 | vim Tutorial |
vim is a text editor. A text editor is a software that
help you create and modify text files. There are a lot of text editors, but
vim is the best of them.
If all you need is small, light-weight and casual text editing, perhaps simple editors
like notepad in Windows, pico in Unix, will make you happy. If most of your time is
devoted to text editing, perhaps you should consider an editor of power, which is
vim, of course.
Choosing vim
may bring dramatic changes to your productivity and your life.
What is good in vim as an editor
- vim is efficient and elegant.
It does things quickly by the best way.
- vim is healthful.
It doesn't make your fingers and arms painful.
- vim is small and fast.
It fits in one or two floppies and starts instantly.
- vim is powerful.
No feature useful for text editing is missing.
- vim is simple and clean.
It doesn't offer to do things irrelevant to text editing.
- vim is running everywhere.
If you're willing to use it, you can, no matter what computers and operating systems you
use.
- vim is free.
What about Vi
The Unix editor vi has a long history, and is the one
that vim is based on. I believe that the power,
beauty and
essence of vim always come from vi. A real
vim user doesn't mind using vi
temporarily, but feels great pain if forced a thing like Emacs.
vim
retains all the powers of vi, plus a lot of
improvements and new features. And now vim is running
virtually all platforms. So I see no reason to
choose vi
over vim.
To know other things about vim, and to download
a copy, check its main developer, Bram Moolenaar's
vim home page,
where you can also find a lot of other vim sites.
About this document
This document is a tutorial written for
new vim users. The purpose is to use plain language
and easily readable html format to introduce the way
vim works and the most basic
vim features.
I think this small fraction of vim features is
enough to make you feel the power you have never felt with other editors.
This document is merely a recording of my own experience of
using vim, and bears many of my personal views.
Therefore it is by no means guaranteed
to be correct, precise, or complete. This document is
free and can be freely distributed. If you find mistakes, have any
suggestions, or have a question about vim, you're
welcome to send
me an email.
Copyright (c) 2002 Xiaorang Li (xli5@uwo.ca)
Minor modification by David B. Dahl, Fall 2005
Table of Contents
-
-
Basic stuff that helps you work with
vim right away
-
The different modes of vim
-
Various ways to move cursor around and locate your target quickly
-
Insert, delete, replace, and change text
-
Select, cut, copy and paste; visual mode; named buffer
-
Search and substitute strings
-
Save key strokes by abbreviation and define new commands by mapping
-
Open, save, read from, and write to file, split windows
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Customize your vim
-
multiple level undo, syntax highlighting, recording,
Ex commands,
command-line editing, folding, encryption...
List of common commands and examples for quick reference
© Xiaorang Li |