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Vi Editor



Vi Editor

A Vi is a screen-oriented text editor, which is the most widely used editor on Linux and UNIX. The vi editor is available with every distribution of the Linux and UNIX operating system.
William Joy developed vi at the University of California at Berkeley. It is a screen-oriented interactive editor. The contents of the file will be displayed to your screen, and as you make changes to the file, they are immediately displayed on the screen. (The UNIX system also supports batch-oriented text editors such as ed, sed, and awk where you submit a batch request to execute file changes.)
This editor is capable of handling multiple files simultaneously. All open files are called buffers in vi terminology. You can perform routine editing tasks within one buffer as well as across buffers. You can cut, copy, and paste text, search and replace text, export and import text to and from other files, and spell check. In addition to the use of vi for general file editing, it is also used for typing email and editing the command line.
Advantages of Vi Editor :
» On every Linux and UNIX platform
» Runs on any type terminal
» Very powerful editor
» Shell command stack uses it
» Other Linux tools require it

We can Learn in this section

1.  Modes Used in Vi
2.  Starting and Stopping vi
3.  Cursor Movement
4.  Inserting and Deleting Text
5.  Replacing Text
6.  Undo and Redo
7.  Scrolling Text
8.  Search and Replace
9.  Cut, Copy, and Paste
10.  Importing and Exporting Text
11.  Configuring vi Options