How to delete next character (not current!) in vim?

Question

I often find myself needing to delete the character after the cursor, but not the current character. What's the shortest way to do this in normal mode in vim?

Answer 1

lx will do the trick, or lxh if you want to return your cursor to the original position.

It simply moves the cursor forward and deletes the character under it.

If that's not short enough, you can map it to a single keypress:

:map <f5> lxh

Then just use the f5 function key.

Answer 2

I believe there are many ways to do that, there is another 3-strokes way:

xpX

note that, either xpX or lxh would fail if your cursor on the EOL. :)

Answer 3

The shortest sequence that I know is also the obvious one:

Type "l x h" in command mode.