The "vi" Text Editor

The “ vi “ Text Editor

Alessandro Manfredi Lug Roma 3 - http://www.lugroma3.org

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Alessandro Manfredi The “ vi “ Text Editor Lug Roma 3 - http://www.lugroma3.org

Roadmap
• Yes, I’m going to convince you to use this tool
• Who, What, When, Where, Why
• How to
• Examples & Training


Once Upon a Time ...

The 5 ‘w’


The editor war
• Modal Editor

• Small and Fast

• Textual env

• Extensive use of chords

• Bells & Whistles

• GUI

Both have a difﬁcult learning curve

And the winner is ...

POSIX ( IEEE 1003 – ISO/IEC 9945 )
SUS ( IEEE & The Open Group )
( that means there is no actual winner, you can use whatever you want
but since vi is part of the standard you should really know how to use it )


Wait, I never missed anyth using ...
• gedit
• kate / kwrite
• nano
• joe
• oowriter
• notepad
• ... whatever

So why ? ( running into where )

• Again, IT IS PART OF THE STANDARD
• That means you ﬁnd it everywhere
including BSD*, Mac Os X, Solaris, HP-UX,
AIX, Windows with SFU, your microwave
oven (if it’s posix-compliant), etc.


Other strong reasons
(that you will probably ignore)

• Really powerful editor
• Complex tasks with few keystrokes
• Effective regex support
• Makes you damned fast
(especially with touchtyping)

• You can never raise hands from keyboard
• Someone says modal editing increase productivity

What (the jargon ﬁle says..)

vi: /V-I/, not, /vi:/, never, /siks/, n. [from ‘Visual
Interface’] A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for
an early BSD release. Became the de facto standard Unix
editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favorite outside of
MIT until the rise of EMACS after about 1984.

Tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take
commands while expecting input text nor vice versa [... ]


How the ADM3A Keyboard
looks like

• Esc was where now TAB is
• No arrows, just H , J , K , L

Clones
• Vim Any clone extends the basic ‘vi’
• Elvis program with addictional functions
but all of them share the common
• nvi mode and subset of commands you
• gvim are (hopefully) going to learn
• bvi hint: try $which vi
• calvin
• lemmy, elwin, winvi, ...

How to ...


Modal Editing
• Command Mode
• Cursor is on the text
• Can’t see what you’re typing, just its effects
• Input Mode
• Text typing and ONLY text typing
• Directive Mode
• Entered with <:>
• You can see what you type this time =)

Switching Modes (1)

Command Mode

Input Mode : Directive Mode


Enter the editor
• vi

• vi filename
• vi filename1 filename2 filename3

• vi -r filename

• vi +cmd filename

• vi +lnum filename

• vi @rcfile

• ...


Very Basic usage example

<a> Hello folks! <Esc> <:><w><q> <Enter>
( btw, ‘<x>’ means ‘ press the ‘x’ key )

$ cat ﬁlename


Switching Modes (2)
• Command Mode > Input Mode
• <a>, <A>,<i>,<I>, <o>,<O>, ...
• Input Mode > Command Mode
• <Esc>
• Command Mode > Directive Mode
• <:>
• Directive Mode > Command Mode
• clean the directive line ‘:’ included

Some Directive Line Commands
:w ‘write’ (save)
:w filename save as filename
:q quit’
:q! quit’ forced (forget changes)
:wq ( :x ) Combination of ‘w’ and ‘q’
:e filename ‘edit’ filename
:r filename read’ filename (copy next)
:n open the ‘next’ file
:rew ‘rewind’ file list
:ab token expression create a ‘token’ macro for exp
:unab token delete the ‘token’ macro
:n go to line n

Moving Cursor
h, j, k,l left, down, up, right
G to the end of the document
{} beginning / end of the paragraph
() beginning / end of the sentence
$ to the end of the line
^ to the beginning of the line
n| to the n-th column
w beginning of the next word
e end of the next word
+ first non-blank of next line
- first non-blank of previous line
fx first occurence of the ‘x’ char
n cmd repeat ‘n’ times ‘cmd’

Editing Commands
i,a,I,A,o,O input mode editing
u undo the last change
U undo all the changes on the line
J join current line and the next
<< , >> move the line left or right
<L , >L move the following lineset l or r
y# yank the # range
p# paste the # range
d# delete the # range
yy, pp, dd yank, paste, delete one line
Commands can be combined, e.g. 6yy yanks 6 lines
Possible ranges # are w, ), }, fx, nj, $ as word, paragraph, sentence,
ﬁrst x occurrence, till the n-th line and till the end of the line.

Examples
( and Training )


The % and the ‘ . ‘ commands

•% , in command mode is the block range
• match things like vdDASFgvfd(sdf,rgae,##,adSDf)

• ‘ . ‘ , just repeat the last command
• consider that ‘ <i> [type text] <Esc> ‘ is still a command


‘ . ‘ and the programmer day ...
• ... that often starts with the need to implement some
functions from signature already in the headers
• ‘3yy’ and ‘p’ to copy something like
bool check(int a, char c);
int value(int strange);
int failure(int my_process);
• The ﬁrst task is replace semicolon with the blocks
<A><backspace> { <Enter> } <Esc> <j.j.>

Good way to modal editing
• One mode for each task support tasks separation
• Command mode should be the most used
• Insert text in input mode is a command too
• and should be used “transactionally”
• e.g. reading should be achieved in command mode
• words replacement too! e.g. <cw>newword<Esc>

‘ % ‘ and the programmer day ...
• ... that goes on extracting function calls from
complex expressions and assigning ‘em to a variable
• something like
if (!my_st.enf && do_smtg( s.isopn(), s.isdmz) && ( a & b.c )){ ... }

• <fdc%> var <Esc><O> var = <Ctrl+R> ; <Esc>

• turns that into
var = do_smtg( s.isopn(), s.isdmz) ;
if (!my_st.enf && var && ( a & b.c )){ ... }

Keep the audience awake
or pull them to leave the room

• What do these commands do ?
3J , 3dl , 3iHi<Esc>u , yf6 , dfyp , cfyp , llcfxy<Esc>hp

• What is the difference between these commands?
‘ 4c( ‘ and ‘ 2c2( ‘

• How to ﬁnd the next 3 ‘ x ‘ char ?
• How to replace the next 3 sentences with ‘-censored-’

Search
fx ﬁnd the next occurrence of x
tx scroll to the next x
Fx ﬁnd the previous x
Tx scroll backwards to the prev x
/exp search forward for exp
?exp search backwards for exp
; repeat last search
, reverse the last search order
/ ,? repeat the last search


Regexp

• “A regular expression (regex or regexp for short) is
a special text string for describing a search pattern”
• Very common in programming languages
• Different syntaxes
• Match regular languages
• In short is a string made of chars, wildcards,
multipliers and escape sequences, that can match an
entire class of other strings.


Some regexp elements (in vi)
^ beginning of the line
$ end of the line
w alphanumeric chars
W non-alphanumeric chars
exp? exp, 0 or 1 occurrences
exp+ exp, 1 or more occurrences
exp* exp, 0 or more occurrences
exp|pxe exp or pxe
. ANY char
< beginning of a word
> end of a word


Search and replace
...with regexp from directive line

• : <range> s / <exp> / <replace> / <mod>
• Ranges: n, . , $, %, n,m
( for ‘n lines’, ‘single line’, ‘till the end’, ‘whole file’,’from n to m’ )

• Mods: c, g, n
( for ‘ask confirm’, global and ‘first n matches’ )

• Search and execute command
• : <range> g / <exp> / <command>

Search Options

• :set (no)ic
• :set (no)hlsearch
• :set (no)incsearch
• :set (no)...


More Directive Line Commands

• :map key cmd
• :unmap key
• :[n,m]w ﬁlename
• :!shcmd
• :r shcmd
• :sh

Clones Conﬁguration (vim)
• VIM (:r $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim)
• :e ~/.vimrc ( linux & some unix )
• :e $VIM/_vimrc ( windows )
• :e /usr/share/vim/vimrc ( Mac OS X )
• set ai (set AutoIndex)
• set ruler (show cursor position)
• syntax on (enable syntax hl)
• set nohlsearch (disable hlsearch)

Keep in mind that ...

• Be good at modal editing means
think complex commands ... fast!
• Learn with practice!
• Don’t read these slides again and again! But ...


What’s next ?
• Use vimtutor !
• Build your own reference, at ﬁrst with few
commands, then improve that when you need it.
• Don’t practice as an exercise, use the editor when
you need to edit texts.
• Don’t be surprised if you will ﬁnd yourself
typing :wq even when not using vi


Q? /(& A)?/


How vi would seem if has been made by Microsoft
Credits to Marigan’s Blog - http://blogs.sun.com/marigan/entry/how_the_vi_editor_would


Online References
• Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vi
• The vi lovers homepage
http://thomer.com/vi/vi.html
• Why do those nutheads use vi?
http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.htm
• Vi Reference Manual
http://drumlin.thehutt.org/vi/
• (Book) O'REILLY - Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/vi6/


The "vi" Text Editor

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