Chapter 10. An Introduction to the vi Editor

The next few hours focus on full-screen editing tools for Unix. First you'll learn how to use vi to create and modify files. This hour covers the basics, including how to move around in the file and how to insert and delete characters, words, and lines. The next hour adds how to search for specific patterns in the text and how to replace them with other information as desired. In the third hour, you learn to use an alternative Unix editor called emacs.

Goals for This Hour

In this hour, you will learn

  • How to start and quit vi

  • Simple cursor motion in vi

  • How to move by words and pages

  • How to insert text into the file

  • How to delete text

In some ways, an editor is like another operating system living within Unix; ...

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