Question

What is the difference between the remap, noremap, nnoremap and vnoremap mapping commands in Vim?

Answer 1

remap is an option that makes mappings work recursively. By default, it is on and I’d recommend you leave it that way. The rest are mapping commands, described below:

:map and :noremap are recursive and non-recursive versions of the various mapping commands. For example, if we run:

:map j gg           (moves the cursor to the first line)
:map Q j            (moves the cursor to the first line)
:noremap W j        (moves the cursor down one line)

Then:

• j will be mapped to gg.
• Q will also be mapped to gg, because j will be expanded for the recursive mapping.
• W will be mapped to j (and not to gg) because j will not be expanded for the non-recursive mapping.

Now remember that Vim is a modal editor. It has a normal mode, visual mode and other modes.

For each of these sets of mappings, there is a mapping that works in normal, visual, select and operator modes (:map and :noremap), one that works in normal mode (:nmap and :nnoremap), one in visual mode (:xmap and :xnoremap) and so on.

For more guidance on this, see:

:help :map
:help :noremap
:help recursive_mapping
:help :map-modes