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Ch 01. Starting Vim
In this chapter, you will learn different ways to start Vim from the terminal. I highly recommend you use Vim from the terminal as you are typing along. I am currently using Vim 8.2. You should be fine if you use a lower version, but some commands might not be available.
Installing
I will not go through the detailed instruction how to install Vim (because there are many different distros out there). The good news is, most Unix computers should come with Vim installed. If not, most distros should have a way to install Vim.
For more download information, check out Vim's official download website:
https://www.vim.org/download.php
Alternatively, you can also check out Vim's official github repository.
vim
Now that you have Vim installed, run this from the terminal:
vim
You should see an intro screen. This is the where you will be working on your file. Unlike most text editors and IDEs, Vim is a modal editor. If you want to type "Hello", you need to switch to Insert mode with i. Type: ihello<Esc>.
Exiting Vim
There are several ways to exit Vim. The most common one is to type:
:quit
You can type :q for short. That command is a Command-line mode command (another one of Vim modes). If you type : in Normal mode, the cursor will move to the bottom of the screen where you can type some commands. You will learn about the Command-line mode later in chapter 15. If you are in Insert mode, typing : will literally produce the character ":" on the screen. In this case, you need to switch back to Normal mode. Type <Esc> to switch to Normal mode. By the way, you can also return to Normal mode from Command-line mode by pressing <Esc>. You will notice that you can "escape" out of several Vim modes back to Normal mode by pressing <Esc>.
To save your changes, type:
:write
You can also type :w for short. If this is a new file, you need to give it a name before you can save it. Let's name it file.txt. Run:
:w file.txt
To save and quit, you can combine the :w and :q commands:
:wq
To quit without saving any changes, add ! after :q to force quit:
:q!
There are other ways to exit Vim, but these are the ones you will use daily.
Help
Throughout the book, I will refer you to various Vim help pages. You can access the help page by typing the following Command-line command:
:help
Or :h for short. You can also pass the :h command the subject you want to learn as an argument. For example, to learn more about different ways to quit Vim, you can type:
:h write-quit
Opening a File
From the terminal, to open hello1.txt file, run:
vim hello1.txt
You can also open multiple files at once:
vim hello1.txt hello2.txt hello3.txt
Vim opens hello1.txt, hello2.txt, and hello3.txt in separate buffers. You will learn more about buffers in the next chapter.
Arguments
You can pass the vim terminal command with different flags and options.
To check the current Vim version, run:
vim --version
This flag tells you the Vim version and all available features marked with either + or . Some of these features in this guide require certain features to be available. For example, you will explore Vim's command-line history in chapter 15 with the :history command. Your Vim needs to have +cmdline_history feature for the command to work.
This may sound like a lot of work, but the popular Vim downloads should have all the necessary features. In my Mac, the Vim version that I installed from brew install vim has all the features I need.
Alternatively, to see the version information from inside Vim, you can also run this command:
:version
Later on, you will probably start adding plugins to Vim. If you ever need to run Vim without any plugins, you can pass the noplugin flag:
vim --noplugin
If you want to open the file hello.txt and immediately execute a command, you can pass the vim command the +{cmd} option.
In Vim, you can substitute text with the :s command (short for :substitute). If you want to open hello.txt and substitute all "foo" with "bar", run:
vim +%s/foo/bar/g hello.txt
These commands can also be stacked:
vim +%s/foo/bar/g +%s/bar/baz/g +%s/baz/donut/g hello.txt
Vim will first replace all instances of "foo" with "bar", then replace "bar" with "baz", then replace "baz" with "donut" (you willl learn about substitution in chapter 12).
You can also pass the c flag followed by the command instead of the + syntax:
vim -c %s/foo/bar/g hello.txt
vim -c %s/foo/bar/g -c %s/bar/baz/g -c %s/baz/donut/g hello.txt
Throughout this book you will learn various Command-line commands. These commands can all be executed on start.
Opening Multiple Windows
You can launch Vim on split windows, horizontal and vertical, with o and O, respectively.
To open Vim with two horizontal windows, run:
vim -o
To open Vim with 5 horizontal windows, run:
vim -o5
To open Vim with 5 horizontal windows and fill up the first two with hello1.txt and hello2.txt, run:
vim -o5 hello1.txt hello2.txt
Retrospectively, to open Vim with two vertical windows, 5 vertical windows, and 5 vertical windows with 2 files:
vim -O
vim -O5
vim -O5 hello1.txt hello2.txt
Suspending
If you need to suspend Vim while in the middle of editing, you can press Ctrl-Z. Alternatively, you can also run either the :stop or :suspend command.
To return to the suspended Vim, run fg from the terminal.
Starting Vim The Smart Way
You can pass the vim command with different options and flags, just like any terminal commands. One of the options is the command-line command (+{cmd} or c cmd). As you learn more command-line commands throughout this book, see if you can apply it on start.
To learn more about the different options you can pass from the terminal, check out man vim. To learn more about Vim modes and commands, check out :help.