vim

Vim

Vim running in a terminal emulator
Original author(s)	Bram Moolenaar
Initial release	1991; 20 years ago (1991)
Stable release	7.3.353  (2011-10-26) [±]
Preview release	7.3a  (2010-05-24) [±]
Written in	C and Vimscript
Platform	Cross-platform: Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android
Available in	English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Spanish[1]
Type	Text editor
License	Free software, charityware
Website	http://www.vim.org/

Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open source software and is released under a license which includes some charityware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda.^[2] The license is compatible with the GNU General Public License.

Although Vim was originally released for the Amiga, Vim has since been developed to be cross-platform, supporting many other platforms. In 2006, it was voted the most popular editor amongst Linux Journal readers.^[3]

History

Written in 1988 by Bram Moolenaar for the Amiga computer, but first released publicly (v1.14) in 1991.^[4] It was based on an earlier editor, Stevie, for the Atari ST,^[5] created by Tim Thompson, Tony Andrews and G.R. (Fred) Walter.^{[citation needed]}

The name "Vim" is an acronym for "Vi IMproved"^[6] because Vim is an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code. Originally, the acronym stood for "Vi IMitation", but that was changed with the release of Vim 2.0 in December 1993.^[7] A later comment states that the reason for changing the name was that Vim's feature set surpassed that of vi.^[8]

Interface

Graphical Vim under GTK+ 2.

Like vi, Vim's interface is based not on menus or icons but on commands given in a text user interface; its GUI mode, gVim, adds menus and toolbars for commonly used commands but the full functionality is still expressed through its command line mode.

Vim has a built-in tutorial for beginners (accessible through the "vimtutor" command). There is also the Vim Users' Manual that details Vim's features. This manual can be read from within Vim, or found online.^[9][10]

Vim also has a built-in help facility (using the :help command) that allows users to query and navigate through commands and features.

Customization

Part of Vim's power is that it can be extensively customized. The basic interface can be controlled by the many options available, and the user can define personalized key mappings—often called macros—or abbreviations to automate sequences of keystrokes, or even call internal or user defined functions.

There are many plugins available that will extend or add new functionality to Vim. These complex scripts are usually written in Vim's internal scripting language vimscript.^[11] Vim also supports scripting using Lua (as of Vim 7.3), Perl, Python, Racket^[12] (formerly PLT Scheme), Ruby, and Tcl.

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for a specific task or adding a major flavour to its behaviour. Examples include Cream which makes Vim behave like a click-and-type editor or VimOutliner that provides a comfortable outliner for users of Unix-like systems.

Features and improvements over vi

Vim has a vi compatibility mode but when not in this mode Vim has many enhancements over vi.^[13] However, even in compatibility mode, Vim is not 100% compatible with vi as defined in the Single Unix Specification^[14] and POSIX (e.g., Vim does not support vi's open mode, only visual mode). Vim has nevertheless been described as “very much compatible with Vi”.^[15]

Some of Vim's enhancements include completion, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.) including support for plugins, a graphical user interface (known as gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation, spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search, and cursor position histories, multiple level undo/redo history which can persist across editing sessions, and visual mode.

Availability

Whereas vi was originally available only on Unix operating systems, Vim has been ported to many operating systems including AmigaOS (the initial target platform), Atari MiNT, BeOS, DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008/7, IBM OS/2 and OS/390, MorphOS, OpenVMS, QNX, RISC OS, Unix, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS.^[16] Also, Vim is shipped with every copy of Apple Mac OS X.^[17]

Vim is available for Apple iOS, and can be installed on iPhones and iPads via the Apple App Store.^[18] It is also available through Cydia on jailbroken Apple devices running iOS.^[19] Vim has been independently compiled for Android, although it can only run on rooted devices as of July 2011.^[20]

Release history

See also

	Free software portal
	Computer programming portal

• Comparison of text editors
• Editor war
• List of text editors
• List of Unix programs
• Vimperator

References

External links

The Wikibook Learning the vi Editor has a page on the topic of Vim

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vim

• Official website
• Online Vim documentation
• Online Vim help pages
• Vi IMproved - Vim, by Steve Oualline and errata.
• Books, complete list
• Vim Introduction and Tutorial

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