:set tings

This post is half googlecache, half hoping someone will find it useful.

I'm a die hard vi user. So hardcore that years ago, I started a project to replace Windows explorer with something that could be controlled with vi keys. Imagine blazing through your filesystem with j and k and then renaming a file with vi commands. I'm starting to drool again. I mothballed that project long ago.

Anyway, I have some settings for vi that I'm used to and I like to take them with me to whatever machine I touch. Here is what you'll find in my .exrc, .vimrc, or lemmy.rc (depending on the platform).


set shiftwidth=4
set autoindent
set ruler
set showmode
set wrapscan
set warn
set showmatch
set tabstop=4
ab teh the
ab fo of
map ,, o^[k
map g ^i/* ^[ ^[A */^[j
map f ^i^[j
map ,da :r!date


If I'm on OS X, warn, showmode, and wrapscan are on by default. Remember that Leopard uses Vim, so put your settings in ~/.vimrc.

To me, a tab is 4 wide, not 8. Feel free to start a religious war with me if you'd like to.

Some of my favorites are the mappings I have near the end. Hitting to add a blank line is a must have. The auto-comment-this-line shortcuts are nice too.

I know some of the readers of this blog are vi users. What do your settings look like?