Help

Vim ships with VERY extensive documentation. The main help file is accessible like so:

:help

This can be abbreviated:

:he

We navigate inside the help documents using regular Vim motions, (such as j for next line, <CTRL-F> for page down, and so on).

Note also that help opens in a separate WINDOW - our previous file (No Name) is still there!

This can be visualized a bit easier if we extend the height of our terminal:

We can make the help file the ONLY window visible with only:

:only

We can also combine commands in the Command Line using the | operator:

:he | only

Help for specific topics

We can also access help for a specific topics. Let's look at the documentation for w, which is the motion command for moving the cursor forward by one word.

:he w

Help search

We can also get a list of all available commands that include the current string, by pressing <CTRL-D>:

:he w<CTRL-D>

That's quite the list!

Note that there are separate help articles for w and :w

• w is the motion command, whereas
• :w is the save command.

Alternatively, we can use tab completion:

:he w<TAB>

Using Help

Let's go back to the main help page.

:help

The help file starts with useful tips, such as the keys used for basic navigation.

In Vim help, we can "Jump to a subject". These sections are accessed using TAGS, the hot-links to another section in the help manual. They are highlighted in a particular color.

When the cursor is positioned over a tag, pressing <CTRL-]> will jump FORWARD to that tag.

Pressing <CTRL-T> will go BACK one tag.

Tags

Tags work by using the internal "tag stack", a list of visited tags.

To demonstrate this, navigate to a few help sections using <CTRL-]> over their tags.

Now, we can inspect the current tag stack like so:

:tags