A Practical Guide to UNIX for Mac OS X Users

6. The vim Editor

IN THIS CHAPTER

Tutorial: Creating and Editing a File with vim

147

Introduction to vim Features

154

Online Help

154

Command Mode: Moving the Cursor

160

Input Mode

163

Command Mode: Deleting and Changing Text

165

Searching and Substituting

168

Yank, Put, and Delete Commands

175

The General-Purpose Buffer

176

Reading and Writing Files

178

The .vimrc Startup File

180

This chapter begins with a history and description of vi, the original, powerful, sometimes cryptic, interactive, visually oriented text editor. The chapter continues with a tutorial that explains how to use vim (vi improveda vi clone supplied with Mac OS X 10.3 and later and available for most UNIX distributions) to create and edit a file. Much of the tutorial and the balance of the chapter apply to vi and other vi clones. Following the tutorial, the chapter delves into the details of many vim commands and explains how to use parameters to customize vim to meet your needs. It concludes with a quick reference/summary of vim commands. The vim home page is www.vim.org.

Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier used the nvi clone of vi. Not all of this chapter applies to nvi, although both vim and nvi are largely compatible with vi.

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