Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 8th Edition

Chapter 8. Vim (vi Improved): Overview and Improvements over vi

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s Superman!”

Yes, it’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

The 1950s Superman TV Show

While Vim is neither strange nor from another planet, it does have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal text editors!

In this chapter, we introduce the most noteworthy of Vim’s many technical advances over vi, along with a bit of history. We continue with some pointers to special Vim modes and teaching tools for new users. We then move on to introduce some of Vim’s improvements over vi, ranging from multiple color syntax definitions to full-blown scripting.

If vi is excellent (it is), Vim is amazing. In this first chapter of Part II we discuss how Vim fills in many features that users have complained were missing from vi. This chapter introduces:

• Editing enhancements over vi

• Built-in help

• Startup and initialization options

• New motion commands

• Extended regular expressions

• Extended undo

• Incremental searching

• Left-to-right scrolling

The remaining Part II chapters cover:

• The Vim graphical user interface (GUI)

• Multiwindow editing

• Programming enhancements

• Vim scripts

• Other cool stuff

• Some Vim power techniques

About Vim

Vim stands for “vi improved.”¹ It was written and is maintained by Bram Moolenaar. Today, Vim is perhaps the most widely used vi implementation. ...