vim

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Vim is a text editor first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991. Vim was created as an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code; its name stands vi improved.

While Vim is cross-platform, it is most popular on Unix-like operating systems.^[1]

Released under a software license compatible with the GNU General Public License, Vim is free and open source software. The program's license includes some charityware clauses.^[2]

Interface

Vim running in a terminal emulator

For many users, Vim may present a steep learning curve, meaning that learning is slow initially but once the user gets a grasp of the basics they progress quickly and their editing becomes more efficient.^[3] To facilitate this, Vim has a built-in tutorial for beginners. There is also the Vim Users' Manual that details the basic and more advanced Vim features. This manual can be read from within Vim, or found online.^[4]

Modal editing

As a descendant of vi, Vim is modal—a design choice which tends to confuse new users. All editors are modal in the general sense of having to distinguish insert and command inputs, but most others implement that modality through very different methods: command menus (mouse or keyboard driven), meta keys (simultaneous use of multiple keys, usually involving control key (CTRL) or alt key (ALT)), and mouse input. Vim, following vi, is unique in that the entire keyboard is switched into and out of these modes. This allows, but does not require, one to perform all editing functions with no use of the mouse or menus and minimal use of meta keys. For touch-typists and those averse to the mouse, this can be a great benefit in power and efficiency.

Customization

Part of Vim's power is that it can be extensively customized. For example the basic interface can be controlled by the many options available (":help options"). Additionally 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 (":help map.txt").

Vim script

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 (":help vim-script-intro")—sometimes called VimL^{[citation needed]}—but they can also be implemented using Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. interfaces that can be included in Vim at compile time.

Bundles

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for 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

Some of the main features of Vim and improvements of Vim over vi:^[5]

• Vim is almost fully vi compatible (in compatible mode, which is on by default if a .vimrc doesn't exist)
• Portability: there are versions for:^[6]
  • Amiga (the initial target platform)
  • Atari MiNT
  • BeOS
  • MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
  • IBM OS/2 and OS/390
  • Mac OS (discontinued in Vim 7)
  • MorphOS
  • OpenVMS
  • QNX
  • RISC OS
  • Unix, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X
• Command-line editing and extensive completion
• Comparison and merging of files (vimdiff)
• Comprehensive integrated help system with hypertext via ctags
• Configurable status line
• Editing of compressed files (gzip, bzip2, and zip (Vim 7)) and archive files (tar (Vim 7))
• Extended regular expressions
• Extended scripting and expressions
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode
• IDE-like build/review/edit features
• Insert-mode completion
• Mouse sensitivity
• Multi-mode folding
• Multiple buffers
• Remote file editing over ssh, FTP, and HTTP
• Scripted plugins
• Session state preservation
• Spell checking
• Split windows—both horizontal and vertical
• Support for Unicode
• Syntax highlighting for hundreds of file types
• Tabbed windows (Vim 7)
• Trans-session history of commands, searches, registers, positions, etc.
• Multi-level undo/redo (version 7 added undo branches feature which remembers all changes)
• Visual mode selection with character/line/block ranges

History

(Note that some dates are approximate,^[8] development releases are not listed, and many minor version releases are not yet included in this list.)

See also

• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors
• Editor war
• Cream (software)
• List of Unix programs

References

External links

Wikibooks Learning the vi editor has a page on the topic of

Vim

• Vim home page
• Online Vim documentation
• Vim Tips Wiki at Wikia

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