Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

How the Material Is Presented

Our philosophy is to give you a good overview of what we feel are vi survival materials for the new user. Learning a new editor, especially an editor with all the options of vi, can seem like an overwhelming task. We have made an effort to present basic concepts and commands in an easy-to-read and logical manner.

After providing the basics for vi, which are usable everywhere, we move on to cover Vim in depth. We then round out our coverage of the vi landscape by looking at nvi, elvis, and vile. The following sections describe the conventions used in this book.

Discussion of vi Commands

A picture of a keyboard button, like the one on the left, marks the main discussion of that particular keyboard command or of related commands. You will find a brief introduction to the main concept before it is broken down into task-oriented sections. We then present the appropriate command to use in each case, along with a description of the command and the proper syntax for using it.

Conventions

In syntax descriptions and examples, what you would actually type is shown in the Courier font, as are all command names. Filenames are also shown in Courier, as are program options. Variables (which you would not type literally, but would replace with an actual value when you type the command) are shown in Courier italic. Brackets indicate that a variable is optional. For example, ...