Emacs Describe Key in vim

Question

Is there any feature in Vim which shows me what a keyboard shortcut is bound to in the current context? Something like describe-key in emacs.

I'm trying to find out which keys i can safely rebind and which are bound to something useful.

There is some information here that might help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4778715/is-there-a-way-to-list-all-the-default-normal-visual-and-insert-mode-bindings-in — Jeremiah Willcock, Feb 20 '11 at 19:14
Cool thank you. That is very near at what I wanted to do. How do I efficiently search and group this output? --> jep there is see the solution. — Kungi, Feb 20 '11 at 19:28

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 20 '11 at 19:26

15

If your key is manually mapped, you can check the mapping by evoking:

:map <keys>

if it is not, then you can check the manual:

:help <keys>

answered Feb 20 '11 at 19:26

Eelvex

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Thank you that is exactly what I wanted. :-) Just Great. – Kungi Feb 20 '11 at 19:30
1

It's often helpful to use `:verb map ` so you can find out where the mapping was set. – echristopherson Aug 18 '12 at 19:16

9000 · Answer 2 · 2011-02-20T19:30:15.463

5

The first google hit says:

is there anything like "describe-key" (EMacs) in vim ?

The simplest might be the Vim help system. For example:

:h ^X

describes Ctrl-X. You have to type "^X" as two characters, not one.

To see how a key is mapped, you can use :map <whatever key sequence>, or just :map to see all non-default bindings. Mappings of keys may contain non-trivial sequences, so you might need to look up several other keys used in the mapping with :h as said above.

edited Feb 20 '11 at 19:30

answered Feb 20 '11 at 19:11

9000

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btw, you can type special characters by first typing CTRL+V. For example, typing CTR+V, gives you ^M. – Eelvex Feb 20 '11 at 19:23
Updated the answer to include mapping. – 9000 Feb 20 '11 at 19:30

Emacs Describe Key in vim

2 Answers2