Abbreviations in Vim

Vim has a nifty feature that allows you to define keywords that will then expand to a configurable string. The basic syntax is

:iabbrev {kw} {expansion}

I am going to define two abbreviations __w and __t that will expand to my personal homepage and to this journal respectively

:iabbrev __w http://zqureshi.in
:iabbrev __t https://til.zqureshi.in

Now when I’m in insert mode and type __w followed by a <Space> the expansion will be triggered. In the situation that you do not want the expansion you would type __w and then press <Ctrl-V> followed by any other character to insert it verbatim. Usually I’ll do <Ctrl-V><Space>.