Hidden features of Vim

Question

Over the years, I thought I'm a Vim master! Recently I visited a real Vim master! oops! My knowledge is awfully superficial!

For example I didn't know it's possible to add a \c to make search case insensitive. (instead of :set ignorecase)

I clearly remember when how I'm surprised when I found SuperTab or TagList plugins first time. Vim's official site says "Vim isn't an editor designed to hold its users' hands. It is a tool, the use of which must be learned.", so naturaly it should have many undiscovered features.

So I'm asking, what are your favorite features of Vim? What are things you can do with it that you can't or are more difficult in the other editors?

Of course there's some same topics about other editors:

• Hidden Features of Eclipse
• Hidden Features of TextPad

Answer 1

It took me a few years before I learned about text objects

:help text-object
:nmap cw ciw
:nmap cW ciW

Also nice are ci" and ci( when I want to change a string or function args.