Vim: Sort the file contents

Lets say you have a file that looks like this

and all you want to do is get the content rearranged in sorted order. Well here is a quickie , enter visual mode by pressing v , press Shift+g to select entire file and then just execute the sort command.

and bang here is the sorted content.

Vim : Actually numbering the lines

You can always display line numbers inside vim with :set nu , little did I know of a way of actually inserting the line number inside the file .

Here is a cool trick for line numbering

• Number all the lines in Vim


• :%! cat -n 

• Number only a portion of file contents
• First enter the Vim visual mode by pressing v
• select the portion that you want to number
• then :'<,'>!cat -n

Direct terminal output to vim

• command | vim  -
• e.g ls | vim -  and then :save fileName to store it.

Word wrap the contents of a file

• :set wrap

How to open a file in Read Only mode

• vim -R fileName

Dot Files

Make Vim even better with some dot files ( https://github.com/sontek/dotfiles ).

Handy Vim shortcuts

• Line Numbers
• Set line number with
• :set nu
• Unset line numbers with
• :set nonu
• Set relative line numbers with 
• :set relativenumber.

• Copy selected lines from vim visual mode to system clipboard.
• "+y and then paste it outside vim.

• Make vim paste the content from outside properly.
•  :set paste
• unfold code
• zo
•  fold code  
• zc