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UNIX tips and tricks for a new user, Part 2: The vi text editor

Tim McIntire, Consultant, Freelance Writer
Photo of Tim McIntire
Tim McIntire works as a consultant and co-founder of Cluster Corporation, a market leader in HPCC software, support, and consulting. He also contributes periodically to IBM developerWorks and Apple Developer Connection. Tim's research, conducted while leading the computer science effort at Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Digital Image Analysis Lab, has been published in a variety of journals, including Concurrency and Computation and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. You can visit TimMcIntire.net to learn more.

Summary:  The vi text editor might seem counterintuitive to new users but, make no mistake, there is a good reason this 30-year old tool is still widely used by many of the best developers in the world. The vi text editor separates operations into insert mode and command mode, which gives you ultrafast access to key commands that can edit, insert, and move text in on-the-fly, user-defined segments.

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Date:  07 Nov 2006
Level:  Intermediate PDF:  A4 and Letter (495 KB | 22 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity:  19322 views
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Wrap-up

To wrap up, run though a last sequence of commands to combine some of the things you've learned (see Figure 26):

  1. To go to the beginning of your document, press the g key twice.
  2. To delete everything in your file (because you have less than 100 lines), type 100 followed by the dd command.
  3. Press the i key to go into insert mode.
  4. Type I am done with this tutorial!.
  5. Press the Esc key.
  6. Press the y key twice, type 100, and then press the p key.

You've now yelled to your computer 100 times that you're done! Good job; time for a break and a cup of coffee.


Figure 26. You're finished with this tutorial
Final command sequence

After working through this tutorial, you should have the knowledge to create and edit files with vi. Experiment with the commands listed throughout this tutorial, and practice them by beginning to use vi as your day-to-day text editor. It will slow you down at first but, in a short time as you memorize the commands and learn when and where to use them, vi can significantly increase your productivity.

Future tutorials in the series will cover shell tricks and tips. In the meantime, keep working with the command line and practicing with vi -- you'll be a power UNIX user in no time!

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