Vi

Learning VI

It's known for a relatively steep learning curve - because there are an unbelievable number of options for VI, but you can get by with a few basic commands (see below for the cheatsheet).

Also, the vim-common package includes the vimtutor command. This command allows you to go through an interactive tutorial. Either type <bash> vimtutor </bash> or <bash> man vimtutor </bash> for more information

• http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html

In addition to the VIM, there is gvim which is the graphical version of vim. Use that too. After you read some of the resources listed here, you'll know how to use plugins for vim to do debugging, syntax highlighting, automatic docblocks, network and multiple file operations, lint syntax highlighting and code tag parsing with exuberant ctags.

Resources

• Vim wiki http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
• https://vimhelp.appspot.com/quickref.txt.html An HTML collection of the vim help, quickref and other info.

Configuration

For configuring vim, including 'What is a modeline?' see these excellent references:

• the Drupal website has a good collection of comments for configuring

vim for PHP http://drupal.org/node/29325

• Andrei Zmievski did a talk on vim-for-php-programmers http://www.gravitonic.com/blog/archives/000357.html

For an example of setting up additional syntax highlighting, see Syntax Highlighting

VI Cheetsheet

• Esc - Escape to view-only mode. Press Esc before using the following commands to get out of whatever mode you're already in.
• :w !sudo tee % force write file using sudo to 'tee' the standard output to the file descriptor
• i - Enter insert mode. Place the cursor where you want to type and press i before typing.
• x - Delete the character under the cursor.
• dd - Delete the current line.
• :q! - Quit
• :wq - Save and Quit

See our VI Cheetsheet or http://www.eec.com/business/vi.html for more

VI Improved

On modern systems vim is actually the package that is installed because it succeeds the predecessor 'vi' There are many other vim-related packages. Check if vi is a symbolic link to vim (file `which vi`), and if not then sudo apt-get install vim.