masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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 Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2025 5:46 am Post subject: vi and vim introduction |
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We have not had any tutorials or posts on Vi or Vim in quite some time. I know that I have filled the "All other software" category with links, guides, and so forth for a variety of editors over the years - probably more Emacs than anything else.
While these days there are a great number of editors available and you should rarely get stuck without more than one option, it is a good idea to know at least the basics of a few text editors. Some people feel that they can get away with the basics of nano and that is enough. Maybe it is, but coming from a UNIX systems background, and having learned how to use ed even before I learned how to use Vi, I still think it is useful to know the basics of Vi. Some people get quite attached to it and find that it is capable of doing a great deal more than just basic editing, and indeed that is the case.
While GNU Emacs is also incredibly powerful and capable of doing much more than you may imagine (including playing games, transferring files using FTP, reading mail, news, and browsing the Web, Vi is still a good idea to know. You might get caught one day needing to know it, but if you really learn it, you may find that it greatly accelerates how much you can edit very quickly.
Vi and Vim explains the basics of Vi and Vim, and shows you, at the most basic level, how you can use the Graphical implementation of Vim as a Notepad editor. That's fine, but I think it is also extremely useful to know a half dozen to a dozen primary commands, and how to use "addresses" - numbers, and also relative symbols, to transform many of those commands into something that can edit an entire file of thousands of lines in just a second or two - now that is power at the fingertips.
Note that while Vi and Vim are not the only editors capable of editing thousands of lines with a few keystrokes, they remain the most prevalent editors, and today with Vim, you can run it on Windows, Linux, UNIX, and a number of other operating systems, just as you can with Emacs, but Vi or Vim are nearly always installed - and that cannot be said for Emacs.
Therefore, even though I also happen to be a big Emacs fan, I think it is valuable to add Vi-like editing skills to your resume - it may come in extremely handy some day, either to get a job done quickly or to bail you out of a mess. |
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inactive
Sr. Member
Joined: 29 Aug 2025
Posts: 1207
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2025 3:28 am Post subject: You are right, that IS a very good guide! |
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| crouse wrote: | bah... i posted the best vi guide ever right here !! 
http://usalug.org/vi.html
It's how i learned vi ........ vimtutor isn't too bad either though. |
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good bookmark 