Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Options When Starting vi

So far, you have invoked the vi editor with the command:

$vifile

There are other options to the vi command that can be helpful. You can open a file directly to a specific line number or pattern. You can also open a file in read-only mode. Another option recovers all changes to a file that you were editing when the system crashed.

Advancing to a Specific Place

When you begin editing an existing file, you can call the file in and then move to the first occurrence of a pattern or to a specific line number. You can also specify your first movement by search or by line number right on the command line:^[15]

$ vi +n file

Opens file at line number n.

$ vi + file

Opens file at last line.

$ vi +/pattern file

Opens file at the first occurrence of pattern.

In the file practice, to open the file and advance directly to the line containing the word Screen, enter:

Keystrokes	Results
vi +/Screen practice	With a screen editor you can scroll the page, move the cursor, delete lines, and insert characters, while seeing the results of your edits as you make them.Screen editors are very popular, since they allow you to make changes as you read Give the vi command with the option +/ pattern to go directly to the line containing Screen.

As you see in this example, your search pattern will not necessarily be positioned at the top of the screen. If you include spaces in the pattern, you must enclose the whole pattern within single or double quotes:^[16]

+/"you make"

or escape the space with ...