Vi

INSERTING TEXT

DELETING TEXT

UNDOING AND REPEATING COMMANDS

COPYING AND PLACING TEXT

( These commands may be preceded by a number to multiply commands )

USEFUL OPTIONS

COPYING AND PLACING TEXT

( These commands may be preceded by a number to multiply commands ) ||

USEFUL OPTIONS

Typing a number before these commands will delete that amount of characters, words, or lines.

SEARCHING

GLOBAL SEARCH AND REPLACE

INSERTING TEXT

DELETING TEXT

VI commands

INSERTING TEXT

To leave the Insert mode, press 'Esc' a Append after cursor A Append after end of current line i Insert before cursor I Insert before beginning of current line o Open new line below current line and insert O Open new line above current line and insert CTRL-vchar While inserting, ignore special meaning of char

               (e.g., for inserting characters like Esc and control
               characters)

:r file Read file, and insert after current line J Join next line to end of current line

DELETING TEXT

CTRL-h or Backspace While in Input Mode delete previous character

Typing a number before these commands will delete that amount of characters,

   words, or lines.

x Deletes current character dw Delete current word dd Deletes current line

:n,md Deletes lines n through m D or d$ Delete from cursor to end of current line dcursor_cmd Delete text to cursor to cursor_cmd(e.g.,dG deletes from

               current line to end of file)

UNDOING AND REPEATING COMMANDS

u Undo last command U Restore current line to original state "np Retrieve last nth delete(last 9 deletes are in a buffer)" n Repeat last / or ? search command N Repeat, in reverse direction, last / or ? search command ; (semi-colon) Repeat last f, F, t or T search command , (comma) Repeat, in reverse direction, last f, F, t or T search

               command

. (period) Repeat last text change command

MOVING THE CURSOR

k or CTRL-p Up j or CTRL-j or CTRL-n Down h or CTRL-h or Backspace Left l (lower case L) or Spacebar Right w or W Start of next word; W ignores punctuation b or B Start of previous word; B ignores punctuation e or E End of next word; E ignores punctuation 0 (zero) or | (pipe) First column in current line n| Column n in current line ^ (caret) First non-blank character in current line $ Last character in current line + or Return First character in next line - First non-blank character in previous line 1G First line in file G Last line in file G$ Last character in file nG Line n in file ( Back to beginning of sentence ) Forward to beginning of next sentence \{ Back to beginning of paragraph \} Forward to beginning of next paragraph

PATTERN MATCHING

Pattern matching characters help find strings with similar char- acteristics.

:set magic Allow pattern matching with special characters

               (default)

:set nomagic Allow only ^ and $ as special characters ^ (caret) Match beginning of line $ Match end of line . (period) Match any single character \< Match beginning of word \> Match end of word [str] Match any single character in str [^str] Match any character not in str [a-n] Match any character between a and n

• Match zero or more occurrences of previous character

               in expression

\ Escape meaning of next character(e.g. \$ lets you

               search for $)

\\ Escape the \ character

SAVE TEXT AND EXIT VI

ZZ or :wq or :x Save file and exit vi :w file Save file but do not exit. Omitting file saves current

               file

:w! file Save file overriding normal checking :n,mw file Write lines n through m to file :n,mw>>file Append lines n through m to end of file :q Leave vi, saving changes before last write

               (you may be prompted to save first)

:q! Leave vi without saving any changes since last write Q Escape vi into ex editor with same file; :vi returns :e! File-edit current file, disregarding changes since last

               write.

SEARCHING

f<char> Search forward in current line to <char> F<char> Search backwards in curretn line to <char> /<string> Find next occurence of <string> ?<string> Find previous occurence of <string> :set ic Ingnore case while searching :set noic Case sensitive while searching (default)

GLOBAL SEARCH AND REPLACE

:n,m s/<str1>/<str2>/<opt> Search from n to m for <str1> and replace

                               it with <str2> with option <opt>. 
                               <opt> can be c - confirm changes
                                             g - global replace
                                             p - to print changed lines

(Ex- :1,$ s/foo/bar/g Replaces every occurence of "foo" with the

                               string "bar".)

:g/<str>/<cmd> Run <cmd> on all lines that contain <str> :g/<str1>/s/<str2>/<str3>/ Find line containing <str1>, replace <str2>

                               with <str3>

:v/<str>/<cmd> Execute <cmd> on all lines that do not

                               match <str>   

COPYING AND PLACING TEXT

( These commands may be preceded by a number to multiply commands ) yy or Y Yank current line into the buffer ( copy ) nyy or nY Yank n amount of line into buffer p Insert line(s) in buffer after cursor; also prints

             last deleted text

P Insert line(s) in buffer before cursor

USEFUL OPTIONS

:set all Displays all options you may "set" :set showmode Displays "INPUT MODE" while in input mode :set tabstop=n Sets the tabwidth of the tab key to n spaces;

                 8 is default, but 4 may be preferable

:set list Displays all control characters in document;