Drew Neil - Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought

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Thanks to Bram Moolenaar for creating Vim and to all those who have contributed to its development. Its a timeless piece of software, and I look forward to growing with it.

Thanks to everyone at the Pragmatic Bookshelf for working together to make this book the best that it could be. Special thanks to Kay Keppler, my developmental editor, for coaching me as a writer and for helping to shape this book, despite its growing pains and my occasional tantrums. Id also like to thank David Kelly for his adept handling of my unusual formatting requests.

Practical Vim didnt start out as a recipe book, but Susannah Pfalzer recognized that it would work best in this format. It was painful to have to rewrite so much, but in doing so I produced a draft that I was happy with for the first time. Susannah knows whats best, and I thank her for sharing that insight.

Thanks to Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt for creating the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I wouldnt want to be represented by any other publisher, and Im honored to be listed alongside the other titles in their catalog.

Practical Vim wouldnt have been possible without my technical reviewers. Each of you contributed something and helped to shape the book. Id like to thank Adam McCrea, Alan Gardner, Alex Khan, Ali Alwasity, Anders Janmyr, Andrew Donaldson, Angus Neil, Charlie Tanksley, Ches Martin, Daniel Bretoi, David Morris, Denis Gorin, Elyzer Mendes Rezende, Erik St. Martin, Federico Galassi, Felix Geisendrfer, Florian Vallen, Graeme Mathieson, Hans Hasselberg, Henrik Nyh, Javier Collado, Jeff Holland, Josh Sullivan, Joshua Flanagan, Kana Natsuno, Kent Frazier, Luis Merino, Mathias Meyer, Matt Southerden, Mislav Marohnic, Mitch Guthrie, Morgan Prior, Paul Barry, Peter Aronoff, Peter Rihn, Philip Roberts, Robert Evans, Ryan Stenhouse, Steven! Ragnark, Tibor Simic, Tim Chase, Tim Pope, Tim Tyrrell, and Tobias Sailer.

As a whole, Id like to thank the Vim community for sharing their insights across the Internet. I learned many of the tips in this book by reading the Vim tag on StackOverflow and by following the vim_use mailing list.

Tim Popes rails.vim plugin was instrumental in convincing me to take Vim seriously, and many of his other plugins have become essential parts of my setup. Ive also gained insight by using the plugins of Kana Natsuno, whose custom text objects are some of the best extensions to Vims core functionality that Ive come across. Thank you to both for sharpening the saw so that the rest of us can benefit.

Thanks to Joe Rozner for providing the wakeup source code that I used to introduce the :make command. Thanks to Oleg Efimov for his quick response to nodelint issues. Thanks to Ben Cormack for illustrating the robots and ninjas.

In January 2012, we moved to Berlin, where the tech community inspired me to complete this book. Id like to thank Gregor Schmidt for founding the Vim Berlin user group and Jan Schulz-Hofen for hosting our meetups. The opportunity to speak to fellow Vim users really helped me to get my thoughts in order, so Im grateful to everyone who attended the Vim Berlin meetings. Thank you to Daniel and Nina Holle for subletting your home to us. It was a wonderful place to live and a productive environment in which to work.

In March 2011, I needed surgery to clear adhesions that were obstructing my bowel. Unlucky for me, I was a long way from home. Luckily, my wife was by my side. Hannah had me admitted to the South Sinai Hospital, where I received excellent care. I want to thank all of the staff there for their kind help, and Dr. Shawket Gerges for successfully operating on me.