How do I scroll the current line to the center or top of the screen and simultaneously move my cursor to the first non-blank character?

Explanation

Vim has two parallel sets of scroll commands: the well-known zz, zt, zb which reposition the view without moving the cursor, and the lesser-known z., z<CR>, z- which do the same repositioning and move the cursor to the first non-blank character of the line.

How it works

The cursor-moving variants are useful when your cursor is mid-line (e.g., after a long search match) and you want to both reposition the view and get back to the beginning of indented content in one keystroke.

Example

With the cursor deep in a long line:

    function veryLongFunctionName(arg1, arg2, arg3) {  ← cursor here somewhere

Pressing z. centers this line in the window and snaps the cursor to function (the first non-blank character), equivalent to pressing zz then ^.

Tips

• Think of z. as zz + ^, and z<CR> as zt + ^, and z- as zb + ^
• Most useful in workflows where you navigate to matches mid-line (e.g., after /pattern) and want to re-anchor your view and cursor at once
• Works with a count: 3z<CR> scrolls line 3 to the top and moves to its first non-blank character