Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition

How the Material Is Presented

The philosophy of this handbook is to give you a good overview of what we feel are vi survival materials for the new user. Learning a new editor, especially an editor with all the options of vi, can seem like an overwhelming task. We have made an effort to present basic concepts and commands in an easy-to-read and logical manner. The following sections describe the conventions used in this handbook.

Discussion of vi Commands

A picture of a keyboard button, like the one on the left, marks the main discussion of that particular keyboard command or of related commands. You will find a brief introduction to the main concept before it is broken down into task-oriented sections. We then present the appropriate command to use in each case, along with a description of the command and the proper syntax for using it.

Conventions

In syntax descriptions and examples, what you would actually type is shown in the Courier font, as are all command names. Variables (which you would not type literally, but would replace with an actual value when you typed the command) are shown in Courier Italic. Brackets indicate that a variable is optional. For example, in the syntax line:

vi [filename]

filename would be replaced by an actual filename. The brackets indicate that the vi command can be invoked without specifying a filename at all. The brackets themselves are not ...