Wiki: Irc Faq

You should read these help topics. Really.

Using help

• :help
• :help c_Ctrl-D

Search Highlights

• :help 'hlsearch -- turn them on or off permanently
• :help :nohlsearch -- turn them off until the next search

Backspace behavior -- how to get (g)vim to backspace over line-endings and so forth

• :help 'bs

Do something to all lines matching a pattern

• :help :g

Format options

• :help fo-table

End-of-line problems (extra ^Ms all over the place)

• FileFormat

indenting

• :help 'expandtab
• :help 'shiftwidth
• :help 'tabstop
• :help 'copyindent
• :help 'preserveindent
• :help sub-replace-special -- for why \n doesn't do what you want in s///

not indenting when pasting

• :help 'paste

Making invisible characters visible (tabs, newlines, trailing spaces,...)

• :help 'list
• :help 'listchars

Show matching braces

• :help 'showmatch

You may also want to peruse the main FAQ page from this wiki: FAQ