November 1998
Beginner
352 pages
7h 46m
English
Content preview from Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition
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11.8. Improved Editing Facilities
This section describes the features of vim that make simple text editing easier and more powerful.
11.8.1. Command-Line History and Completion
vim keeps a history of your ex commands, search strings, and expressions in its extended command language. These are three separate histories. The size of each is controlled by the history option; the default is 20. You may wish to increase it in your .vimrc file, although vim does take steps to maintain only unique commands.
To access the history, use the 
cursor key on the colon command
line. This will move backwards through the saved commands (most recent
first). The 
key will move forwards.
You can move around on the command line using the 
and 
keys. By default, text that you type is inserted into the
command line. You can use the INS (Insert) key
on your keyboard to toggle this mode, in which case what you
type will replace what's on the command line. The
BACKSPACE key will erase characters.
You can use the SHIFT or CTRL key in combination with the and keys to move the cursor left or right ...
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