Lec. 9 The vi Editor

Advantages of vi: - The vi editor is an ASCII text editor available on every Linux distribution in the world - The vi editor can be execute both in a CLI interface and a GUI interface - While new features have been added to the vi editor, the core functions have been around for decades - vim (vi improved) has additional features
Three modes in vi: - Command mode is used to position the cursor within the file and edit text - Insert mode is used to type text - Ex or last-line (named because commands are entered on the last line of the screen) mode is used save the file, quit vi, perform searches, and set editor preferences
3 Modes of vi
Knowing the 3 modes, what each is used for, and how to move from one to the other is key to learning vi.
Many editors are available for different versions of LINUX. However the one editor available with all versions of LINUX is vi. This is extremely powerful but has no built-in help. In more recent releases of LINUX, the vi manual page explains in detail how to use vi.