That hard-to-learn part is evident from the first time you use it (unless you have a vi user
nearby). When you first open the vi editor (and these days, typing vi actually opens its
???improved??? version, vim), you cannot type anything. By default, vi opens in its command/
viewing mode. You can maneuver around a file, provided you know that commands in vi
begin with a colon (:). To edit a file, you must press the Insert key (or Esc+i) first.
After you know this secret handshake, vim can be very useful and, with practice, very powerful.
It also comes with extensive documentation. The documentation page at the Vim.org site
says it best: ???The most useful software is sometimes rendered useless by poor or altogether
missing documentation. Vim refuses to succumb to death by underdocumentation.???
To quickly get up to speed in vim, you don??™t have to run the editor. Run vimtutor from
the shell prompt to get a brief tutorial, estimated to take about 30 minutes to complete.
Following are a few commands that will help you get started with vim:
Simple navigation: Your arrow keys work fine, but these characters also move the cursor:
h left
l right
k up
j down
Delete character x
Delete line dd
Copy (yank) selected text y
Paste (put) p
Undo u
Save :w (write)
Find text in file /
Changing mode from Insert to Command Esc
Quit :q
Quit without saving :q!
CHAPTER 5 Getting Started with openSUSE 86
Vi and Yzis run inside your shell.
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