Initialization

vi performs the following initialization steps:

  1. If the EXINIT environment variable exists, execute the commands it contains. Separate multiple commands by a pipe symbol (|).

  2. If EXINIT doesn’t exist, look for the file $HOME/.exrc. If it exists, read and execute it.

  3. If either EXINIT or $HOME/.exrc turns on the exrc option, read and execute the file ./.exrc, if it exists.

  4. Execute search or goto commands given with +/pattern or +n command-line options (POSIX: -c option).

The .exrc files are simple scripts of ex commands; the commands in them don’t need a leading colon. You can put comments in your scripts by starting a line with a double quote ("). This is recommended.

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