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Appendix A: vi

Most artists who use the Unix/Linux environment use IRIX. Under the X-windows (the graphic desktop) most prefer to use “jot” as their text editor. However, there are times when you need to use a text-only text editor with no graphics at all. This is useful when you want to telnet to another machine (remotely log on), and cannot use any graphics. Jot is a graphic text editor. There are two main text-only text editors – emacs and vi. Since I never use emacs I’ll briefly talk about vi.

Vi is a very complex text-editor with many commands and navigation keys. For a full listing of the vi commands type “man vi” To execute vi, either type:

# vi

or add the name of the file you want to edit or create:

# vi newfile.txt

vi has 3 main modes:

1.Insert mode – where you insert, append, change and replace text
2.Ex mode – Using ex (the line editor) commands
3.Command mode – this is the mode vi starts with.

You switch to other modes from this mode. I will show only a few of the important, most common, keys – there are too many keys to cover them all here:

<ESC>- the escape key is used to exit the Insert mode
: – the colon is used to enter the ex mode

Moving around

Arrow Keys – use the Up, Down, Right and Left. Also the “j,k,l,;” keys
w – Forward one word
b – backward one word
^F - page down
^B - page up
G – last line of file
5G – move to 5th line

Inserting Text

a – append after cursor
i – insert before cursor
o – open a line below current line
O – open a line above current line

Deletion

x – delete current character
dw – delete current word
dd - delete current line
5dd – delete 5 lines

Changing Text

r - replace one character
R – overwrite text in insert mode

Other

u - undo the last change
/string – move cursor to occurrence of string
:w – write the file using the same name
:w filename – write under a new name
:wq – write the file and quit
:ZZ – save all and quit
:q! – quit without saving

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