Re: Learn vi/vim in 50 lines and 15 minutes

To edit a file with vi do:
vi file.txt
[download]

This is a bit misleading. On many systems, if you do vi file.txt, you do indeed edit the file with vi, and not with vim. You discuss vim, and while vim has many similarities with vi, not everything you discuss will work in vi. For instance, not on every system will the arrow keys work as expected in vi. There's no syntax highlighting in vi, nor does vi have any perl hooks.

It has 4 MODES.

That's just an opinion. One could also argue that vi only has command mode. But some commands take arbitrary long arguments. ;-).

Abigail (using vi since 1984)

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Re: Re: Learn vi/vim in 50 lines and 15 minutes by etcshadow (Priest) on Mar 05, 2004 at 04:27 UTC
`alias vi=vim` Never leave home without it. `------------ :Wq Not an editor command: Wq` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Learn vi/vim in 50 lines and 15 minutes by brig (Scribe) on Dec 01, 2006 at 08:00 UTC
Yep, this is where I jump right in and say that I was taught and believe that vi has 2 modes, command and insert. In command mode you have an ed sub mode (:). In command mode you can use the / or ? command to search. The only reason I would use /usr/bin/vi would be an emergency. On the positive side I wish there had been a web tutorial like this when I was cursing and crying in front of the beeping flashing monster with the intimidating tilde teeth. (they really do look like teeth on a HP-Term in a panic trying to figure out how to use it to do homework.) That was when I learned about O'Reilly. Love, --Brig Update: Fixed 2 typos	[reply]