Vi and vim Editor (14): vim Overview

Vi and vim Editor (14): vim Overview

Vim refers to "vi improved", that is, the ultimate version of vi. Currently, vim may be the most widely used similar vi product.

Overview:

Author and brief history:

Vim is written by Bram Moolenaar and assisted by others. Therefore, vim can grow and change accordingly with the demands of the computer industry and text editing, and maintain its own value. Today's vim is one of the most comprehensive Class vi editors, with a wealth of online help.

Comparison with vi:

Vim is more widely accepted than vi, because some versions of vim are available for almost all operating systems, and vi is only applicable to UNIX or UNIX-like systems. Vi is the original version, but vim implements all vi functions and provides many easy-to-use and powerful extension functions, including syntax extension, programmer assistance, graphical user interface functions, script writing and plug-in programs, initialization, Session Context, post-processing, state conversion, transparent editing, metadata, black hole registers, and keyword completion. Vim can also return to the vi-compatible mode by setting the compatible option.

Obtain vim:

If the operating system is a UNIX-Like operating system, vim may have been installed. If vim is not installed on your operating system, manually install vim.

Obtain vim in UNIX and GNU/Linux:

Now many UNIX environments have installed a certain version of vim. Most GNU/Linux release packages link the default vi location "/bin/vi" to the vim executable file. However, there are many variants of UNIX, and there are also many releases of GNU/Linux. If your UNIX-Like operating system does not install vim, You need to download the vim source code package, and compile and install it.

Obtain vim in Windows:

For Windows operating systems, the most convenient way to use vim is to install gvim on your own. Another method is to install Cygwin, a tool kit for porting commonly used GNU tools to Windows. vim is the standard configuration for Cygwin installation.

For how to obtain vim on Mac OS or other operating systems, refer to the vim official website.

It should be noted that vim is a free software and charityware ). If you are using vim, enter ": help uganda" to learn more.

Summary of the vi commands in this chapter:

This chapter introduces the differences between vim and vi, as well as the methods for obtaining vim on various operating systems.