#Vim editor how to#
#Vim editor code#

Vi comes preinstalled with just about every UNIX/Linux system out there. On the other hand, the Vim editor allows navigation using arrow keys in insert mode. That makes Vi editor inconvenient to navigate around in insert mode. Vi editor does not allow navigation using arrow keys while in insert mode.

#Vim editor code#

New features can be easily added from 3’rd parties without changing the main and official Vim code base. Plugins extend the current features of Vim. In addition, Vim text editor enables you to import the same configurations on different Linux systems. Vim uses native GUI widgets for scrolling and dividing buffers and has mouse support. It is designed for use from a command-line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim works well at a console, but it can run natively in many GUIs. This improvement over Vi comes in handy for programmers using Vim to write/edit code. Vim can be programmed to highlight portions of the buffer in different colors or styles based on the edited file type. Indeed, one of the key selling points of Vim over Vi is its syntax highlighting.

On the other hand, Vi editor does not support multilevel undo. For example, if you accidentally delete a line of text, delete a second line, and then the third one, you can undo each of the four deletes. One of the best features of the Vim editor is multilevel undo, meaning you can undo changes multiple times. It has many features that Vi does not, even features that are not “advanced.” Let’s now see what the main differences between them are. Vim is a vi-like editor but is more advanced and powerful than the original Vi. It is the classic and most popular text editor in the Linux family that comes built-in in most Linux distributions. It was renamed from Vi IMitation to Vi IMproved. Later new functionality was added, and by version 1.22, Vim included more features than Vi. Since there was no good Vi for the Amiga, he started with the best available and started improving it. When he had bought an Amiga computer, he wanted to use the editor he learned on Unix. Vim (a contraction of Vi IMproved) is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly on November 2, 1991. He then developed vi as a “ visual interface” to ex. Joy first developed ex as an improved line editor that supported a superset of ed commands. Later he co-founded Sun Microsystems and server as Chief Scientist until 2003. The original Vi was developed in the late 1970s by Bill Joy, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. Vi traces its origins back to the command line editor called ed. But let’s start with a little bit of history first. Vim is simply an improved version of Vi, but unlike Vi, Vim is not universal.ĭepending on your Linux distro, it may be or may not be installed by default.

#Vim editor how to#

If you know how to use the Vi text editor, you can edit any text file on any mode and version of Linux. Vi is the universal text editor of Linux. This tutorial explains the differences between the Vi and Vim editors in detail. Vi, with its numerous implementations, is by far the most distributed and used text editor. Vi and Vim are both text editors available in Linux.