Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Amaze Your Friends!

In the long term, perhaps the most useful items are in the collection of vi-related information in the FTP archives at alf.uib.no. The original archives were at ftp://afl.uib.no/pub/vi. This site has gone away, but you can find the archives mirrored at ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/text-processing/vi.^[79] The file INDEX in that directory describes what’s in the archives and lists additional mirrors that may be geographically closer to you.

Unfortunately, these files were last updated in May of 1995. Fortunately, vi’s basic functionality has not changed, and the information and macros in the archive are still useful. The archive has four subdirectories:

docs

Documentation on vi, and also some comp.editors postings.

macros

vi macros.

comp.editors

Various materials posted to comp.editors.

programs

Source code for vi clones for various platforms (and other programs). Take things from here with caution, as much of it is out of date.

The docs and macros are the most interesting. The docs directory has a large number of articles and references, including beginners’ guides, explanations of bugs, quick references, and many short “how to” kinds of articles (e.g., how to capitalize just the first letter of a sentence in vi). There’s even a song about vi!

The macros directory has over 50 files in it that do different things. We mention just three of them here. (Files whose names end in .Z are compressed with the Unix compress program. They can be uncompressed with either uncompress or gunzip ...