Moving Windows
As Vim users, we like to work with split windows. We tend to split them ad hoc rather than according to a fixed scheme — I’ll often use a vertical split for code | unit test, but it's so easy to split windows that I'll open more as needed, quite arbitrarily.
Armed with just :split (shortcut: CTRL-W_s, alias: :sp) and :vsplit (shortcut: CTRL-W_v, alias: :vs), it's possible to get by productively without taking advantage of the hidden wealth of window management commands that lie just beneath the surface. Let's look at one category of these commands: moving windows.
Flippin’ Windows
Vim’s documentation for window movement is under :help window-moving. The first command it introduces is CTRL-W r, which rotates windows downwards and rightwards. This is useful, but what I usually want to do is switch between a horizontal and vertical layout.
To flip layouts, you need to understand how Vim moves windows internally. Let’s say I’ve got two horizontally split windows in the following configuration:
For whatever reason I want to change this layout to use a vertical split instead. To do that, I press CTRL-W_L (that's CTRL and w then uppercase L):
Although it seems like the windows have changed layout, what really happened was the current window (“win b”) was moved to be the right window, using the full height of the screen. This is implemented by closing “win b”, creating another window using :vert topleft split, and then replacing the new window with the closed window.
These operations make sense because they allow you to work with arbitrarily complicated window layouts. If I now type CTRL-W_s to horizontally split the window and open another file, it splits the new window into two:
This can lead to situations where there are too many windows to be usable. Fortunately, I can easily send the new window to another tab by typing CTRL-W T:
It’s great to be able to quickly move a window to a new tab when your screen is full of windows. I find it easier than closing a window then finding it in the buffer list.
