Difference between revisions of "Editor: vim"

Revision as of 22:40, 26 February 2010

vim is a console-based cross-platform editor, mostly used by Lunix and other Unix users. It can be a very powerful, but also difficult to learn tool.

vim has two modes, an insertion mode that you can access by using the [Ins] key, and the command mode it starts with, which you can get back to with [Esc]

Useful commands

In command mode, the text can be searched by entering a slash and then typing the text one is looking for. If you want to see the next hit of the search, type "n".

Saving is done by entering ":w" and then hitting enter, quitting by ":q" and if you want to save and quit, the two are just concatenated to ":wq"

Setting up Vim for coding

Add the following to your .vimrc file:

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set softtabstop=4
set smarttab
set smartindent
set expandtab
set autoindent

If you want Vim to do more while you are coding:

syntax on
filetype on
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on

There are many ways to configure Vim to your liking, included plugins. Go to the Vim site for information on those. There is also a graphical version called GVim, with clients for Linux, Windows, and the Mac to name a few.