Mastering the VI editor

Mastering the VI editor

University of Hawaii at Manoa

College of Engineering

Introduction
The VI editor is a screen-based editor used by many Unix users. The VI editor has powerful features to aid programmers, but many beginning users avoid using VI because the different features overwhelm them. This tutorial is written to help beginning users get accustomed to using the VI editor, but also contains sections relevant to regular users of VI as well. Examples are provided, and the best way to learn is to try these examples, and think of your own examples as well... There's no better way than to experience things yourself.

Conventions
In this tutorial, the following convention will be used:

^X denotes a control character. For example, if you see: ^d in the tutorial, that means you hold down the control key and then type the corresponding letter. For this example, you would hold down the control key and then type d.

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The Vi/Ex Editor By Walter Alan Zintz

The Vi/Ex Editor

By Walter Alan Zintz

To get a real grasp on this editor's power, you need to know the basic ideas embodied in it, and a few fundamental building blocks that are used throughout its many functions.

One cause of editor misuse is that most users, even experienced ones, don't really know what the editor is good at and what it's not capable of. Here's a quick rundown on its capabilities.
First, it's strictly a general-purpose editor. It doesn't format the text; it doesn't have the handholding of a word processor; it doesn't have built-in special facilities for editing binaries, graphics, tables, outlines, or any programming language except Lisp.

It's two editors in one. Visual mode is a better full-screen editor than most, and it runs faster than those rivals that have a larger bag of screen-editing commands. Line editing mode dwarfs the ``global search and replace'' facilities found in word processors and simple screen editors; its only rivals are non-visual editors like Sed where you must know in advance exactly what you want to do. But in the Vi/Ex editor, the two sides are very closely linked, giving the editor a combination punch that no other editor I've tried can rival.

Finally, this editor is at its best when used by people who have taken the trouble to learn it thoroughly. It's too capable to be learned well in an hour or two, and too idiosyncratic to be mastered in a week, and yet the power really is in it, for the few who care to delve into it. A large part of that power requires custom-programming the editor: that's not easy or str aightforward, but what can be done by the skillful user goes beyond the direct programmability of any editor except (possibly) Emacs.

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