vi Beginner Help

VI Quick Start

VI is a text editor (vi is most likely short for "visual" editor as
screen editors were called many years ago though some claim it is the
roman numerals for 6 as it was originally developed on Version 6 Unix.
It doesn't really matter, does it?)


Starting VI:

	world% vi file.name			# or just vi

Moving around:

	hjkl			the four keys h j k l are left, down,
				up and right.

	^D			(control-D) go down half a screen
	^U			up half a screen
	^			go to beginning of line
	$			go to end of line

Inserting text:

	i			go into insert mode, then just
				type, hitting ESCape ends insert

	a			append, same as insert but starts
				after the cursor rather than before.

AN IMPORTANT POINT TO REMEMBER IN VI IS IF YOUR "COMMANDS" ARE BEING
INSERTED INTO THE FILE INSTEAD OF BEING EXECUTED HIT THE ESCAPE KEY TO
END INSERT MODE.

This one event drives new (and some old) vi users nuts until their
fingers learn to do this without thinking.

Inserting lines:

	o			open new blank line "above" cursor.
	O			...or "below" cursor.

Deleting:

	x			delete the char under the cursor
	dd			delete this whole line

Searching:

	/string/		search for string (down)
	?string?		search for string (up)

There are a bunch of commands that are entered after typing : which
moves the cursor to the lower left of the screen and waits for you on
the bottom line (hitting return on an empty line cancels a : prompt).

Quitting vi:

	q			quit if there's nothing to save
	:wq			write changes and quit
	:w			just write (save), don't quit
	:w file.name		specify file name to save to and write
	:q!			quit instantly, throw away changes

Also:

	ZZ			(no : ) writes and exits.

Some other commands:

	:!unix command		run any unix command, including a new
				shell. Return to vi from a shell by
				typing exit to the shell.

	:n,m command		perform command on lines n thru m

for example:

	:1,10d			delete lines 1-10
	:1,$s/foo/goo/		on all lines ($ means last line),
				substitute the *first* occurance of
				foo with goo.
	:1,$s/foo/goo/g		same but *all* occurances of foo with goo

	:4			go to line 4
	:$			go to last line
	:$=			tell me the line number of last line
				but don't go there.
	:.=			tell me the number of this line I'm on
	:,.$s/foo/goo/		substitute foo with goo on lines from
				here to the bottom (that is, dot means
				this line, $ means last line.)

Finally, there's pattern directed commands:

	:/foo/d			find the next line with a "foo" in it
				and delete it.

	:g/foo/d		find all lines with a foo in it and
				delete them.

	:u			undo the last thing I screwed up (good
				to know with a command like g/foo/d)

	:v/foo/d		delete every line WITHOUT a foo (v is
				opposite sense of g).

	:g/foo/s/hello/goodbye/	on every line with a foo in it substitute
				hello with goodbye (if it's there.)

Finally, the answer to a deep dark mystery:

The search patterns between // and ?? are known as REGULAR
EXPRESSIONS.  They can contain wild cards like /x.*z/ matches any line
with an x followed by anything and then a z (for example, xyz, xyyyz,
xabcdez, and so on.) This is very powerful. The full explanation is on
the grep manual page (world% man grep), grep is a command that
searches text files using the same wildcard patterns as in:

	world% grep 'x.*y' file [file2 file3 ...]

grep prints out the lines matched.

The equivalent command in vi would be:

	:g/r.e./p

That is, globally search for regular expression and print it (to the
screen.)

So now you know where grep got its name (actually, from ed which was
an earlier line editor, but same idea, same command without the : .)

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