Vim

Vim is a very handy, full-featured, lightweight text editor available on all Unix systems. Vim and Emacs are two of the most common text editors available on Unix systems.

See: Vim wikipedia article

Vim/Notes

Vim/Tabs

Introduction

Documentation

You can find plenty of documentation available for Vim here: http://www.vim.org/docs.php

You can also type :help from Vim, which will open Vim help, and you can navigate from there.

This documentation is also available online here: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/

Configuration

.vimrc

Main article: my .vimrc file Dotvimrc

Searching

Main article: Regular Expressions

Searching in Vim utilizes regular expressions.

Find

To search for an expression, type:

/pattern

Find and Replace

To find and replace an expression, type:

:%s/peanutbutter/jelly/g

where the g means "global", i.e. replace all instances of "peanutbutter" with "jelly" (instead of just the first instance).

Using Regular Expressions

You can also utilize regular expressions in either finding or finding and replacing. For example, you can search for a 2-digit number by using:

/[0-9][0-9]

Multitasking

Windows

Vim has a really handy feature that allows you to divide the screen of the text editor into multiple sections, called windows.

:sp - split the current window into two parts, horizontally - "top" and "bottom"

:vsp - split the current window into two parts, vertically - "left" and "right"

To open multiple files and split them into their own windows, use the -o and -O command-line options.

The following will open these 3 files split horizontally:

$ vim -o file1 file2 file3

and this will open the three files split vertically:

$ vim -O file1 file2 file3

Tabs

Like windows, tabs provide a way to handle several files at once. However, windows allow you to open and look at multiple files at once. Tabs, on the other hand, like browser tabs, allow you to look at one file at a time but still have other files open, for easy switching back and forth between open files.

Tab commands include:

:tabnew - creates a new tab and switches to it

:tabnext - go to the next tab

:tabn - ditto

:tabprevious - go to the previous tab

:tabp - ditto

:tabfirst - switch to first tab (good if you have lots of tabs open)

:tabfir - ditto

:tablast - switch to last tab

:tabf something* - find tabs with open files whose names match "something*"

:tabs - list all open tabs and what files they are open to

References

• vimrc references:
  • http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialAdvanced_vi.html
  • http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html

• vimlatex reference:
  • http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/index.php?subject=download&title=Download