Today I Learned

hashrocket A Hashrocket project

Complete a Whole Line in Vim

This week I picked up an excellent Vim command: CTRL-X CTRL-L. This command searches backwards through your project and inserts a matching line after the cursor.

So, if there's a line in your project like this:

defimpl Phoenix.Param, for: Tilex.Developer do

And I type defimpl (which is unique enough to match just a few lines of code in my project), Vim will suggest matching options, letting me choose a match to complete it:

defimpl Phoenix.Param, for: Tilex.Developer do
defimpl Phoenix.Param, for: Tilex.Developer do

This is useful when writing code in a framework like React.js, where the head of many files often includes a group of repetitive import statements.

See 'Insert mode completion' inside insert.txt in the Vim help for more information.

h/t Dorian Karter

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Every developer at Hashrocket is a Vim expert. Check out our development environment, Dotmatrix, and if you are in Chicago, come to the Vim Chicago Meetup hosted at our Chicago office.