Hdi2u S15

Text editing

• There are very many text editors, but one of the most powerful and dependable is vi.
• It has a steep but tiny learning curve, which we hope to conquer in this section.

• "vi" is an old version and is available on all Unix/linux systems by default
• Vim is the modern version, it used ncurses to use the whole screen
• It's free and has graphical version call gvim and a Windows version too.

Using vim

• type vim to get in, and :q to get out without saving.
• ZZ to save onto to current filename. ":sav fname" otherwise
• It opens in "normal" mode which is similar to less, in that direct editing is not expected.
• This is changed by pressing i. To get back to normal mode, press the ESC key.
• In normal mode u undoes any changes
• : while in normal mode allows command sto be entered
• Visual: enabled by "v" or "V" (visual block), sub-box at the bottom open.
• After v or V, movement keys ":%" will operate on whole document, ":’a,’b" operate between two marks, ":42,45" between two line numbers
• search via "/", ":set hlsearch" to see all the hits