Introduction to Vim

Benefits of Vim

• Fast:
• keep fingers on keys: mouse not needed


• powerful commands use minimal keystrokes
• Examples:
• Swap characters and lines: xp, ddp
• Movement - mark, move, return: 0, $, ma, 1G, gg, 'a
• (cit changes inside this tag)
• ( da) deletes these parens and their contents)


• Powerful editing features (eg column operations)
• Example: Column operations


• Highly configurable:
• Example: search for smartcase and Smartcase. Again: smartcase Smartcase


• Extensible: scripting language built in, can also use perl, ruby, python
• See scrollbar in statusline


• Ubiquitous:
• Available on many, many systems
• Use same environment for programming in any language


• Fun!

Brief History

• vi: visual editor - Bill Joy - 1976 - BSD Unix
• Vim ex mode gives an idea of life before visual editors:

          Q
          p 
          #  
          1,5p  
          -3,+3p 
          1  
          s/DOC/doc/  
          u  
          vi   

• Q: Enter ex mode
• Display current line: p or #
• Display absolute range of lines: 1,5p
• Display relative range of lines: -3,+3p
• Move to a new line: -3 [relative], 3 [absolute]
• Substitute old to new: s/DOC/doc/
• Undo: u
• vi: Exit ex mode and return to normal mode
• Vi was a HUGE improvement!


• Vi-IMitation - Bram Moolenaar - 1991
• Vi-IMproved - Bram Moolenaar - 1992
• Some Baby Pictures


• 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 7.4 (Aug 2013)

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

How to learn

---

• vimtutor
• Run from command line or icon
• Walks you through basics of vim, editing the vim tutor file


• Pick a few commands, learn more as needed


• Gets easier!!