A brief guide to evil-mode in Emacs

You know you are in evil mode by the trajectory Vim follows when you hit RET you get evil-ret

Note: Emacs commands still work! So you have double the power.
e.g. ^ and C-a take you to end of line
e.g. C-l centers the screen, as does zz
e.g. C-s and / search forward (isearch-forward versus evil-search-forward)

Esc puts you in Normal Mode
i puts you in Insert Mode
E Puts you into Emacs state. A state that mimics default Emacs behaviour, by eliminating all vi bindings, except for C-z, to re-enter normal state.
C-z lets you toggle between Normal and Emacs Mode

RET takes you down a line
- takes you up a line
h j k l
G takes you to the end of the buffer~
gg takes you to the beginning

u will undo

O will open up a new line above
o will open a new line below

v is combined with movement keys to select text
y will yank/copy text
p will paste copied text in Normal Mode
C-r " pastes text in insert mode
r will replace a Character

yy will copy a line
dd will delete a line

zz moves current line to middle of screen
zt moves current line to top of screen

H moves the cursor to top of screen
M to the middle
L to the bottom

:w will save the current buffer
I insert text at beginning of line
A append text at the end of a line
x delete the character under the cursor

/ search forward (combine with M-p)
? search backward

C-w deletes a word in insert mode
C-u deletes to indentation (if customized as below)

C-q TAB inserts a TAB character

(setq-default tab-width 4)

. will repeat the last action (like C-x z in Emacs)

(setq evil-shift-width 0) ;; Determines the number of columns by which a line is shifted using the operators > and <.
(setq evil-want-C-u-delete) ;; This works in conjunction with C-w which deletes last word.
(setq evil-want-Y-yank-to-eol t) ;; yanks the text from the cursor position to the end of the line, excluding the newline character

This is an example …
C-u now deletes back to indentation in insert state

https://readthedocs.org/projects/evil/downloads/pdf/latest/
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

;; EVIL MODE SETTINGS
;; Download and install Evil Mode
(unless (package-installed-p 'evil)
  (package-install 'evil))

;; Enable Evil Mode
(setq evil-default-state 'normal)
(setq evil-want-C-u-scroll t)
(setq evil-want-Y-yank-to-eol t)
(require 'evil)
(evil-mode 1)

;; Setting a leader key in evil-mode (,)
(evil-set-leader 'normal (kbd ","))
(evil-define-key 'normal 'global (kbd "<leader>s") 'save-buffer)
(evil-define-key 'normal 'global (kbd "<leader>q") 'kill-this-buffer)

;; Evil surround package
(unless (package-installed-p 'evil-surround)
  (package-refresh-contents)
  (package-install 'evil-surround))
(require 'evil-surround)
(global-evil-surround-mode 1)

(setq evil-shift-width 4) ;; number of columns by which line shifts using > and <.
(setq evil-want-C-u-delete t) ;; This works in conjunction with C-w which deletes last word.
(setq evil-want-Y-yank-to-eol t) ;; Yanks line, excluding the newline character.

(with-eval-after-load 'evil-surround
  (add-to-list 'evil-surround-pairs-alist '(?\* . ("**" . "**")))
  (add-to-list 'evil-surround-pairs-alist '(?~ . ("~~" . "~~")))
  (add-to-list 'evil-surround-pairs-alist '(?\" . ("\"" . "\""))))
;; Comment out lines in Emacs Vim style
(use-package evil-nerd-commenter
  :ensure t
  :bind ("M-;" . evilnc-comment-or-uncomment-lines))
(global-set-key (kbd "M-;") 'evilnc-comment-or-uncomment-lines)

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