vi and Vim Editors Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

nvi—New vi

nvi is a vi clone created for the 4.4BSD Berkeley Unix release. It’s intended to be “bug-for-bug” compatible with the original, although it does have a number of extensions over the original vi.

Important Command-Line Options

-c command

Execute command at startup.

-F

Don’t copy the entire file when starting to edit.

-R

Start in read-only mode, setting the readonly option.

-s

Enter batch (script) mode. This is only for ex and is intended for running editing scripts. Prompts and nonerror messages are disabled.

-S

Run with the secure option set, disallowing access to external programs.

nvi Window Management Commands

Command	Function
bg	Hide the current window
di[splay] b[uffers]	Display all buffers, including named, unnamed, and numeric buffers
di[splay] s[creens]	Display the filenames of all backgrounded windows
Edit filename	Edit filename in a new window
Edit /tmp	Create a new window editing an empty buffer; /tmp is interpreted specially to create a new temporary file
fg filename	Uncover filename into the current window
Fg filename	Uncover filename in a new window; the current window is split
Next	Edit the next file in the argument list in a new window
Previous	Edit the previous file in the argument list in a new window
resize ±nrows	Increase or decrease the size of the current window by nrows rows
Tag tagstring	Edit the file containing tagstring in a new window

The ^W command cycles between windows, top to bottom. The :q and ZZ commands exit the current window.

You may have multiple windows open on ...