Errata

The following substitution command is given to delete all spaces at the end of every line:

:%s/\(.*\) *$/\1/

I tried this in vim version 7.2.330, and it doesn't work--for lines with more than one space at the end, it only removes one of them.

I think this is because the '.*' earlier in the pattern is greedy, and consumes as many characters as it can without causing the match to fail. The first space in the pattern forces the '.*' not to match the very last space in the line, but it matches all the other trailing spaces, leaving the '<space>*' to match zero characters.

A pattern that works (and is also much shorter!) is:

:%s/ *$//

(again with two spaces before the '*').

It's not an error, but I also think the analogous pattern for removing leading whitespace would be better than the one currently given as example 12, i.e.:

:%s/^ *$//

instead of

:%s/^ *\(.*\)/\1/

Thanks for a very helpful book!

In this example, two commands are presented for moving any line that doesn't begin with a number to the end of the file:

:g!/^[[:digit:]]/m$

and

:g/^[^[:digit:]]/m$

The subsequent text says these two commands have the same effect, but they do not (in Vim 7.2.330). The first command moves blank lines to the end of the file, but the second does not.

This is because the second command matches lines whose first character is not a digit, which is subtly different from "lines that don't begin with a number."

In this case it's not clear whether one or the other is more useful, but in general this is an important distinction.

The solution for example 22 in the book can not exactly match the heading number.
%s/^[1-9][0-9]*\.[1-9][0-9.]* //
will also match 5.3.00.01,5.3.....,5.3.0.0.0 etc,but maybe these numbers can not be used as indexes of chapters.Please consider my solution :
%s/^[1-9][0-9]*\.\([1-9][0-9]*\.\)*[1-9][0-9]* //

The error is that this paragraph tells you in-order to see a more complete discussion of all command-line options ( it implies that this includes the just referenced command-line "-remote" argument ) to go to page 377 { Appendix A } for more details.

Well, I've gone to this Appendix A and looked up and down this reference and also further in the Appendixes, and found No mention of these commands. So in my opinion this is an Error.

This forced me to then turn to the internet and the Vim dot org's Support page in-order to accomplish a Search for the promised "complete discussion" on this option. I was then able to read the on-line reference regarding "remote" and the search also matched other references on the Vim FAQ Wiki.

IMHO, this misstep was a true Error that provided only half of the presented information and it could have at least referenced the on-line help for those who are interested < // vimdoc (dot) sourceforge (dot) net / htmldoc / remote (dot) html >.

I do not know, since version eight (8) of Vim is already out, if this option is still available in this version or dropped. This was the latest publication I could find on Vim. This functionality is, IMO, needed previously and may even be more important now in these DevOps times (2019).

the description states that "If the Vim exrc option is set, Vim looks for the three additional config files: [._]vimrc; [._]vimrc; and [._]exrc."

Shortening that list of searched files is not a good idea: there's only two distinct config files in it: [._]vimrc and [._]exrc, not three ;-)

That list should be reworded to specify the three files depending on the OS and also to specify that they are searched into the current directory.

Maybe something like: "If the Vim exrc option is set, the current directory is searched for three additional config files. The first found is used. For Unix, Amiga, OS/2, and Mac OS X, the files are: .vimrc, _vimrc, and .exrc and for DOS/Windows: _vimrc, .vimrc and .exrc"?

The note ends with: "and to use the winheight option to size your command window.", but my guess is you really meant to write "cmdheight", described on the next page.

The image used in this figure does not correspond to the code sample (missing vertical space between first and second entry). The right image is the one shown in Figure 13-14 (p.234).

The image used for this figure does not correspond to its legend ("gvim?s toolbar".)

The file latin.vim should be created in $HOME/.vim/syntax, not in $HOME/.vim.