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How to navigate to a specific line in Vim

December 06, 2022

Vim is a powerful and popular text editor developers often use to write code. One of the critical features of Vim is its ability to navigate quickly and easily within a document. This is particularly useful when working with large files or when you need to go to a specific line or section of a file.

This article will look at how to go to a specific line in Vim.

  1. To go to a specific line in Vim, you can use the :<line-number> command. For example, to go to line 20 of the current file, enter :20 and press <Enter>. This will take you directly to the line 20 of the file.

  2. Another way to go to a specific line in Vim is to use the :<line-number>G command. This works the same way as the :<line-number> command, but it also moves the cursor to the first non-blank character on the line. This can be useful if you want to go directly to the start of a line rather than the end of the previous line.

  3. You can also use the :<line-number>+<offset> command to go to a specific line and move the cursor a certain number of characters to the right or left. For example, to go to line 20 and move the cursor 10 characters to the right, you would enter :20+10 and press <Enter>. This can be useful when you want to go to a specific line and then make a change at a specific point in that line.

  4. Another helpful command for going to specific lines in Vim is the :<line-number>go. This command opens a new window at the specified line, and this can be useful when you want to view a different part of the file without losing your current position.

In summary, there are several ways to go to a specific line in Vim. The :<line-number>, :<line-number>G, and :<line-number>+<offset> commands allow you to quickly navigate to a specific line in the current file, while the :<line-number>go command opens a new window at the specified line. By using these commands, you can easily navigate within a file and make changes at specific points in the file.

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