Recipe 6.11. Mapping Commands to Keystrokes

6.11.1 Problem

Some of Vim's commands are long and complex, and you are amassing your own collection of custom commands, so you would like to create keyboard shortcuts for your most-used commands.

6.11.2 Solution

Use the map command to assign custom keystrokes to any command or text string. map creates keymappings for Normal mode; map! creates keymappings for Insert mode. To see your current set of mappings, type:

:map

or:

:map!

Be careful when creating your own maps—don't map to keys that already have commands assigned to them by Vim, as map will happily, and without comment, overwrite them. (This is a good reason to wait until you're proficient before going crazy with maps.)

Creating a new keymapping is done like this:

:map <F3> :runtime! syntax/2html.vim

This command adds HTML tags to the current document, in a new window. Now hitting F3 activates it.

You can delete a map like this:

:unmap <F3>

You have to spell out the names of the Esc, <CR> (carriage return) and <F2>-<F12> keys, because if you simply press the keys they will execute whatever command is assigned to them.

This example maps a command to F3 that goes into Insert mode, inserts an HTML tag around a word, and leaves off in Insert mode so you can continue typing:

:map <F3> i<B><Esc>ea</B><Esc>a

These are examples of Insert mode mappings for quickly adding HTML tags. They're fast, because you never leave Insert mode, and it's unlikely that such comma-letter combinations will come up in ordinary typing.

:map! ,ah <A href="">

:map! ,a </A>

:map! ,b <B><Esc>ea</B><Esc>a

:map! ,i <I><Esc>ea</I><Esc>a

:map! ,l <LI><Esc>ea</LI><Esc>a

6.11.3 Discussion

The safest keys to use are F2-F12 and Shift-F2-F12. (F1 is mapped to Vim's help pages.) However, you'll use those up pretty quickly, so using combinations like comma-letter that usually do not occur in normal usage gives you the ability to create as many keymappings as you like.

See :help map-which-keys for complete information on Vim's built-in keymappings. You can also query Vim's help for a specific key or combination:

:help CTRL-V

:help F5

:help /b

Remember to spell out CTRL and F5; don't press the Ctrl and F5 keys.

6.11.4 See Also

Vim's online help (:help 2html.vim, :help key-mapping)
Chapter 8 of Vi IMproved—Vim
Chapter 7 of Learning the vi Editor

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