Welcome

Presentation Plan

• Today
• Introduction
• The basics: vimtutor
• Essentials for day to day use
• Installing
• A few more hints


• Next time
• More commands
• More configuration
• Some scripting


• Have Fun!

Benefits of Vim

• fast: keep fingers on keys


• fast: powerful commands use minimal keystrokes


• powerful editing features (eg column operations)


• highly configurable (eg smartcase - ignores case in searches unless ...)


• extensible: scripting language built in, can also use perl, ruby, python


• ubiquitous: available on virtually any system


• use same environment for programming in any language

History

• vi: visual editor - Bill Joy - 1976 - BSD Unix
• Vim ex mode gives an idea of life before visual editors: Q, p, #p, #, -3,.+3p, z#=
• Q: Enter ex mode
• vi: Exit ex mode and return to normal mode
• Display current line: p, #p, #
• Display range of lines without moving: z#=
• Display range of lines and move: -3,.+3p
• Move: -3 [relative], 3 [absolute]
• Substitute old to new: s/old/new/
• Change line to new lines: c [enter lines; enter . to stop]
• Undo: u
• Vi was a HUGE improvement!
• Vi-IMitation - Bram Moolenaar - 1991
• Vi-IMproved - Bram Moolenaar - 1992
• Vim 5 - 1998
• Syntax highlighting
• Scripting language
• Vim 6 - 2001
• Folding
• Vertical splits
• Diff mode
• File Browser
• Command Window
• Vim 7 - 2006
• spell checking
• Dictionary in scripts (ie objects lite)
• Omni completion (ie intellisense)
• Tabbed editing
• Current: Vim 7.3 on windows (7.3 on Ubuntu)

Important for Newcomers

• vim uses modes
• To shift for regular mode to insert mode, press i (or other commands)
• To shift from insert mode to regular mode, press escape


• to exit without saving changes: esc :q! enter


• to exit and save changes: esc :wq enter

Vimtutor

• A special session of vim that directs you to learn as you read
• To run vimtutor
• Windows: Select Programs/COST/Editors/Vim 7.x/vimtutor
• Linux command line: vimtutor
• We will do first 4 lessons or so

Vimtutor Command Listing

    1. hjkl, :q!, x, i, esc, A, wq 
        [modes, status line, case sensitive, muscle memory]

    2. dw, d$, d motion, count motion, d number motion, dd, u, U, ^r

    3. p, r, ce, cw, c$, c count motion, esc

    4. ^G, G, gg, number G, /, ?, n, N, ^o, ^i, %, 

    4.4 :s/old/new/, :s/o/n/g, :#,#s/o/n/g, :%s/o/n/g, :%s/o/n/gc

    5. :!, :!ls, :w fname, v move :w fname, :r fname, :r !ls

    6. o, O, esc, a, R, v move y, yw

    6.5 :set ic, hlsearch, incsearch, hls, is, noic, /foo\c

    7. , :help, ^W^W, :q, vimrc, :anything^D, 

Vim Essentials

• Beyond vimtutor, we will look at the essentials of using vim

Installation

• Vim.org: The main vim page
• Download gvim73.exe to install on windows


• Two versions:
1. Command line: vim
2. GUI: gvim


• On Windows, you will probably want to choose the batch files option to get a command line version of vim


• Note for students in ITEC 320: Vim ada make command requires a project file - fixes are described in the 320 pages

Online References and Other Stuff

• Vim.org: The main vim page


• My Reference Page (lots of commands, operators, motion, objects)


• Other cool things:
• Vimperator
• shell vi key bindings put bindkey -v in .cshrc (works in tcsh; don't know about others)


• Dr. Chip's Vim Page has lots of nice stuff


• User Manual and other documentation is here


• From within vim, get User Manual with :h user-manual
• From within vim, get Quick Reference with :h quickref


• Google


• Wikipedia


• Some reference pages:
• A nice keyboard reference page
• A very complete reference (VIM Reference Card 3.0)
• Quick Reference Page 0
• Quick Reference Page 1
• Quick Reference Page 2
• Quick Reference Page 3

Books

• Vim.org books page


• Learning the vi and vim Editors RU Library Electronic Resources (7th Editions)


• Learning the vi and vim Editors (7th Edition) from Amazon


• Vi Improved (Vim)


• Hacking Vim

Advice

• Use help, vimtutor, online manuals, and the web


• Learn frequently used operations until they are muscle memory:
• Basic movement - character, line, word, screen, top, bottom: hjkl, w, e, ^F, ^B, gg, G
• Input: i, a, A, o, O, r, R
• Changing characters (r, R), words (cw), lines (cc, C)
• Delete: x, dw, dd
• Search: /foo, ?, n, N, f, F, t, T
• Substitute: :s/old/new, :%s/old/new/gc
• Yank and paste: yy, Y, p, P
• Swap lines and characters: ddp, xp
• Use counts
• Undo, redo: u, ^R
• Help: :help
• Ranges/blocks: v, V, ^V
• Use operators with movement, text blocks, ranges
• <TAB> completion (supertab plugin may be required)


• Add new commands as needed


• The more you learn, the easier it is to learn (because it's well designed)