Additional vi Resources

There may be several good sources of information about vi or its clones already residing in your computer. One of them is the vi manual pages, which are accessed by typing man vi at the command line.

Another is the help files, which can be accessed while vi is in use by typing :help and pressing ENTER. To exit the help screen type :q and press ENTER.

Vim comes with a tutorial which is stored in text form in a directory such as /usr/share/vim/vim61/. After confirming the exact location on your system, you can navigate to that directory and open the file with a command such as

cat tutor | more

This assumes that the tutorial is named "tutor" in your system. The "cat" command is used to open the tutorial in read-only mode. The "|" and the "more" are standard Unix commands that work together to display a long file one page at a time for easier reading.

nvi comes with a tutorial which is stored as a compressed file in /usr/doc/nvi/. This file can be accessed by copying it to your home directory, uncompressing it and then opening it with vi. For example, from your home directory type:

cp /usr/doc/nvi/vi.beginner.gz
gunzip vi.beginner.gz
vi vi.beginner

An advanced tutorial is also available in the same directory.

There is also a substantial amount of material about vi and its clones online. Some of the more useful sites are presented here:

Tutorials:

• An Extremely Quick and Simple Introduction to the Vi Text Editor - a short tutorial.
• An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi - an extensive tutorial written by Bill Joy, the creator of vi, when he was still a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley.
• Mastering the VI editor - by the University College of Engineering, University of Hawaii. This long, single-page tutorial is available for both online viewing in HTML format and downloading in PDF format.
• vi Basics - a very brief tutorial.
• Vi For Smarties - a tutorial consisting of eight short lessons.

Reference:

• The Traditional Vi - has the source code for the original version of vi.
• The Vi/Ex Editor - covers many of the more advanced features.
• Vi Macros, Abbreviations, and Buffers - information about vi's macro writing capabilities.
• vi reference - a fairly complete reference.
• vi Reference - a single-page list of vi commands, probably not for inexperienced users.
• VI (and Clone) Editor Reference Manual - a 1998 overview of the more common vi commands.
• VI Helpfile - a quick reference of vi and ex commands.

Clones:

• The Elvis Text Editor - the official home page for elvis.
• Elvis - a vi clone - information about elvis.
• Lemmy Version 4.5 - the home page for lemmy.
• The Berkeley Vi Editor Home Page - information and source code for nvi, a vi implementation originally distributed as part of BSD.
• vile - the home page for the vile clone.
• Vim the editor - Vim's home page, hosted by SourceForge.
• Why use a Vi clone? Why VIM? - discusses the advantages of Vim.
• WinVi - a free vi clone for Microsoft Windows.