Swap two characters in Vim

Here’s a quick trick that requires no plugins. You probably already know both of these commands but many people, including myself, might not have internalized the combination. A little reminder is sometimes all we need.

Use xp to swap the character under your cursor with the one to its right.

For example, suppose you have a misspelled word like so:

puts "Hlelo world!"

With your cursor on the misplaced l in Hlelo, type xp:

puts "H█elo world!"

The x deletes the character under the cursor and puts it in a register and p pastes that register to the right of the cursor. You end up with:

puts "Hello world!"

Just internalize xp for swapping characters and stop going in and out of insert mode to make small edits. And to swap backwards instead of forwards, use Xp.