Some Tips for VIM Users

Mustafa Emre Aydın — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:02:50 +0000

VIM, one of the best text editors of all time, has a lot of useful options which are usually hidden. To get the best out of this text editor, I’d recommend checking some of these features out.

To get these settings enabled by default, add the lines to your vimrc file, it is usually located at ~/.vimrc if not, just create it. Below is a part of the .vimrc file I like using.

"set tabwidth to 4 characters, automatic indentation and stuff
set tabstop=4 shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
set smarttab
set autoindent
set smartindent

"set searching case insensitive, but if you type uppercase, it will go case sensitive
set ignorecase
set smartcase

"2 lines above/below cursor when scrolling
set scrolloff=2

"show filename in title bar
set title

"show line numbers, and toggle it on/off with F2
set number
map  :set invnumber

"toggle wrapping mode with Ctrl+w
map  :set invwrap

"Reload Current File, ask for confirmation if changed
map  :confirm :edit

"automatically cd into the directory that the file is in, very useful when running commands within vi
autocmd BufEnter * execute "chdir ".escape(expand("%:p:h"), ' ')

"highlight the current line, when you split screen, it will only highlight the line that has focus on
hi CursorLine cterm=NONE ctermbg=blue ctermfg=NONE
autocmd WinEnter * setlocal cursorline
autocmd WinLeave * setlocal nocursorline
set cursorline

"set encoding to utf-8
set encoding=utf-8

"highlight search results
set hlsearch
"search while typing
set incsearch

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Using vi Editor

ckaraca — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:20:08 +0000

Vi is the one of the mostly used editor in Linux via terminal. In most cases where Linux is used as a server operating system, admins use the terminal, where GUI uses more system resources & network bandwidth. Since Vi is used from the terminal, the lack of GUI force the user to learn function keys of the editor. Vi is a powerful and functional application if it is used with the ideas that is built on.

To run vi, type vi from the terminal, vi is installed on most of the Linux distros as default. You may also you the improved version called “Vim” if you are developing codes or scripts. If you don’t have vim installed just run the command to install “yum install vim-enhanced -y“.

To create a new file just write the name of the file after the command as follows:

vi /root/newfile.txt

For more functionality Vi is designed to work in three modes described below:

Command Mode
Edit (editing + adding) Mode
Command Line Mode

Vi starts in Command mode, thus you cannot directly start typing or editing the lines inside the editor. You can always return to command mode by pressing ESC button anytime. To switch to Editing mode while you are in command mode press “ESC” and type “:” or press “Insert” button on your keyboard.

Below are the mostly used functions in Command Mode::

Command	Action
i	Switches to Insert (edit) Mode
a	Switches edit mode at the end of cursor
A	Switches edit mode at the end of current line
ESC	Closes edit mode and switches to Command Mode
u	Undo
U	Undo all
o	Insert new line
dd	Delete whole line
/string	makes search for the “string”
n	Search next item

To switch to Command Line mode press ESC and type “:” without quotes. Below are the commands that you can use in command line mode:

Command	Action
ZZ	Saves the current file and exits or
wq	w for saving, q to exit
w!	saves read-only files (force)
q!	Quit without saving
q	Quit

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Some Tips for VIM Users

Using vi Editor