Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
88 lines (68 loc) · 3.7 KB

module1.md

File metadata and controls

88 lines (68 loc) · 3.7 KB
Raw

Learn Vim - Module 1: (Not just an) Intro

Home | Next module

Vim is a command-line text editor, created by Bram Moolenar. It stands for Vi-IMproved; Vi was an older ubiquitous editor, which was enhanced to create Vim.

To open Vim, just type vim at the command-prompt. Note that on most modern systems, vi is symlinked to vim. However, just in case the symlink does not exist, I recommend typing the whole word vim.

To open a file in the beginning, type vim file-name at the command-prompt. To open a file inside vim, type:

:e file_name	" 'e' stands for 'edit'

Vim is a modal text-editor. That is, it has different modes to perform different tasks. The major ones (for now) are:

  • Normal (N) -- edit text
  • Insert (I) -- type text
  • Command-line (C) -- execute commands

The following diagram shows how to switch from one mode to the other:

The default mode when we open vim is the Normal mode.

To start typing like other non-modal editors (e.g., gedit), just press i in normal mode, which will land you into the Insert mode. Once typing is over, we can save the text by typing w in Command-line mode and pressing Enter (CR or carriage-return):

<Esc>:w<CR>    " <Esc>: the Escape key; <CR>: the Enter key

Note that the above command lands us back into normal mode; thus, to start typing text again, we need to press i again.

To quit vim, type either q in command-line mode, or ZZ in normal mode:

<Esc>:q<CR>  or  <Esc>ZZ    " Quit vim

We can save-and-quit by combining the keystrokes for write (w) and quit (q) in command-line mode:

:wq    " Save-and-quit. From now on, we will omit writing the prefix <Esc> and the suffix <CR>.

If you try to quit vim when some contents in the open file are unsaved, vim will throw an error. In such a case, either write :q! to quit without saving the changes, or first save (using :w) then quit.

Extra dose:
  1. The command :x is a shorthand for :wq.
  2. The command :up (for update) writes the file to disk only if the file has unsaved changes.

Configuring Vim

Vim has many configuration options, which can be

  • enabled for the current instance of vim by setting them in command-line mode (e.g., :set option)
  • enabled across all the instances of vim by writing them in the vimrc file.

The default location of the vimrc file is:

$HOME/.vimrc    " hidden file

We can simply list the options, one per line, in the vimrc file, like this:

" This is a comment
set option1    " This is also a comment
set option2
...

Note that the vimrc file can be commented using the double-quotes (") character.

Some useful options to set in the vimrc file are as follows:

  • set ruler -- show the current line-number, current column-number, etc. in the status-line (bottom) of vim.
  • set number -- show line-numbers in the LHS.
  • syntax on or syntax enable -- enable syntax-based coloring in different files, based on the extension.
  • set tabstop=4 -- use 4 characters for tab.
  • set expandtab -- replace tab character (\t literal) with 4 spaces.

Endnote:

In this module, we learned about some basic operations that allow us to type neatly in vim. This is already enough to get you started with using Vim instead of other simple editors (such as TextEdit in macOS). In the next module, we will learn about working with multiple files in Vim, simultaneously!

Home | Next module

Star this repository on GitHub if you like the tutorial.