2016年8月24日 · Nobe4's answer is great, and explains why we use hjkl very well. However, it's really interesting to see the full keyboard, and a lot of strange things about vim make more sense when you can see the full keyboard it was designed on. For example, why does vi rely so heavily on the esc key, when it's in such a weird and uncomfortable place? This ...

2023年6月16日 · Vi used hjkl because its creator's keyboard didn't have physical cursor keys. Instead, the arrows were printed on the hjkl keys. The arrow keys were printed on hjkl because the corresponding control codes all moved the cursor in directions roughly similar to the cursor keys: ^H for "backspace, ^J for "line feed", ^K for "upline", and ^L for ...

2012年7月29日 · The thing is that you start out using the "hjkl" key just as a slightly better way to move your cursor, but the truth is that they are actually motions. h motions one character left; j motions one line down; k motions one line up; l motions one character right

2017年7月5日 · (The same is true in a couple of other places, for instance you can use left/right arrows to move around within a command or search/replace you are typing, but you cannot use hjkl for movement in those cases.) There is one other difference, I suppose - since they are separate keys, they can be mapped to separate things.

hjkl is better than jkl; because it mitigates the pinky overload, if you are resting your hands on j and typing properly h and j are to be typed with the index finger, k with the middle finger and l with the ring finger. Which is good.

It was too much of a hassle to constantly move my hand to the arrow keys, so I came up with an easy way to practice hjkl. I thought you guys might appreciate it. Play any snake game (I used nSnake as it was super lightweight and allowed key rebinding) Rebind movement to hjkl Play the game until it becomes muscle memory! Enjoy!

2021年11月12日 · Vi used hjkl because its creator's keyboard didn't have physical cursor keys. Instead, the arrows were printed on the hjkl keys. The arrow keys were printed on hjkl because the corresponding control codes all moved the cursor in directions roughly similar to the cursor keys: ^H for "backspace, ^J for "line feed", ^K for "upline", and ^L for ...

2022年6月29日 · The hjkl keys are not used that often by the average Vimmer (in particular the h and l keys); we instead use more specific or more efficient motions. The ; key itself (used to repeat a f or t command) is far more used than both h and l combined, so there is no use trying to "learn Vim on hjkl".

2014年11月3日 · hjkl are only marginally better than the arrows while Vim's more advanced motions, bBeEwWfFtT,;/?^$ and so on, offer a huge advantage over the arrows and hjkl. FWIW, I use the arrows for small movements, in normal and insert mode, and the advanced motions above for larger motions.

2013年9月8日 · Now, why the designers of that particular keyboard put the directional keys on hjkl and not on jkl; is another question and an interesting one at that. I don't know the answer to that question but a benefit of using hjkl instead of jkl; is that hjkl are at the same spot on every "classic" keyboard layouts while ; is a moving target.