Neovim Saga Part 1: Getting Started

What this blog is about??

I have tried multiple times in past to completely move to Neovim, but everytime due to learning curve (or my skill issue), the idea never got fulfilled successfully.

Now since last month, I have been switching between LunarVim and Zed, sometimes playing with Cursor in between. I could have just keep on continuing using the above editors/IDE, but I wanted the following things in my developer journey:

• Fully customization editor, I should know what and why of editor
• I don’t want any IDE or huge chunky editor with lots of extensions taking minutes to load
• I do want AI support, but I want them as an extension of my editor, not an editor/IDE solely built for AI usecase.
• And most of all, I want to brag in front of others whenever I code.

Hence I finally decided to build my own Neovim configuration, each and every keybinding will be set by me and at last add an AI plugin on top of it.

This is Part 1 of the series and this part will cover all the basics neovim motions and intro to Lua language.

Why Neovim, and not Vim?

• I did my own research on which one to use and decided to use neovim because:
  1. better lsp integration
  2. uses lua scripting for configuration (Vim uses Vimscript which is another hell of a learning curve)
  3. Better plugin system
  4. I found neovim community more active

Installation

• Let’s quickly install neovim on our system. Below commands are for MacOS, you can find your commands from here

curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/nightly/nvim-macos-arm64.tar.gz
tar xzf nvim-macos-arm64.tar.gz
./nvim-macos-arm64/bin/nvim

Running the above commands will display this beautiful screen which we will make more beautiful in coming blogs!!

(Neo)Vim Motions

Vim/Neovim Motions are commands that allow us to move the cursor around the screen without any mouse or arrow keys. To use Neovim efficiently, one must know/master these keybindings.

I am not covering each and every keybindings, I am just covering the ones which I will be referring more and more in future. Show please go through :Tutor on Neovim to learn about vim motions.

As Neovim is highly customizable, one can create their own custom keybindings as need arises.

Moving around the window

1. h - move left
2. j - move down
3. k - move up
4. l - move right
5. i - insert after line
6. shift + i - insert before line
7. a - append after line
8. A - append before line
9. w - next word
10. b - back word
11. e - end of next word
12. $ - end of line
13. 0 - 0th point of line, very first location of line
14. ^ - first character of line
15. fs - find first s it sees
16. ; - represents the last find command
17. , - backwards to previous target
18. shift + f + s - find first s behind the target
19. 4ft - 4th occurrence of t
20. gg - goes to the first character of the page
21. shift + g - goes to last line
22. shift + m - middle of the desktop
23. zz - scroll the document to the center

Text Objects

1. diw - delete in word
2. dip - delete in paragraph
3. daw - delete around word
4. da + Shift + w - remove everything between two spaces
5. ci( - change in bracket
6. di( - delete in bracket
7. di" - delete in ""
8. . - repeat the last operator
9. shift + v - highlight the visual line

Command mode

1. : - start a command

Macros

Macros lets you record a series of keystrokes (includes movements, matching, replacing, copy, paste, etc.). It helps to automate repetitive tasks, hence an important tool for Neovim productivity.

1. Recording a macro

• Press q + <register-name>, e.g. q+v to start recording.
• Perform a sequence a character
• Press q again to stop the recording

2. Playing the macro

• Use @ followed by <register-name>, e.g. @+v to replay the recorded macro
• Use last used macro using @@.
• Repeat macro multiple times 100@v

3. Viewing and editing macros

• Run :reg to view registers
• To edit, paste the content into the buffer using "vp, modify it, yank it into the same buffer "yp.

Misc

1. * - Matches everything under the cursor
2. Shift + n - move to previous matched character or word
3. n - move to next matched character or word
4. ciw - change in word
5. . - replay the last action

• e.g. * -> n -> ciw -> n -> .
  • Above will first move to next matched character, do the change in word, and then whenever doing ., ciw will be applied

6. %s/<word1>/<word2>/g - replace word1 with word2 globally
7. %s/<word1>/<word2>/gc - ask each time before replacing word1 with word2 globally
8. y - yanking means copying the content
9. viw - visual highlight in word
10. p - paste
11. :reg- show all registers and their content
12. "3p - paste the content in the third register
13. "7p - yank content into 7th register
14. Special registers:

• system clipboard in mac - *
• "*y - yank into system clipboard
• "*p - paste from system clipboard

15. one could also reassign the registers

• :let @+=@% - making + register as % register

16. == - fix indentation
17. dw - delete word
18. u - undo
19. yw - yank a word
20. dd - deletes entire line
21. yy - yanks entire line
22. p - paste after the cursor
23. shift + p - paste before the cursor
24. shift + r - replace mode, replace everything in this way
25. % - matching counterpart of bracket
26. :set rnu - set relative number
27. / - search for word
28. shift + / or ? - search for a word in previous order
29. ctrl + v - mark vertically across line
30. ctrl + d - half a screen down
31. ctrl + u - half a screen up
32. zb - moves the cursor by one page
33. ctrl + e - moves the cursor up by one line
34. ctrl + y - moves the cursor down by one line

Intro to Lua

To write configs and scripts for Neovim, we will be using Lua language which is a scripting language easier than bash and faster than python. Most of the plugins that we will use are mostly written in Lua, and I am pretty sure you will write your first Neovim plugin in Lua too.

Commenting

-- single line comment

-- [[
multi line comment
]]

Variables

local x = 1
local a = "a"
local b = true
local c = nil
x = x + 1
print(x)

local name = "Barun"
print("I am".." ".. name)

Comparison

== equal
< less than
<= less than or equal to
> greater than
>= greater than or equal to
~= not equal

Conditionals

local age = 24
if age > 20 then
  print("over 20")
elseif age == 20 then
  print("20")
else
  print("below 20")
end

Combining statements

• use and, or and not

Functions

local function func1(a)
  print(a)
end

local func2 = function(a)
  print(a)
end

function sum(a, b)
  return a + b
end

Scope

function func()
  local x = 1
end

print(x) -- nil

Loops

local i = 1
while i<=3 do
  print(i)
  i = i + 1
end

for i = 1,3 do
  print(i)
end

Tables

• tables includes - arrays/lists and dicts (key, value)

local a = {"a1", "a2", "a3"}
print(a[1])

-- #a is the length of the table
for i = 1, #a do
  print(a[1])
end

-- ipairs
for index, value in ipairs(a) do
  print(a[index])
  print(value)
end

for _, value in ipairs(a) do
  print(value)
end

Dictionaries

local a = {
  name = "Barun"
  age = 24
  isAlive = true
}

print(a["name"])
print(a.age)

for key, value in pairs[a] do
  print(key .. " " .. tostring(value))
end

local b = {
  { "b1", 20 },
  { "b2", 22 }
}

for i = 1, #b do
  print(a[i][1] .. " is " .. a[i][2] .. " years old")
end

local c = {
  c1 = {age = 20},
  c2 = {age = 22}
}

Modules

require("path")

-- for example in ~/.config/nvim/lua , all dirs and files are accessable via require
-- Do note that all files in that lua folder are in path!
-- ~/.config/nvim/lua/abc.lua 
-- ~/.config/nvim/lua/abc/init.lua

require "abc"

vim.tbl_deep_extend

• neovim function used for merging tables and their values recursively. Generally used by plugins for merging config tables.

-- table 1
local person = {
    name = "joe",
    age = 19,
    skills = {"python", "html"},
}

-- table 2
local someone = {
    name = "siduck",
    skills = {"js", "lua"},
}

-- "force" will overwrite equal values from the someone table over the person table
local result = vim.tbl_deep_extend("force", person, someone)

-- result : 
{
    name = "siduck",
    age = 19,
    skills = {"js", "lua"},
}

-- The list tables wont merge cuz they dont have keys

• check :h vim.tbl_deep_extend for more info

pcall

• Requiring a nonexistent module or a module which contains syntax errors aborts the currently executing script. pcall() may be used to prevent errors.

local ok, _ = pcall(require, 'module_with_error')
if not ok then
  -- not loaded
end

Vim namespace

• Neovim exposes a global vim variable which can be used to interact with its API via Lua. It exposes it as a standard library.
• Some useful modules and functions:
  1. vim.inspect
  2. vim.regex
  3. vim.api
  4. vim.ui
  5. vim.loop
  6. vim.lsp
  7. vim.treesitter

What’s next?

In next part of this series, we will finally start configuring our Neovim to give us IDE like feel.

I don’t know how many blogs will be there in this neovim series. But my goal is to build a most perfect IDE like editor from scratch.

References

• NvChad Learn Lua
• Neovim Lua Guide
• Neovim Lua
• nvim-lua-guide