Vim: Motions

See :help motion.txt for a complete listing of motions that Vim supports.

Operators

Motions can be used for navigating a codebase, but are most powerful when combined with operators that act on motions. The syntax is [count]<operator>[count]<motion>. The canonical example would be to use d2w to delete two words from the current cursor location. Common operators are

c - change
d - delete
y - yank
gu - make lowercase
gU - make uppercase
gq - reflow/format text
<, > - shift left, right

Operators can also be applied to text-objects like matching quotes, parentheses, braces, words, sentences, etc. For example, diw deletes the word under the cursor without having to move the cursor to the beginning of the word with bde.

vim-surround also works nicely with text objects and motions. For example, ys2w' surrounds the next two words (from the current cursor) with single quotes.

Motions

Left-right motions

The common motions I use to navigate the current line are

h, l - left/right by one character
0, ^, $ - go to the first, first non-blank, or last character of a line
[count]| - go to the countth column
f{char}, t{char} - go to the first occurrence of {char}. f lands on the character, while t puts the cursor right in front
F{char}, T{char} - same as f and t, but forward through the line
[count];, [count], repeat the last f, t, F, or T command count times

Up-down motions

k, j - move up/down
[count]-, [count]+ - (relative) move count lines up/down
[count]G - (absolute) move to the last character of line count. Defaults to last line
[count]gg - (absolute) move to the first non-blank character of line count. Defaults to first line

Word motions

For lowercase word motions, words are defined as a sequence of leters, digits, and underscores. For uppercase WORD motions, words are separated by whitespace.

w - move count words forward
e - move forward to the end of word count
b - move backward to the beginning for word count

Text object motions

See text-objects for details. Some text objects can provide motions (paragraphs and sentences)

(, ) - move count sentences backwards/forwards
{, } - move count paragraphs backwards/forwards
]] - move count sections forward, or to the next opening {
][ - move count sections forward, or to the next closing }
[[ - move count sections backward, or to the previous opening {
[] - move count sections backward, or to the previous closing }

Some languages have ftplugins that define sections for its particular syntax, so the ]]-style motions can work for non-C-style languages.

I haven't found the ]] motions reliable, but that could be because I haven't used them much.

Various motions

% - go to the matching item at or after the cursor. Becomes more powerful with the matchit plugin loaded.
[(, [{ - go to the previous unmatched parenthesis or brace. Useful for jumping to the beginning of a C-style statement
]), ]} - go to the next unmatched parenthesis or brace. Useful for jumping to the end of a C-style statement
]m, ]M - go to the next start/end of a C++-style method
[m, [M - go to the previous start/end of a C++-style method

Note that % is a bit funky in HTML. If your cursor is on top of a < or >, it will go to the matching bracket. If the cursor is inside the tag, % will go to the matching tag. For lists, % will cycle through the list items.

Also note that matchit doesn't support Python, because of the language syntax. python_match exists, but I haven't used it.