./missing-semester - Editors (Vim) - Exercises

21 Oct 2020

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Course located at: missing.csail.mit.edu

Exercises

• Complete vimtutor. Note: it looks best in a 80x24 (80 columns by 24 lines) terminal window.
• Download our basic vimrc and save it to ~/.vimrc. Read through the well-commented file (using Vim!), and observe how Vim looks and behaves slightly differently with the new config.
• Install and configure a plugin: ctrlp.vim.
  • Create the plugins directory with mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/vendor/start
  • Download the plugin: cd ~/.vim/pack/vendor/start; git clone https://github.com/ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim
  • Read the documentation for the plugin. Try using CtrlP to locate a file by navigating to a project directory, opening Vim, and using the Vim command-line to start :CtrlP.
  • Customize CtrlP by adding configuration to your ~/.vimrc to open CtrlP by pressing Ctrl-P.

• To practice using Vim, re-do the Demo from lecture on your own machine.

    import sys
  
    def fizz_buzz(limit):
        for i in range(1, limit+1):
        if i % 3 == 0:
            print('fizz', end='')
        if i % 5 == 0:
            print('buzz', end='')
        if i % 3 and i % 5:
            print(i)
  
    def main()
        fizz_buzz(int(sys.argv[1]))
  
    if __name__ == '__main__':
        main()
  

• Use Vim for all your text editing for the next month. Whenever something seems inefficient, or when you think “there must be a better way”, try Googling it, there probably is. If you get stuck, come to office hours or send us an email.
  • I’ve been using Vim as my primary editor for the last couple months, and have improved noticeably.
• Configure your other tools to use Vim bindings (see instructions above).
  • I used set -o vi to put my terminal in vi mode.
  • I also downloaded Vimium.
• Further customize your ~/.vimrc and install more plugins.

• (Advanced) Convert XML to JSON (example file) using Vim macros. Try to do this on your own, but you can look at the macros section above if you get stuck.

    $ wget https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/files/example-data.xml
    $ cp example-data.xml example-data.json
    $ vim example-data.json
  
    :s/<people>/{\r\t"people": {/g
    j
    :s/<person>/\t\t"person": [\r\t\t\t{/g
    :%s/  <person>/\t\t\t{
    :%s/    <name>\(.*\)<\/name>/\t\t\t\t"name": "\1",/g
    :%s/    <email>\(.*\)<\/email>/\t\t\t\t"email": "\1"/g
    :%s/  <\/person>/\t\t\t},
    Gddlxo<Tab><Tab>]<Enter><Tab>}<Enter>}