How to read Vim keystroke syntax?
I'm trying to learn Vim and I'm seeing a lot of documentation use syntax like
<C-v>. Is there a general guide on how to read this correctly?
I've attached an example SO post below that uses this syntax:
Vim multiline editing like in sublimetext?
Do yourself a favor by droping the Windows compatibility layer. The normal shortcut for entering Visual-Block mode is
<C-v>.
Solution 1:
From within Vim, :help <> has a short overview of the notation Vim uses with a few examples, including:
<C-G> CTRL-G
<C-LeftMouse> Control- left mouse click
:help key-notation or :help keycodes will bring up a more thorough list of conventions used within Vim's documentation (and typically copied by Vim users as well) to refer to various keys. One of the lines has this:
notation meaning equivalent decimal value(s)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
<C-...> control-key *control* *ctrl* *<C-*
Solution 2:
I am not sure if there is a general guide on vims documentation syntax. But from my experience < C-v> is equivalent to (ctrl + v).
This can be seen for example in this cheat sheet. https://gist.github.com/awidegreen/3854277
And in this question on SO https://stackoverflow.com/questions/289681/why-does-c-a-ctrla-not-work-under-gvim-on-windows