Customer Reviews

Learning the vi and Vim Editors

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vi, like many of the utilities developed during the early years of Unix, has a reputation for being hard to navigate. Bram Moolenaar's enhanced clone, Vim ("vi Improved"), has gone a long way toward removing reasons for such impressions. Vim includes many conveniences, visual guides, and help screens. It has become possibly the most popular version of vi, so this seventh edition of this book devotes seven new chapters to it in Part 2. However, many other worthy clones of vi also exist and they are covered in part 3.

The first two chapters present some simple vi commands with which you can get started. Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on easier ways to do tasks. Chapters 5 through 7 provide tools that help you shift more of the editing burden to the computer. They introduce you to the ex line editor underlying vi, and they show you how to issue ex commands from within vi.

Chapter 8, provides an introduction to the extensions available in the four vi clones covered in this book. It centralizes in one place the descriptions of multiwindow editing, GUI interfaces, extended regular expressions, facilities that make editing easier, and several other features, providing a roadmap to what follows in the rest of this book. It also provides a pointer to source code for the original vi, which can be compiled easily on modern Unix systems, including Linux.

Part 2 describes Vim, the most popular vi clone. Chapter 9, provides a general introduction to Vim, including where to get binary versions for popular operating systems and some of the different ways to use Vim. Chapter 10 describes the major improvements in Vim, such as built-in help, control over initialization, additional motion commands, and extended regular expressions. Chapter 11, focuses on multiwindow editing, which is perhaps the most significant additional feature over standard vi. This chapter provides all the details on creating and using multiple windows.

Chapter 12, looks into the Vim command language, which lets you write scripts to customize and tailor Vim to suit your needs. Much of Vim's ease of use comes from the large number of scripts that other users have already written and contributed to the Vim distribution. Chapter 13 looks at Vim in modern GUI environments. Chapter 14 focuses on Vim's use as a programmer's editor, above and beyond its facilities for general text editing. Of particular value are the folding and outlining facilities, smart indenting, syntax highlighting, and edit-compile-debug cycle speedups. Chapter 15, is a bit of a catch-all chapter, covering a number of interesting points that don't fit into the earlier chapters.

Part 3 describes three other popular vi clones: nvi, elvis, and vile. Chapters 16 through 18 cover these clones and show you how to use them, discussing the features that are specific to each one.

Part 4 provides useful reference material. Appendix A lists all vi and ex commands, sorted by function. It also provides an alphabetical list of ex commands. Selected vi and ex commands from Vim are also included. Appendix B lists set command options for vi and for all four clones. Appendix C consolidates checklists found earlier in the book. Appendix D describes vi's place in the larger Unix and Internet culture.

vi and its clones may seem like backwards tools in the 21st century, but at a very low level of operation, it may be all you have. It is good to understand it or at least have a reference where you can get up to speed quickly if you need to do so. You may say this is only something system admins need to know, but at one time or another we all turn into system administrators at some level. Also, vi is one of the few editing tools you can count on to be on every Unix system. You cannot say the same of dtpad (most commonly on Sun workstations) or nedit (common on SGI and Sun workstations). Sometimes you have to trade ubiquity for intuitiveness, and in the case of Unix editors, this is one of those times.

This new edition goes above and beyond of what's currently available in the area of Vi/Vim tutorials.

It is fascinating to watch how much time and typing a programmer can save every single day, once they've figured out how to use a tool like Vim efficiently. Many people just know 5% of what an editor is capable of, and day-in and day-out they're using way too many keystrokes. What a waste of time and what a strain on your hands!

"vi and vim" 7th edition (make sure to get the latest, not the previous one) explains how to make the most out of this editor. By the way, you should always use "vim", not the legacy "vi" editor, which is a waste of time as it lacks important features. Luckily "vim" is standard on many systems like Linux nowadays, and even if you type "vi" there, you'll get the better "vim" automatically.

Learning shortcuts for common editing tasks like block indentation, text formatting, or screen movement is essential for fast typing, and the challenge is to keep the shortcuts all memorized. Vim isn't your father's editor, it has literally thousands of keystroke combinations, and if you don't have a system to memorize them, you'll never use them. Luckily, "vi and vim" 7th edition explains them all in detail and in a way that makes it easier to recall them later when you need them.

The book gives mnemonics whenever possible and it explains concepts like vim's combination of action and move commands in a way that lets you understand the concept behind these commands instead of simply having to memorize nonsensical keystrokes.

There's some chapters which I consider fluff, but I guess there is people out there using odd vi incarnations like "elvis" or "gvim", so the authors felt like they were worth to be covered as well.

It would be great if the chapter on programming vim with its own scripting language (and possibly other languages like Perl) could be expanded and information on how to define complicated macros or write your own plugins would also be helpful. But I guess that's too much for a "Learning the vi and vim editors" book and maybe there's an upcoming "Mastering" book, who knows?

This book is a must-read for every programmer using the 'vi' line of editors. There's two other vim books out there, but they don't come even close in terms of depth and content structuring. Five stars for the 7th edition!

I use TextMate for writing code and for most text editing while I'm on the Mac (although I'm editing this review with MacVim version 7.3, otherwise I'd feel dirty). Everywhere else I use vi and Vim (Windows/Linux/OpenBSD/etc.) I spent years using Emacs and gradually made the shift to Vim a few years ago. I found Vim to be lighter weight and easier to configure than Emacs. Anyway, if you're tackling an uber-editor like Vim, you need a really great book. For Vim, that book is "Learning the vi and Vim Editors".

The book initially introduces you to vi and ex, giving you the most basic commands. Pay attention to these first few chapters as it lays the foundation for the rest of the book. You'll move on to learn about global replacement and the power of regular expressions in the context of text replace commands. A short chapter is devoted to advanced editing features and takes you through basic vi customizations, how to execute Unix commands, how to filter text within vi through Unix commands, abbreviations to simplify repetitious typing, mapping keys to simplify repetitious keystrokes, and some basic ex scripting.

A very brief chapter introduces you to the major vi clones. Then, a really beefy section spanning chapters 9 through 15, covering 159 pages, takes you through Vim in great detail. All the major differences between vi and Vim are discussed. You'll learn about multi-window editing, the specifics of Vim scripting, GVim (the GUI version of Vim), and Vim enhancements related to software developers.

Following the Vim section of the book, there are small chapters that describe each of the other major vi clones, including nvi, elvis and vile. Near the end of the book, you'll find the appendixes crammed full of vi and ex commands. Additionally, there is a brief section on setttings for vi, nvi, elvis, Vim and vile. As if that's not enough, the final appendix throws in some comic strips for a little vi humor [...]

I was actually suprised to find a lack on information on both registers and macros. Vim has support for these two extremely useful features, yet the book does not go into detail. Of course, the book does cover the help system, and if there is anything you want to know about Vim, you'll find it well documented in the help system. Learning to use the help system is a key to learning the editor and becoming more proficient by being able to take advantage of its features.

If you've never worked with a truly powerful text editor, prepare to be enlightened. Spend the time necessary to really learn your editor (whatever it may be) and it will pay a huge dividend in return. If you choose to take on the power of vi or Vim (or any other vi-like editor), equip yourself with this book to help guide you through the learning curve.

I found the book "Learning the vi and Vim Editors" to be a very thorough book in covering the foundations of these complex tools. Already being a pretty avid Vim user, I picked up this book as a reference to fill in any holes in my knowledge and to brush up on various configuration options for improving my Vim environment. I found the book to be exceptionally useful in terms of helping me configure my environment. I learned many different options from it that I wouldn't have known existed and it helped me improve my environment in ways I wouldn't have first thought of. The book itself did not help fill in many holes in my knowledge, though, because it tends to be primarily a book aimed at introducing the user to these editors. I think the issue that is the primary cause of this is that these two editors have enough features that it's difficult for anyone to know them all and to cover them effectively in one text while being aimed at beginners as well. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone just beginning to use vi or Vim and wanting to really hone their skills with these editors.

Vi through the years has been the topic of many "geek debates." Maybe not quite as big as the "Windows - Mac arguments," but vi and its companion editor Emacs both have their fervent followings. I've been in the "Vi camp" for more years than I want to think about, but I still love it.

This latest edition not only describes Vi and the countless things it does in great detail as past editions have but also has an section of the book devoted to vim, a vi clone that not only emulates vi, but does much more. It was created by someone who grew tired of Vi's limitations and is available on virtually any platform. Reading the seven chapters devoted to vim enlightened me as to the countless things it can do in addition to what Vi could already do. One thing I noticed immediately was syntax based color coding of text, something that comes in handy when I edit php files. Other nifty features include GUI features, being able to write your own Vim extensions or downloading plugins online, extensive online help, extended, expression matching facilities, and a lot more.

Speaking of writing your own Vim extensions, one chapter in the Vim section explains how to write a sample Vim script, which I'm sure nonprogrammers like myself will find helpful. Another chapter touches on the graphical Vim (GVim), which can be used on Windows or Mac machines. With the graphical Vim, you can even customize your scrollbars, menus and toolbars. Fun stuff indeed.

Previous editions of this book were quite good. The addition of the Vim section in this latest edition has made this an even better book. To those of you who might look down on a "lowly" text editor, I suggest you give Vim a try.

... and reading this book is well worth it's cost!

I've purchased both the .mobi and .pdf from O'Reilly as I prefer reading from both types of files on the Kindle DX. The Kindle DX has different features for different filetypes. MOBI is easy to read with inserting notes. PDF does better at consistent display of tables, examples and diagrams, but tends to be more CPU intensive vs. TEXT/HTML/MOBI and lacks inserting notes.

Now, back to this book...

Pros:
Even though this book states us experienced users can skip a chapter, I still started reading from the first chapter. The beginning chapters are written in both a learner's sense and towards an experienced user, very concise. The beginning chapters will not "put you to sleep" like the beginning chapters of most other books.

Think I'm at Chapter Four now, and am learning much of the stuff I should have already learned. It's written at a comfortable learning speed and doesn't waste text talking about non-relevant issues. So, if you're an experienced user, you get just the facts without having to read how to learn to press a key. If you're a beginner, you'll still learn without being left hanging. And, the author explains some brief scenarios without boring the reader.

If you need to know something about VI/VIM, it's likely in here including past history!

Cons:
It would be great to have a cheat sheet we can print from the book or for later referral. Towards the rear of the book (Appendix IV pages 383-392), there is a listing of commands with short descriptions. I'm guessing, adding one or two pages, similar to a Cheat Sheet 1-2 page format (in addition to the current Appendix IV) would be desirable?

I'll try printing these pages anyways and try following-up later. Who knows, maybe it's better to have 5-10 pages?

Last Edited: 2011.09.28

I am new to vim and gvim, and this book gave me a nice solid foundation. This book combined with some great blog posts and some excellent vim screencasts has me up and being productive in vim. I love it.

This book is great! I thought I was well on my way to being a vim master, but I only know enough to fill a couple chapters in this book! Tons of information, goes into great detail with clear examples. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn vim, or anyone who already does and wants a printed reference/manual.

I read this with both joy and sadness. Joy because it's a great treatment of vi and its clones, but sadness because so few will appreciate it.

Nowadays it's mostly programmers who understand the value of a text editor as opposed to a word processor. For the rest of the world, any text editor is just a clumsy, difficult beast that seems to belong in another era. Ordinary computer users just don't grok text editors.

Yet I use vi every day. Yes, for writing programs and scripts, but also for creating HTML files and anything else I need to store away. Why I use it for HTML is obvious to any programmer: advanced editing is just as apt to be needed there as in program text. But again, the average person, even those who write raw HTML, just doesn't understand that.

They miss out on so much. Tasks that I can do in seconds, sometimes fractions of seconds, will have them bumbling along for minutes or worse. Sometimes their word processor or HTML editor can help them a little, but none of those tools have any fraction of the power that vi offers.

Even for "ordinary" files, lists, records and the like, I tend to use vi where most folks would automatically turn to a spreadsheet or database. I can easily import my raw data into those other tools if I need to, but it's much easier to work on the data in text form. Vi gives me the power to do mass changes that would always be clumsy in any other tool.

That's what it is about: power and control. Efficiency. Speed. If you understand even part of what I'm talking about, you'll want this book. As for the rest of you.. well, I feel sorry for you. You have no idea what you are missing.

'Learning the vi and Vim Editors' is the ultimate reference for using 'vi' out there on the market. Now in its 7th (yes SEVENTH) edition, this book has been around for 22 years and there is a reason. 450+ pages are spread over XX chapters:

01. Basics
02. Simpled Editing
03. Movement
04. Beyond the Basics
05. ex Editor
06. Global Replacement
07. Advanced Editing
08. vi Clones
09. Vim
10. Vim Improvements Over vi
11. Multiple Windows In Vim
12. Vim Scripts
13. Graphical Vim
14. Vim Enhancements
15. Other Cool Vim Stuff
16. nvi
17. Elvis
18. vile

If you are a Linux user or need vi on a daily basis you owe it to yourself to pick up this great book. It's a definitive resource and well worth the time and money.

***** RECOMMENDED