greg Leaver on 2009-12-05 22:17 (Reply)

Yup - I think j and l are lower because I use f, w and b for moving around a lot more often.

#4.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-05 22:23 (Reply)

I don't know how your logging script works (so I don't know if the following is implementable), but it would be interesting to have multi-character commands turn up in the chart. Instead of a single 'g' entry, I'd like to see gg, gt, gj etc. show up individually, because as it is, the 'g' metric in itself isn't all that useful. Same with 'd', and maybe 'f' too (which character is sought the most?).

#5 Mathias Rav (Homepage) on 2009-12-06 07:21 (Reply)

I'd thought about that, but unfortunately it's kind of tricky.

In the Vim source (normal.c, I think), there is a loop that looks something like:

while (1) {
    c = getchar();
    command = lookup_command(c);
    command-&gt;execute();
}

(of course, it's actually much more complex than that… But that's the gist of it)

So, to log compound commands, I'd have to tinker with each command's 'execute()' function… Which is a lot of work

#5.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-06 12:20 (Reply)

Ok, so clearly I'm an idiot.

It was a simple matter of intercepting the calls to 'getchar' (or the Vim equivalent). I've updated http://wolever.net/~wolever/wiki/vim-logging with a new version that does this properly.

#5.1.1 David Wolever (Homepage) on 2009-12-11 23:46 (Reply)

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