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Justin Joyce

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How to exit Vim

Posted Dec 27, 2022 — Updated Nov 1, 2023

My preferred method: :x. But you have a few choices:

CommandDetails
:qQuits, but only if no changes were made
:q!Quits without saving any changes. Always works
:wqWrites (saves) and quits. Always works. Importantly, this always saves, meaning the file’s ‘last modified’ time will change
:xSaves only if changes were made, and then quits. Always works.

Now that you know how to quit vim I feel obligated to say: spend some getting familiar with it. Vim is very powerful, and has been a major improvement to my workflow; I’ll never work without it again.1


Helpful Links

  • Vim :x command – Hashrocket

Notes

  1. I don’t do much work in actual Vim, but I always use the keybidnings. VSCode and JetBrains both have great Vim bindings. ↩︎

Filed Under: Vim

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