flevour unplugged

When remotely editing through Vim on a friend’s server, I had troubles using the arrow keys, because instead of moving the cursor, using them result in some random letters printed on the screen. After some researches I stumbled on this help (:help compatible_):

This option has the effect of making Vim either more Vi-compatible, or
make Vim behave in a more useful way. When a ".vimrc" file is found while Vim is starting up, this option is switched off, and all options that have not been modified will be set to the Vim defaults.

So the point is, if you have the same problems I had, you don’t want to be Vi-compatible. So simply go and touch ~/.vimrc (this will create an empty .vimrc file in your $HOME directory).

There are also other cool tricks you can do for mapping arrows keys:

• Scroll using arrow keys like browser: map shift-up and shift-down
• A Collection of Vim Tips

• and if you are going into mapping keys, read which key should I use to start my mappings?

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