Learning the VI and VIM Editors

by Robbins, Arnold

• ISBN13: 9780596529833
• ISBN10: 059652983X
• Edition: 7th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-01
• Publisher: Oreilly & Associates Inc

Summary

There's nothing that hard-core Unix and Linux users are more fanatical about than their text editor. Editors are the subject of adoration and worship, or of scorn and ridicule, depending upon whether the topic of discussion is your editor or someone else's. vi has been the standard editor for close to 30 years. Popular on Unix and Linux, it has a growing following on Windows systems, too. Most experienced system administrators cite vi as their tool of choice. And since 1986, this book has been the guide for vi. However, Unix systems are not what they were 30 years ago, and neither is this book. While retaining all the valuable features of previous editions, the 7th edition of Learning the vi and Vim Editors has been expanded to include detailed information on vim, the leading vi clone. Vim is the default version of vi on most Linux systems and on Mac OS X, and is available for many other operating systems too. With this guide, you learn text editing basics and advanced tools for both editors, such as multi-window editing, how to write both interactive macros and scripts to extend the editor, and power tools for programmers - all in the easy-to-follow style that has made this book a classic.

Author Biography

Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native, is a professional programmer and technical author. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, when he was introduced to a PDP-11 running a version of Sixth Edition Unix. His experience also includes multiple commercial Unix systems, from Sun, IBM, HP and DEC. He has been working with GNU/Linux systems since 1996. He likes his Macintosh laptop, but it has been commandeered by one of his daughters.

Arnold has also been a heavy awk user since 1987, when he became involved with gawk, the GNU project's version of awk. As a member of the POSIX 1003.2 balloting group, he helped shape the POSIX standard for awk. He is currently the maintainer of gawk and its documentation.

O'Reilly has been keeping him busy: He is author and/or coauthor of the bestselling titles: Unix In A Nutshell, Effective awk Programming, sed & awk, Classic Shell Scripting, and several pocket references.

Elbert is a professional software engineer and software architect recently finishing a 21-year career in the telcom industry. He wrote a full screen editor in assembler in 1983 as his first professional assignment, and has had special interest in editors since. He loves connecting Unix to anything and once wrote a stream editor program to automate JCL edits for mainframe monthly configurations by streaming mainframe JCL to a stream editor on an RJE connected Unix box.

He loves tinkering with everything Unix and considers any environment incomplete without his suite of Unix work-alike tools and the latest version of vim. He is a Unix Shell specialist, writing entire applications with only the shell.

His telcom honored him with their highest award for money-saving applications that he authored using a set of mainframe screen-scraping tools he wrote himself. They continue to use those applications today. He was also one of three founding team members that brought web 1.0 to the corporate consciousness in his telco position, and his team featured on the cover of CIO Magazine for their innovative and pioneering works.

He also served a brief stint on the original Microsoft NT beta support team in 1992.

He loves bicycling, music, and reading. Today he lives in the Chicago area where he occasionally takes on short term projects and works on personal software products.

Linda Lamb is a former employee of O'Reilly Media, where she worked in various capacities, including technical writer, editor of technical books, and marketing manager. She also worked on O'Reilly's series of consumer health books, Patient Centered Guides.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Basic and Advanced vi
The vi Text Editor	p. 3
A Brief Historical Perspective	p. 5
Opening and Closing Files	p. 6
Quitting Without Saving Edits	p. 10
Simple Editing	p. 13
vi Commands	p. 13
Moving the Cursor	p. 14
Simple Edits	p. 18
More Ways to Insert Text	p. 30
Joining Two Lines with J	p. 31
Review of Basic vi Commands	p. 32
Moving Around in a Hurry	p. 35
Movement by Screens	p. 35
Movement by Text Blocks	p. 38
Movement by Searches	p. 39
Movement by Line Number	p. 43
Review of vi Motion Commands	p. 44
Beyond the Basics	p. 47
More Command Combinations	p. 47
Options When Starting vi	p. 48
Making Use of Buffers	p. 51
Marking Your Place	p. 52
Other Advanced Edits	p. 53
Review of vi Buffer and Marking Commands	p. 53
Introducing the ex Editor	p. 55
ex Commands	p. 55
Editing with ex	p. 58
Saving and Exiting Files	p. 63
Copying a File into Another File	p. 65
Editing Multiple Files	p. 65
Global Replacement	p. 71
Confirming Substitutions	p. 72
Context-Sensitive Replacement	p. 73
Pattern-Matching Rules	p. 74
Pattern-Matching Examples	p. 81
A Final Look at Pattern Matching	p. 89
Advanced Editing	p. 95
Customizing vi	p. 95
Executing Unix Commands	p. 99
Saving Commands	p. 103
Using ex Scripts	p. 114
Editing Program Source Code	p. 120
Introduction to the vi Clones	p. 125
And These Are My Brothers, Darrell, Darrell, and Darrell	p. 125
Multiwindow Editing	p. 126
GUI Interfaces	p. 127
Extended Regular Expressions	p. 128
Enhanced Tags	p. 129
Improved Facilities	p. 134
Programming Assistance	p. 138
Editor Comparison Summary	p. 140
Nothing Like the Original	p. 141
A Look Ahead	p. 141
Vim
Vim (vi Improved): An Introduction	p. 145
Overview	p. 146
Where to Get Vim	p. 150
Getting Vim for Unix and GNU/Linux	p. 151
Getting Vim for Windows Environments	p. 156
Getting Vim for the Macintosh Environment	p. 157
Other Operating Systems	p. 157
Aids and Easy Modes for New Users	p. 157
Summary	p. 158
Major Vim Improvements over vi	p. 159
Built-in Help	p. 159
Startup and Initialization Options	p. 160
New Motion Commands	p. 167
Extended Regular Expressions	p. 169
Customizing the Executable	p. 171
Multiple Windows in Vim	p. 173
Initiating Multiwindow Editing	p. 174
Opening Windows	p. 177
Moving Around Windows (Getting Your Cursor from Here to There)	p. 180
Moving Windows Around	p. 181
Resizing Windows	p. 183
Buffers and Their Interaction with Windows	p. 186
Playing Tag with Windows	p. 190
Tabbed Editing	p. 191
Closing and Quitting Windows	p. 192
Summary	p. 193
Vim Scripts	p. 195
What's Your Favorite Color (Scheme)?	p. 195
Dynamic File Type Configuration Through Scripting	p. 205
Some Additional Thoughts About Vim Scripting	p. 213
Resources	p. 218
Graphical Vim (gvim)	p. 219
General Introduction to gvim	p. 220
Customizing Scrollbars, Menus, and Toolbars	p. 225
gvim in Microsoft Windows	p. 236
gvim in the X Window System	p. 237
GUI Options and Command Synopsis	p. 237
Vim Enhancements for Programmers	p. 239
Folding and Outlining (Outline Mode)	p. 240
Auto and Smart Indenting	p. 251
Keyword and Dictionary Word Completion	p. 259
Tag Stacking	p. 268
Syntax Highlighting	p. 270
Compiling and Checking Errors with Vim	p. 279
Some Final Thoughts on Vim for Writing Programs	p. 284
Other Cool Stuff in Vim	p. 285
Editing Binary Files	p. 285
Digraphs: Non-ASCII Characters	p. 287
Editing Files in Other Places	p. 289
Navigating and Changing Directories	p. 290
Backups with Vim	p. 292
HTML Your Text	p. 293
What's the Difference?	p. 294
Undoing Undos	p. 296
Now, Where Was I?	p. 297
What's My Line (Size)?	p. 300
Abbreviations of Vim Commands and Options	p. 302
A Few Quickies (Not Necessarily Vim-Specific)	p. 303
More Resources	p. 304
Other vi Clones
nvi: New vi	p. 307
Author and History	p. 307
Important Command-Line Arguments	p. 308
Online Help and Other Documentation	p. 309
Initialization	p. 309
Multiwindow Editing	p. 310
GUI Interfaces	p. 311
Extended Regular Expressions	p. 311
Improvements for Editing	p. 312
Programming Assistance	p. 315
Interesting Features	p. 315
Sources and Supported Operating Systems	p. 315
Elvis	p. 317
Author and History	p. 317
Important Command-Line Arguments	p. 317
Online Help and Other Documentation	p. 319
Initialization	p. 319
Multiwindow Editing	p. 320
GUI Interfaces	p. 323
Extended Regular Expressions	p. 328
Improved Editing Facilities	p. 328
Programming Assistance	p. 332
Interesting Features	p. 335
elvis Futures	p. 340
Sources and Supported Operating Systems	p. 340
vile: vi Like Emacs	p. 343
Authors and History	p. 343
Important Command-Line Arguments	p. 344
Online Help and Other Documentation	p. 345
Initialization	p. 346
Multiwindow Editing	p. 347
GUI Interfaces	p. 349
Extended Regular Expressions	p. 357
Improved Editing Facilities	p. 359
Programming Assistance	p. 365
Interesting Features	p. 368
Sources and Supported Operating Systems	p. 374
Appendixes
The vi, ex, and Vim Editors	p. 377
Setting Options	p. 415
Problem Checklists	p. 431
vi and the Internet	p. 435
Index	p. 447
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