The World’s Shortest History Lesson
If you’ve used Vim for more than a couple of minutes, you’re probably familiar with at least a few of its commands. To save a file, you run :w. When you want to exit the editor, you run :q.
Commands such as :w and :q are called Ex commands because they originated in Ex, the line-based editor. Pioneering computer scientist Bill Joy invented vi, a visual mode for Ex, in 1975. In the years since, vi has inspired newer editors and has been ported several times. Of these, the most popular and perhaps the most enduring editor is the one I’m using to write this book: Vim.
In Vim, Ex commands can be run on the command line, but they also make up the bulk of Vim’s built-in scripting language, VimL. Recent Vim versions ...
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