Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 8th Edition

Preface

Text editing is one of the most common tasks on any computer system, and vi is one of the most useful standard text editors on a system. With vi you can create new files or edit any existing text-only file.

vi, like many of the classic utilities developed during the early years of Unix®, has a reputation for being hard to navigate. Bram Moolenaar’s enhanced clone, Vim (“vi Improved”), has gone a long way toward removing reasons for such impressions. Vim includes countless conveniences, visual guides, and help screens.

Today, Vim is the most popular version of vi, so this eighth edition focuses on Vim as follows:

• Part I, “vi and Vim Fundamentals”, teaches basic vi skills, applicable to all versions of vi, but it does so in the context of Vim.

• Part II, “Vim”, devotes a number of chapters specifically to Vim’s advanced features.

• Part III, “Vim in the Larger Milieu”, presents chapters relating to Vim in a larger context.

Scope of This Book

This book consists of 17 chapters and four appendixes, divided into four parts. Part I, “vi and Vim Fundamentals”, is designed to get you started using vi and Vim quickly, and to follow up with advanced skills that will let you use them effectively.

The first two chapters—Chapter 1, “Introducing vi and Vim”, and Chapter 2, “Simple Editing”—present some simple editing commands with which you can get started. You should practice these until they are second nature. You could stop reading at the end of Chapter 2, having learned some ...