Cheatsheet for Vim and Emacs

Emacs and Vim are popular text editors for Linux that enable fast and efficient editing of text using special keys and keystroke combinations. Read on to find a handy cheatsheet table for common Emacs and Vim commands.

The meta key is typically the Windows key, or the command key on Mac OS.

Action	Emacs	Vim
Move forward by one character	CTRL-f	l
Move backward by one character	CTRL-b	h
Move forward by one word	Meta-f	w
Move backward by one word	Meta-b	b
Move to beginning of line	CTRL-a	0
Move to end of line	CTRL-e	$
Transpose (swap) two characters	CTRL-t	xp
Transpose (swap) two words	Meta-t	n/a
Capitalize word (upper case first letter)	Meta-c	n/a
Upper case to end of word	Meta-u	n/a
Lower case to end of word	Meta-l	n/a
Change case of the current character	n/a	~
Insert the next character verbatim, including control characters	CTRL-v	CTRL-v
Delete forward by one character	CTRL-d	x
Delete backward by one character	backspace or CTRL-h	X
Cut forward by one word	Meta-d	dw
Cut backward by one word	Meta-backspace or CTRL-w	db
Cut from cursor to beginning of line	CTRL-u	d^
Cut from cursor to end of line	CTRL-k	D
Delete the entire line	CTRL-e CTRL-u	dd
Paste (yank) the most recently deleted text	CTRL-y	p
Paste (yank) the next deleted text (after previous yank)	Meta-y	n/a
Undo the previous editing operation	CTRL-_	u
Undo all edits made so far	Meta-r	U
Switch from insertion mode to command mode	n/a	Escape
Switch from command mode to insertion mode	n/a	i
Abort an operation in progress	CTRL-g	n/a
Clear the display	CTRL-l	CTRL-l
Save file and quit	CTRL-x CTRL-s	:wq

Some people praise Vim for it's one keystroke efficiency, some prefer Emacs, which is a more full-featured editor that can do much more than text editing.