A Geeks Guide to VI

If you classify yourself a geek, you will probably have played around with the vi text editor at some point.  A lot of *nix user’s avoid using Vi, because their initial experience with it is not good.  It has a steep learning curve, and takes a lifetime to master.  I hope that you will learn some of the basic Vi commands, and begin appreciating it for its power.

What is Vi?

Vi is a screen based editor that is found on any *nix platform.  Vi can seem daunting at times as it has 150 basic commands that can be used at any given time.  Now I won’t be discussing all 150 commands in this post, but I will be talking about the most basic command that are vital to using Vi.

Starting Vi

• Open up your shell prompt and type in vi
• To open up one or multiple files type in vi file1.txt file2.txt
• If the files do not exist they will be created
  

Modes

There are two modes in Vi:

1. Insert
2. Command

When you begin Vi you will start in command mode.  As you would expect; insert mode allows you to enter actual text in the document, and command mode allows you to issue commands.

Insert Mode

• allows you to enter text
• keyboard characters all function as normal
• hitting enter creates a new line

Command Mode

• You always enter command mode by hitting the ESC key
• If you make an error in your command, hit ESC
• Commands are case sensitive
• Command mode does not let you insert any text to the document

Basic Commands

• i – inserts text before the cursor
• a – starts appending text after the cursor
• h j k l – move left, down, up, and right
• w e b – move forward one word, forward to the next end of a word, and back one word
• x – delete one character
• dw – delete one word
• dd – delete one whole line
• u – undo last change
• wq – saves changes and quits
• :q! – doesn’t save changes and quits
• yy – copies current line
• p – pastes under the current one
• P – pastes above the current one

Useful Tricks

• G by itself – goes to the last line in the file
• Number followed by G – goes to that line number (24G)
• ~ – toggles the case of the character under the cursor
• using a number before a command; repeats that command (3dw – delete 3 words)
• . – repeats the last action
• / followed by keyword – searches the document for the keyword

Feel free to practise using the above commands in Vi, and it will come in handy the next time you need to configure a web server!

Note: Found an online Vi editor for those of you that don’t have access to any shell.

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Written by Brenley Dueck