Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Chapter 18. vile: vi Like Emacs

vile stands for “vi Like Emacs.” It started out as a copy of version 3.9 of MicroEMACS that was modified to have the “finger-feel” of vi. Thomas Dickey and Paul Fox are the maintainers. Over the years (since 1990), there have been other contributors, including Kevin Buettner and Clark Morgan.

The current version is 9.6, released late in 2007. The screenshots in this chapter were made with 9.5s (a pre-release beta). Until the late 1990s, version numbers advanced roughly one per year; starting with 1999, the scheme is about 0.1 per year—and someday will reach 10.

This chapter was written using vile.