Moving lines

Have you ever wanted to change the position of a line within a file?

One
Three <<<<< I want to move this down!
Two

One solution would be to "cut" the line

• dd in Vim

... and then to paste the line in the desired position

• Y in Vim

However, in Visual Studio Code, we get the shortcuts <Option-UP> and <Option-DOWN>.

And I REALLY wanted to implement this in Vim.

So I did some research and arrived at this page on the Vim Wiki which gave me the solution!

nnoremap <A-j> :m .+1<CR>==
nnoremap <A-k> :m .-2<CR>==
inoremap <A-j> <Esc>:m .+1<CR>==gi
inoremap <A-k> <Esc>:m .-2<CR>==gi
vnoremap <A-j> :m '>+1<CR>gv=gv
vnoremap <A-k> :m '<-2<CR>gv=gv

What??!

It definitely works though!

I decided that I wanted to find out how those crazy commands worked. This will be one of the best ways to learn Vim - by understanding how a solution you found works.

Like a lot of solutions in the wiki, there are explanations provided, and I decided to cobble together my own annotations for my own .vimrc, ending up with this:

" === MOVING LINES  ====================
" Move, in normal mode
" :m = move
" .+1 = current line number + 1
" :m+1 (same as :m+) = move current line down to current line number + 1
" == re-indents the line to suit its new position
nnoremap <A-j> :m .+1<CR>==

" move up
" same as :m-2
" move current line up to (current line number minus 2)
nnoremap <A-k> :m .-2<CR>==

" Move, in insert mode
" == reindents
" g = ?
" i = enter insert mode again
inoremap <A-j> <Esc>:m .+1<CR>==gi
inoremap <A-k> <Esc>:m .-2<CR>==gi

" we can move blocks of lines too, in visual mode
" '> = a mark that identifies the selection END
" '< = start of selection
" gv = reselects the last visual block
" = reindents
vnoremap <A-j> :m '>+1<CR>gv=gv
vnoremap <A-k> :m '<-2<CR>gv=gv

Here's a Gif to demonstrate: