Can I (re)map Ex commands in vim?

Question

I love vim and the speed it gives me. But sometimes, my fingers are too speedy and I find myself typing :WQ instead of :wq. (On a German keyboard, you have to press Shift to get the colon :.) Vim will then complain that WQ is Not an editor command.

Is there some way to make W and Q editor commands?

• William Keller: You use shift to get a colon on a standard American QWERTY too.
• Boldewyn: Shouldn't that be on Superuser?
• mb14: you can also map ; (or whatever is on the : key) to : and vice versa so you don't need to use shift to get the :.
• Anthony DiSanti: by default jumps to the next instance of a character that you found using f (similar to how n find the next instance of a / search). If you decide to remap it, you lose that functionality.
• mraaroncruz: @AnthonyDiSanti not if you remap ; back to :! noremap ; : noremap : ; :P

Answer 1

Try

 :command WQ wq
 :command Wq wq
 :command W w
 :command Q q

This way you can define your own commands. See :help command for more information.

• rampion: don't forget to add the above to your vimrc so you don't have to do it every time.
• Luc: Note that in .vimrc, you need to omit the leading colon. It should read, for example: command Wq wq
• Jthorpe: This solution is limited to a command names that begin with capitol letters. A much better solution can be found here.
• Flimm: This does not let you use arguments, for instance, :W example.txt will fail to work if you set up the alias using :command W w
• Kingsley: Using vim 8.0.1453, in my .vimrc, I had to use cmap WQ wq, not "command". Vim gave me E128: Invalid command name otherwise.

Answer 2

Alternative way to do it:

Use 'command abbreviations'

:ca WQ wq

• Ben Klein: A helpful way to remember that: The full keyword is cabbrev. :)
• Matthias Braun: +1 This also allows for aliases starting with a lower case letter (in contrast to :command).
• Jthorpe: This solution will replace WQ where ever it is in the command, not just at the beginning, which might be rare for 'WQ' but nor for more commonly typed strings. Hence, this solution is better.

Answer 3

And you can use

:cmap WQ wq

as well. E.g. I have

cmap h tab help

in my .vimrc which means opening help pages in a new tab.

Thanks for the tip Jim Stewart:

But here is a much better solution as the above (for the help mapping, so that it only applies when you do :h):

cnoreabbrev <expr> h getcmdtype() == ":" && getcmdline() == "h" ? "tab h" : "h"

• Zsolt Botykai: On which version if (G)Vim? What happens, when you type '<ESC>:cmap h tab help<CR>:h<SPACE>'?
• Chris Morgan: -1: touches far too much. For example, :echo 3 will then produce :ectab helpo 3. :e sh.py becomes :e stab help.py. Et cetera.
• Jim Stewart: This is off-topic, but you probably want something like cnoreabbrev <expr> h getcmdtype() == ":" && getcmdline() == "h" ? "tab h" : "h" for the help mapping, so that it only applies when you do :h<space>.
• Zsolt Botykai: Thank you @JimStewart it is a much better solution, I will add it to my answer!
• trusktr: :cmap h tab help makes vim output tab all over the screen in a forever loop.