vi and Vim Editors Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

elvis

elvis is a vi clone written by Steve Kirkendall.

Important Command-Line Options

-a

Load each file named on the command line to a separate window.

-c command

Execute command at startup (POSIX version of the historical +command syntax).

-f filename

Use filename for the session file instead of the default name.

-G gui

Use the given interface. The default is the termcap interface. Other choices include x11, windows, curses, open, and quit. Not all the interfaces may be compiled into your version of elvis.

-i

Start editing in input mode instead of in command mode.

-o logfile

Redirect the startup messages out to a file, instead of stdout/stderr. This is of critical importance to MS Windows users because Windows discards anything written to standard output and standard error.

-R

Start editing each file in read-only mode.

-s

Read an ex script from standard input and execute (per the POSIX standard). This bypasses all initialization scripts.

-S

Set the option security=safer for the whole session, not just execution of .exrc files. This adds a certain amount of security, but should not necessarily be trusted blindly.

-SS

Set the option security=restricted, which is even more paranoid than security=safer.

-V

Output more verbose status information.

-?

Print a summary of the possible options.

elvis Window Management

elvis provides multiwindow editing.

Window management commands—ex

Command	Function
close	Close the current window; the buffer that the window was displaying remains intact
new	Create a new empty buffer ...