flávia bastos

For a text like the following:

This is the line I want to move.
This line should be the first line.

In order to move the first line down, in normal mode* (not edit or insert mode), follow these steps:

• place the cursor at the beginning of the line you want to move - in this case, the first line
• hit dd - the line will disappear (it’s the same as using “cut” on a regular text editor)
• move the cursor to where the line should be - in this case, after the second line
• hit p

Voilà!

This line should be the first line.
This is the line I want to move.

NOTES:

• If you are in edit mode and want to go back to normal mode, just hit ESC

Twitter profile mocking how non-intuitive is exiting the Vim editor.

For the sake of completeness, if you need to exit vi and save the changes, hit :, followed by w (meaning &“write”), followed by q (meaning &“quit”). And if you need to exit without saving, hit :, followed by q, followed by !

The post TIL: How to move a line in Vim was originally published at flaviabastos.ca