This article aims to cover the basics of using Vi (or Vim) to edit text. Many modern linux distributions contain either Vi or Vim. Often Vim, which stands for vi improved will be symbolically linked (or aliased) to vi on Linux systems. Most if not all of what’s in this tutorial is interchangeable between Vi or Vim.

Vi was first written in 1976 by Bill Joy at the University of California at berkley. vim was written by and is still maintained by Bram Moolenaar.

Why Learn Vi/Vim? #

• Vi is almost always available on Linux systems. If you’re ssh’d into a server and you don’t have the ability (or the authority…) to install additional software packages, vi will almost always be available by default. You may not always have access to a graphical CLI editor like nano.
• Vi is lightweight and fast. Vi is designed for typing speed and efficiency. There’s a learning curve, but once over that hurdle you may find yourself wondering why all user interfaces where you edit text don’t have a vi mode.
• You want other Linux nerds to respect you and you’re irrationally concerned with being judged by based on your bash history.

Basics #

Starting vi (vim):

$ vi
$ # Or ...
$ vim

You should see something like the following in your terminal:

  1
~
~                                 VIM - Vi IMproved
~
~                                  version 8.2.3182
~                              by Bram Moolenaar et al.
~                         Modified by <bugzilla@redhat.com>
~                    vim is open source and freely distributable
~
~                           Become a registered Vim user!
~                   type  :help register<Enter>   for information
~
~                   type  :q<Enter>               to exit
~                   type  :help<Enter>  or  <F1>  for on-line help
~                   type  :help version8<Enter>   for version info
~
~
~

To exit vi (vim) type :q then press Enter.

:q

This should return you to the shell prompt. If for some reason this doesn’t work we can force the issue with: (this can sometimes happen if we’ve made a change to the file that hasn’t been written yet.)

:q!

Tip: if you get lost in vi/vim try pressing the Esc key twice.

You can create a new file with vi by passing a filename that doesn’t exist as an argument:

$ vi foo.txt

Or you may open a file that already exists with vi by providing the file as an argument:

$ vi /path/to/somefile.txt

Editing Modes #

Vi is a modal editor. When vi starts it’s in command mode. In this mode almost everything is a command. Be careful what you type in this mode, you may end up executing commands you didn’t intend.

Entering Insert Mode #

After you’ve opened or created a file that you’re trying to edit, in order to add some text you need to enter insert mode. To do this press the i key. You should see the following at the bottom of the screen:

-- insert --

Try typing some text:

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

To exit insert mode and return to command mode, press the Esc key.

Saving Your Work #

To save changes to your file enter an ex command while in command mode. You can do this by typing :. You should see a colon character appear at the bottom of your terminal.

:

To write our modified file, type a w and then press Enter.

:w

The file will be written to disk. You should get a confirmation message at the bottom of your terminal that looks similar to this:

"foo.txt" [new] 1l, 46c written

Tip: the vim documentation confusingly calls command mode normal mode and that ex commands are called command mode.

Moving Around the Buffer #

While in command mode, vi offers a large amount of movement commands. Many of these are shared with the less pager. In fact many Linux utilities have some type of vi mode. Once you learn these, this skill is farily portable.

Cursor movement keys

When vi was originally written not all video terminals had arrow keys and commonly the letters h, j, k, and l were used. Many commands in vi can be prefixed with a number. We can specify the number of times a command will be executed. For example, 5j will move the cursor down 5 lines.

Basic Editing #

In general editing text consists of basic operations like inserting text, deleting text, moving text around by cutting and pasting, etc. Vi supports all of this and more. Vi also provides undo if you press u while in command mode. This undo’s the last change you made and will come in handy while you practice some basic text editing in Vi.

Appending and Inserting Text #

To append text after the cursor press a and then type the text that you with to add.

Try moving the cursor to the end of the line in your text file and appending some text.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. It was cool.

Type Esc to get out of insert mode after you’ve finished inserting your text.

Instead of moving to the end of the line and typing a in order to append text. You can type A and this will automatically put you at the end of the line and in insert mode. Similarly lowercase i allows you to enter insert mode before the cursor, but capital I puts you in insert mode at the beginning of the line. As you grow more familiar with the variety of Vi commands at your disposal you’ll learn that for most things that you would want to do, there’s often a short-cut available like this.

Opening a Line #

We can also insert a line above or below the current line and enter insert mode. To do this type o to insert a line below the current one and type O to insert a line above the one your cursor is currently on.

For example:

Line above.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. It was cool.
Line below.

Again to exit insert mode just type Esc.

Deleting text #

Vi offers a variety of ways to delete text. To delete the character underneath the cursor type x. You may preceed x with a number to delete that many characters. The d command is more general purpose. d is followed by a movement command that controls the size of the deletion. To delete the current line type dd. You can preceed d with a number like x, to execute a delete command that many times.

Text Deletion Commands

If you make a mistake, you can undo a deletion with the u command.

Note: Real vi supports only a single level of undo. Vim supports multiple levels of undo.

Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Text #

The d command not only deletes text but it also “cuts” text. Anytime you use the d command it will save that snippet of text into a paste buffer that can later be used. To paste text use the p command to paste the contents after the cursor or the P command to paste the contents before the cursor.

The y command is used to “yank” (copy) text to the paste buffer.

Yanking Commands

Just like with the d command anything that you “yank” into the paste buffer with the y command can be pasted back into your file using either p or P.

Feel free to practice adding, deleting, yanking and pasting text into your text file. Remember, you can always undo with u.

Search-and-Replace #

In vi you can search a single line or a whole file. You can also perform text replacements as in a search-replace, also known as a substitution.

Searching Within a Line #

The f command searches a line and moves the cursor to the next instance of a specified character. For example fa would move the cursor to the next occurrence of the character a. After performing a character search the search may be repeated by typing ;.

Searching the Entire File #

To search for a word or phrase the / command is used. After typing / type a string to search for and press Enter. This will move the cursor to next occurrence of that string in the file. You can repeat the search forward through the file by pressing n. You can perform the search backwards through the file by pressing N.

Vi’s search function allows for the use of Regular Expressions, but that is outside of the scope of this tutorial. Feel free to type :help in command mode to refer to vim’s help docs.

Global Search-and-Replace #

The basic syntax for searching a whole file and replacing every occurrence of a string is:

:%s/search/replace/g

If we break this down…

: starts an ex command.

% specifies the range of lines for the operation, in this case % is a shortcut that means from the 1st line to the last line in the file (aka the whole file).

s specifies the operation we’re performing which in this case is a substitution.

/search/replace/ specifies the search text and the replacement text. Those of you who are familiar with sed might notice the similarity between how vi performs substitutions and how sed does.

The g means “global” which will replace every occurrence of the search string that’s found with the replacement string.

Vi can also ask for confirmation for every substitution if we add the confirmation command to our search-replace.

:%s/line/Line/gc

Before each substitution you will be prompted with:

replace with Line (y/n/a/q/l/^E/^Y)?

yes, no, all, quit, last, Ctrl-e (scroll up), Ctrl-y (scroll down)

Resources #

Vimtutor #

There’s actually a tutorial built right into Vim that is highly recommended. The above introduction is just that, an introduction. There’s quite a bit more that you can do with vim and which is unfortunately ouside of the scope of this article.

If you’re learning vim, running vimtutor from your terminal or :help tutor from inside of vim will open the tutorial that’s builtin to the editor. This covers much of what’s in the tutorial above as well as quite a bit that wasn’t able to be covered here. There’s the added benefit of being able to practice your vim skills right inside of vim.

One suggestion is to work through the vimtutor once per day for a week or so for about 20 minutes each time and restarting the tutor each time you complete it. Practice and repetition is a good way to solidify your skills and commit many of the keyboard commands and skills to memory. After a week of practice you’ll be well on your way to becoming proficient in Vim.

Other Resources #

As always there’s the official help docs which ship with vim if you run :help from any vim buffer.

• Official docs
• Cheat sheet

Acknowledgements #

This “Introduction to Vi” is largely based on the “Gentle Introduction to Vi” that’s written by William Shotts and that’s available online for free download on his site as part of his book on the Linux CLI. This resource is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning the Linux CLI as well as the chapter on Vi.