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So far I've been trying to use Vim in as vanilla a configuration as possible, so as to save myself hassle when moving between machines. However, there are a few things I'd really like to bind keys, such as to shorten "_diwP which I use often to delete the word under the cursor and replace it with one from the clipboard. Are there any particular keys that are conventionally reserved for user-defined mappings? The point of this question is mostly that I would like to avoid hassle later on when I decide to install some plugin or take my configuration files to vim on another OS and find that my key mappings clash with something else.

Weeble
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4 Answers4

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All the letters are already taken:

http://www.dc.turkuamk.fi/docs/soft/vim/vim_idx.html#vim_idx.html (broken link) http://web.archive.org/web/20091026182612/http://www.dc.turkuamk.fi/docs/soft/vim/vim_idx.html (web archive - HTML) http://www.rpi.edu/dept/acm/packages/vim/4.2/sgi_62/lib/vim/vim_idx.txt (plaintext)

But if I want permenant commands I use <leader> as a prefix.

:map <leader>l    :list!

The default leader is '\' so by typing \l I can switch the state of list.
Note the leader can be changed. See :help leader

Note: to make sure I have my vim mapping available anytime I want them, I just put the .vimrc file on a convenient webserver. Then I can just use wget (or a browser) to get my .vimrc file at any time.

Daniel Roseman
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Martin York
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All keys are safe to remap in Vim. However, there are two types of mappings: recursive and non recursive.

a) Recursive:

If you remap for example,

nmap x dd

x deletes the line instead of one character

you will have effectively lost the x key for future mappings, as well as overwritten the delete character function. Were sometime in the future some plugin depend on that key, that could present a problem.

For example, 

nmap <C-x> xxx

will delete three lines instead of three characters, because it is effectively doing dddddd. This is a problem since effectively were some of your plugins to use the x (and they surely will) it will create problems (nasty ones).

b) Non recursive mapping

nnoremap x dd

solves that problem in a way that it will assign dd to x so that upon your pressing x you delete a line instead of a character, but any future mapping 

nnoremap <C-x> xxx

will have the original x on the right hand side functionality.

Always use nnoremap, inoremap ... the non-recursive mapping instead of nmap, imap and so on ... unless you have a very strong reason for doing the opposite.

Rook
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I have a french keyboard. I use é, è, à, ù, µ, §, £, ç ...

mouviciel
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If you have the Alt Gr key, its REALLY useful for situations like this, since if you press it in combination with other letters you have a whole new alphabet available.

I use:

  • Alt Gr + s (ß), for easyMotion search for letter;
  • Alt Gr + y (←) to yank into the register q;
  • Alt Gr + p (þ) to paste the content of the register q;
  • and so on..
N. Joppi
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