vi

Vi ( "vi" for "visual ", pronounced [ vi ː aɪ ] or [ vaɪ ], in German-speaking occasionally [vi ː ], but not "six" or "six " (as the Roman numeral VI) ) is a 1976 by Bill Joy written on an ADM -3A computer terminal for an early version of BSD and POSIX standard text editor. The name comes from the command visual of the editor ex. With this command, you could switch the line editor in a visual mode.

Classification

Until the early 1970s was line-oriented editors were used, with a widely used, the editor ed was. Joy was based on this, first, also with a line editor, ex. Then later built again on the vi editor. vi quickly became the de facto standard Unix editor, at least until the rise of Emacs by about 1984.

Used in 1991 about half of all participants in a Usenet poll vi. Even today, vi is still widespread, at least in the Unix world. In addition, you can work with this editor in combination with ssh (formerly with telnet or rsh ) in the network to other computers.

Because of its relative resource -friendly start vi, or nearly all his clones faster and require less memory than Emacs. On a " rescue disk " vi has still its place, so that it is part of almost all Unix-/Linux-Distributionen.

The original version of Bill Joy was originally nor otherwise freely available in source code, so that now a number of clones exist with some of major extensions, such as vim, nvi, elvis, WinVi partially on non- Unix run like systems.

Working modes

Vi has three fundamentally different modes of operation. The three modes are:

Earlier versions gave the user no clue what mode he was straight. Current versions of vi indicate their momentary mode on the status bar or graphically.

| Start with                                          | Vi                                          v -------------------- -------------------- ----- -------------- | | | | | | | Command line | < --------- | Command Mode | --------- > | Insert mode | | Mode | ": " | | " i", "a" | | | | | Using: | "o" etc. | | | Eg " wq ", " q " | | yy, p, dd, J | | Normal - Editie | | Or complex | | etc. | | reindeer, Arrow keys | | Commands such as | | | | image scrolling, etc. | | "Find and | [ Enter] | ( vi start | [ Esc] | | | Replace " | --------- > | in this mode ) | < --------- | | | | | | | | -------------------- -------------------- ----- --------------      | |      | Exit with | Exit with      v " wq ", or " x " V " ZZ" (a few exceptions, such as jumping back of the r command to command mode without pressing Esc exist)

Pros and Cons

Due to the different working is the operation of vi, compared with conventional graphical editors today, getting used to. A big advantage of vi, however, is that multiple commands can be issued in succession without simultaneously pressing the Alt, Ctrl, or other modifier keys. So it is also possible to use a single command to delete multiple words or phrases.

Humor

In the course of the so-called editor Was the vi camp founded the " Cult of Vi " in response to the Richard Stallman aka St. IGNUcius founded Church of Emacs. Thereafter, they were of the Emacs fans as imitators ( " ape Their betters " ) referred.