Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition

Larger Cover

By Arnold Robbins, Linda Lamb

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: November 1998

Pages: 352

For many users, working in the Unix environment means using vi, a full-screen text editor available on most Unix systems. Even those who know vi often make use of only a small number of its features.

Learning the vi Editor is a complete guide to text editing withvi. Topics new to the sixth edition include multiscreen editing and coverage of fourviclones: vim, elvis, nvi, and vile and their enhancements to vi, such as multi-window editing, GUI interfaces, extended regular expressions, and enhancements for programmers. A new appendix describes vi's place in the Unix and Internet cultures.

Quickly learn the basics of editing, cursor movement, and global search and replacement. Then take advantage of the more subtle power of vi. Extend your editing skills by learning to use ex, a powerful line editor, from within vi. For easy reference, the sixth edition also includes a command summary at the end of each appropriate chapter.

Topics covered include:

Basic editing
Moving around in a hurry
Beyond the basics
Greater power with ex
Global search and replacement
Customizing vi and ex
Command shortcuts
Introduction to the vi clones' extensions
The nvi, elvis, vim, and vile editors
Quick reference to vi and ex commands
vi and the Internet

Basic and Advanced vi
1. Chapter 1 The vi Text Editor
  1. Opening and Closing Files
  2. Quitting Without Saving Edits
2. Chapter 2 Simple Editing
  1. vi Commands
  2. Moving the Cursor
  3. Simple Edits
  4. More Ways to Insert Text
  5. Joining Two Lines with J
  6. Review of Basic vi Commands
3. Chapter 3 Moving Around in a Hurry
  1. Movement by Screens
  2. Movement by Text Blocks
  3. Movement by Searches
  4. Movement by Line Number
  5. Review of vi Motion Commands
4. Chapter 4 Beyond the Basics
  1. More Command Combinations
  2. Options When Starting vi
  3. Making Use of Buffers
  4. Marking Your Place
  5. Other Advanced Edits
  6. Review of vi Buffer and Marking Commands
5. Chapter 5 Introducing the ex Editor
  1. ex Commands
  2. Editing with ex
  3. Saving and Exiting Files
  4. Copying a File into Another File
  5. Editing Multiple Files
6. Chapter 6 Global Replacement
  1. Confirming Substitutions
  2. Context-Sensitive Replacement
  3. Pattern-Matching Rules
  4. Pattern-Matching Examples
  5. A Final Look at Pattern Matching
7. Chapter 7 Advanced Editing
  1. Customizing vi
  2. Executing UNIX Commands
  3. Saving Commands
  4. Using ex Scripts
  5. Editing Program Source Code
Extensions and Clones
1. Chapter 8 vi Clones Feature Summary
  1. And These Are My Brothers, Darrell, Darrell, and Darrell
  2. Multiwindow Editing
  3. GUI Interfaces
  4. Extended Regular Expressions
  5. Enhanced Tags
  6. Improved Facilities
  7. Programming Assistance
  8. Editor Comparison Summary
  9. A Look Ahead
2. Chapter 9 nvi—New vi
  1. Author and History
  2. Important Command-Line Arguments
  3. Online Help and Other Documentation
  4. Initialization
  5. Multiwindow Editing
  6. GUI Interfaces
  7. Extended Regular Expressions
  8. Improvements for Editing
  9. Programming Assistance
  10. Interesting Features
  11. Sources and Supported Operating Systems
3. Chapter 10 elvis
  1. Author and History
  2. Important Command-Line Arguments
  3. Online Help and Other Documentation
  4. Initialization
  5. Multiwindow Editing
  6. GUI Interfaces
  7. Extended Regular Expressions
  8. Improved Editing Facilities
  9. Programming Assistance
  10. Interesting Features
  11. elvis Futures
  12. Sources and Supported Operating Systems
4. Chapter 11 vim—vi Improved
  1. Author and History
  2. Important Command-Line Arguments
  3. Online Help and Other Documentation
  4. Initialization
  5. Multiwindow Editing
  6. GUI Interfaces
  7. Extended Regular Expressions
  8. Improved Editing Facilities
  9. Programming Assistance
  10. Interesting Features
  11. Sources and Supported Operating Systems
5. Chapter 12 vile—vi Like Emacs
  1. Authors and History
  2. Important Command-Line Arguments
  3. Online Help and Other Documentation
  4. Initialization
  5. Multiwindow Editing
  6. GUI Interfaces
  7. Extended Regular Expressions
  8. Improved Editing Facilities
  9. Programming Assistance
  10. Interesting Features
  11. Sources and Supported Operating Systems
Appendixes
1. Appendix Quick Reference
2. Appendix ex Commands
  1. Command Syntax
  2. Alphabetical List of Commands
3. Appendix Setting Options
  1. Solaris 2.6 vi Options
  2. nvi 1.79 Options
  3. elvis 2.0 Options
  4. vim 5.1 Options
  5. vile 8.0 Options
4. Appendix Problem Checklists
  1. Problems Opening Files
  2. Problems Saving Files
  3. Problems Getting to Visual Mode
  4. Problems with vi Commands
  5. Problems with Deletions
5. Appendix vi and the Internet
  1. vi Web Sites
  2. Amaze Your Friends!
  3. Tastes Great, Less Filling
  4. vi Quotes

Colophon

Title:

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition

By:

Arnold Robbins, Linda Lamb

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Safari Books Online

Print:

November 1998

Pages:

352

Print ISBN:

978-1-56592-426-0

| ISBN 10:

1-56592-426-6

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal featured on the cover of Learning the vi Editor is a tarsier, a nocturnal mammal related to the lemur. Its generic name, Tarsius, is derived from the animal's very long ankle bone, the tarsus. The tarsier is a native of the East Indies jungles from Sumatra to the Philippines and Sulawesi, where it lives in the trees, leaping from branch to branch with extreme agility and speed. A small animal, the tarsier's body is only six inches long, followed by a ten inch tufted tail. It is covered in soft, brown or grey silky fur, has a round face, and huge eyes. Its arms and legs are long and slender as are its digits which are tipped with rounded, fleshy pads to improve the tarsier's grip on trees. Tarsiers are active only at night, hiding during the day in tangles of vines or in the tops of tall trees. They subsist mainly on insects, and, though very curious animals, tend to be loners. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font.

Whenever possible, our books use RepKover, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKovers limit, perfect binding is used. The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in troff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The screen shots that appear in the book were created in Adobe Photoshop 4 and the illustrations were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 by Robert Romano.

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oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition

4.8

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Displaying reviews 1-9

4/13/2004

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

A Gem of a book for the Gold standard of editors

By Anonymous

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

This book is the perfect spouse to my favorite editor and the best editor of all time.

The best part of this book is the author's wonderful explanation of Regular Expressions which is also topped of with the amazing examples. This part alone is worth the purchase. I learnt how to use regular expressions effectively from this book alone...BUY IT, TREASURE IT AND YOU WILL READ IT JUST FOR RELAXATION AND IT WILL BECOME DOG EARED AND TATTERED BUT YOU WILL NEVER FORGET IT OR THE WONDERFUL EDITOR IT EXPLAINS...

8/25/2003

4.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By Ricardo

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

I'm satisfied with my recent purchase of Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition. There are two things O'Reilly could do to improve this book:

Add a removable vi quick reference card to the back of the book

Add some tutorial or example files to the O'Reilly Web site that correspond to examples in the book

Having said that, I think Learning the vi Editor is a great place for someone unfamiliar with vi to begin learning.

10/12/2002

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By gopi

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

i never see such a book on vi editor.its saved my skin

iam new to unix and needs to work on unix since one month.iam struggling to get familiar with Vi editor.

i just bought yesterday and reading today for first 4 chapters,i strongly felt i would have read this book early.it's really very very good book and better understanding

i will buy present this book to my project team mates

10/12/2002

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By gopi

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

i never see such a book on vi editor.its saved my skin

iam new to unix and needs to work on unix sice one month.iam struggling to get familiar with Vi editor.

i just bought yesterday and reading today for first 4 chapters,i strongly felt i would have read this book early.it's really very very good book and better understanding

i will buy present this book to my project team mates

12/24/2001

4.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By NEY

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

In the world of UNIX,this book can help users to edit the text files effectively.And at the end of the day, you will realize that " what you see

is what you get!"

NEY.

3/2/2001

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By Harold McNurlan II

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

What can I say other than this book has pulled me out of all sorts of tough, nasty, little ruts.

Chapters one to four are the meat and potatoes of the book. Those four chapters are a quick read at 52 pages long. Take it with you to the laundrymat. It definitely beats watching the spin-cycle. With it, you'll be able to effectively get your job done.

For flair, to flaunt your stuff in front of your co-workers, and to just kick-butt on onerous amounts of code and data changes, you need to read chapters 5: "Introducing the ex Editor"; 6: "Global Replacement"; and 7: "Advanced Editing".

Lots of great examples. If you don't have a copy of this book--you're wrong.

Enjoy REAL editing power! vi rules! Viva vi!

2/5/2001

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By Fabio Rotondo

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

Before reading this book, I was already a fanatic vi (Vim) user.

So I bought this book just to know all the tips and tricks... well it opened me

a new world. There were things I used to do with sed or awk that I am now able to do with Vi. Every little trick is explained and shown in action with examples.

There is only a sad thing: I'd like to see more space dedicated to Vim and its special features.

Anyway, a must have for all vi users.

9/24/2000

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By Joe Black

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

This is an excellent tutorial for vi. If you want to win friends and influence people, learn vi. I hope the 7th edition has even more coverage of advanced features in vim. Vi IMproved at http://vim.org/

6/15/2000

(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)

5.0

Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition Review

By Michael P. Soulier

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition:

Perfection as a tutorial, and also a great reference. The only downside was the lack of a summary page like the Emacs book.

I'm a Vim user myself, so the support for Vi clones was an excellent idea, as most rarely use vanilla Vi anymore. Not if they want to defend themselves to Emacs people anyway. ;-)

A truly great piece of work.

Displaying reviews 1-9