Kill the CAPS LOCK!

The Caps Lock key can do wonders to wreak havoc in VI. You’re in command mode, minding your own business, when all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. All because you pressed the caps lock key instead of the shift key.

For a long while I was reluctant to follow the plethora of tutorials on how to kill the caps lock key. The reason is that there are several cases where I thought it was very beneficial to actually use it to, well, lock the caps. For example, by tradition, definitions in C/C++ are written in all capital letters. I finally figured out how to get along without the evil key, as I will explain below:

g~w - capitalize one word  
g~~ - capitalize the entire sentence  
gU{motion} - capitalize motion

I still have some open issues. For example, to capitalize the word I just wrote, I have to go backwards (‘b’) and then capitalize it (‘g~w’) and then go back to insert mode (‘A’). I’ll be happy to learn of better options, options that take into account that I despite having to configure my setup. Nonetheless, I’m now much better off than I was with the occasional caps lock accident.

You can now make the caps lock key do something else, such as behave as a shift key or an esc key.

• In OS-X - see this serverfault (stackoverflow sibling) page.

• In Linux - Vim Tip 166

• In Windows - Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_Windows

Further Reading:

• Programming with Vi - Tips for using VI as a programming editor.
• Programming Editors - Why I started learning VI.
• Configurability - Why I hate to have to configure software.
• Source Code Highlighting - How to use VI to highlight source code in Blogger.