TopolearnA small, understood vimrc makes Vim comfortable without turning it into someone else's editor.
Vim reads its config from ~/.vimrc (or ~/.vim/vimrc). If none exists, Vim loads defaults.vim, which turns on syntax highlighting, incsearch and a few other niceties; as soon as you create a vimrc that file is no longer loaded, so start yours with source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim or set those options yourself.
Options are set with :set: boolean ones on/off (set number, set nonumber, toggle with set number!), others with a value (set tabstop=4). :set option? shows the current value and :verbose set option? shows which file set it.
Mappings bind keys to keystrokes, per mode: nnoremap (Normal), inoremap (Insert), vnoremap/xnoremap (Visual), onoremap (operator-pending). Always use the noremap forms: the plain map variants re-interpret the right-hand side through other mappings and cause loops and surprises.
The leader key is a prefix for your own mappings. Set let mapleader = " " before defining mappings, then use <leader> in them. <CR> means Enter, <C-x> means Ctrl-x, <silent> hides the command echo.
Edit with :e $MYVIMRC and reload with :source %. Add options one at a time, with a comment saying why, and look each up with :help 'optionname'.
Example
source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim " keep the sane defaults
set number relativenumber
set expandtab shiftwidth=4 tabstop=4
set ignorecase smartcase hlsearch
set hidden " switch buffers without saving
set undofile " persistent undo
let mapleader = " "
nnoremap <leader>w :w<CR>
nnoremap <silent> <leader>h :nohlsearch<CR>
nnoremap <C-h> <C-w>h
inoremap jk <Esc>Remember
- Creating ~/.vimrc disables defaults.vim unless you source it
- Use nnoremap/inoremap/xnoremap, never plain map
- Set mapleader before defining <leader> mappings
Watch out for
- Using map instead of noremap, so your mapping triggers other mappings recursively.