Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Startup and Initialization Options

Vim uses different mechanisms to set up its environment at startup. It inspects command-line options. It self-inspects (how was it invoked, and by what name?). There are different compiled binaries to serve different needs (GUI versus text window). Vim also uses a sequence of initialization files in which uncountable combinations of behaviors can be defined and modified. There are too many options to cover completely; we will touch on some of the interesting ones. In the next sections, we discuss Vim’s starting sequence along the following lines:

• Command-line options

• Behaviors associated to command name

• Configuration files (system-wide and per-user)

• Environment variables

This section introduces you to some of the ways to start Vim. For a more detailed discussion of many more options, use the help command:

:help startup

Command-Line Options

Vim’s command-line options provide flexibility and power. Some options invoke extra features, whereas others override and suppress default behavior. We will discuss the command-line syntax as it would be used in a typical Unix environment. Single-letter options begin with - (one hyphen), as in -b, which allows editing of binary files. Word-length options begin with -- (two hyphens), as in --noplugin, which overrides the default behavior of loading plugins. A command-line argument of two hyphens by themselves tells Vim that the rest of the command line contains no options (this is a standard Unix behavior).

Following the ...