vi(1) Editor Materials

A few components of a large vi(1)-related archive are being reintroduced:

• Documents derived from the original UCB vi(1) document distribution package tar file. You can now get these from other sources, and may have seen them before. A single file for printing is available as a Adobe PDF file.
• Unique powerful vi(1) .exrc files, that make advanced vi(1) features much easier to use. These files particularly help you to work easily with marked regions. The files are heavily commented. The beginner's version is quite complete for basic editing needs, but if you are a heavy vi(1) user the advanced version has even more macros in it. ( The files must retain control characters and tabs and trailing white space in the lines in order to work properly, so users have to get an uuencoded version).

The vi (visual) editor is a display-oriented text editor based on an underlying line editor (ex). It is possible to use the command mode of ex from within vi and vice versa. vi is character-oriented and is designed to be used with an ASCII asynchronous screen. Other common special-purpose aliases exist for vi:

• ex or edit - invokes the editor in novice mode, starting in line (ex) mode.
• vedit - invokes the editor in novice mode, starting in display (vi) mode.
• view - invokes the editor in read-only mode, starting in display (vi) mode.
• vipw - Invokes vi on the /etc/passwd file with the file locked ( specifically for UNIX administrators).

Welcome ..

Table of Contents

UCB-derived vi reference set

• Edit: A Tutorial
• Ex Reference Manual
• Ex/Edit Command Summary
• An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi
• Vi Command & Function Reference
• Appendix: character functions
• Summary: ex(1) and vi(1) quick references

Additional documentation (REMOVED)

• a few tips concerning vi(1) macros
• a guide for writing vi(1) macros
• Regular expressions
• A macro file specifically built for generating HTML documents by hand.
• Xterm(1) usage notes:
• Arrow keys
  • How to deal with window resizing (stty(1), setenv(1), resize(1), rlogin(1) vs telnet(1), ...)
  • Programming your keyboard with an X11 translation table.
  • An enhanced xterm(1) terminfo file (discusses function keys and screen restores on exit from vi).
• Using filters with vi:
  • an overview (:r!, 'a;'b!, ...)
  • formatting text (fmt, adjust, ....)
  • working with columns
  • sort and uniq
  • cut, date, spell, look ...
• Tricks

Related external documents

When these documents were the only copies of the UCB documents converted to HTML and before there were search engines I kept a list of vi-related FAQs, an ftp archive, and a link to a USENET group (comp.editors) here. This is no longer available due to the ready availability of search engines.

For UNICOS system users, these addition resources are recommended:

• UNICOS vi Reference Card, publication SQ-2054.
• man pages for exrc(5) file format, edit(1), ex(1), and vi(1).

[Created: 19960701][Last modified: 19960716]