Vi editor reference manual

Recover crashed file. Open file read-only pass commands to act on text, using most of the keys of the keyboard.

This is the default This is the default mode of the editor where every key pressed is interpreted as a command to run on text. The vi editor editor is built on an earler Unix text editor called ex.

The command is displayed on the status line as you type. Some ex commands are useful when saving and closing files. Vi Cheat Sheet : a handy cheat sheet of the core vi commands.

A vi Primer vi is a simple, visual editor. It is very fast, easy to use, and available on virtually every UNIX system. Although the set of commands is very cryptic, I learned it, as have thousands of others, which is proof that you can learn it too.

Notation In the rest of these notes, 1. It is clone of Vi editor and written by Bram Moolenaar. In command mode, vi allows the user to navigate around the file and enter vi commands, which are brief, case-sensitive combinations of one or more letters. Almost all of them can be prefixed with a number to repeat the command that number of times.

If you are just beginning to learn Unix, you might find the Pico editor easier to use most command options are Most commands in vi can be prefaced by the number of times you want the action to occur. Commands you type are in fixed font. Open file read-only The vedit command starts a version of the vi editor intended for beginners. It is not complete … pass commands to act on text, using most of the keys of the keyboard.

To switch to command mode, use the Esc key. On the other hand, the insert mode enables you to type and add text into the file. To move to insert mode, press i. Note: Bear in mind that Vim undoes and redoes changes by entries changes made within one insert mode session. Apart from command mode and insert mode, Vim also includes visual mode. This mode is mainly used for marking text. Based on the chunk of text you want to select, you can choose between three versions of visual mode: character mode , line mode , and block mode.

Once you have selected the desired text in visual mode, you can use one of the visual commands to manipulate it. Some of them include:. The list of Vim color schemes shows you the ones that come by default with the text editor, as in the image below:. You can also configure the color settings manually or download user-made schemes.

This article includes a one-page Vim commands reference sheet. Knowing basic Vim commands is useful as most Linux distributions have it installed by default. Once you get use to using Vim commands, mastering Vim should be simple. They are fine the way they are. This page is to provide a quick reference sheet for the vi editor and it's most often used functions. Editors such as vim or vile are supersets at least for the most part of the vi editor, so this page should still prove useful.

I hope even the most ardent vi lover can find something useful in this vi editor reference page. To leave one of these two modes press the [ESC] key.