vi editor

Agenda
Describe the background of vi Editor Use vi editor to:

create text files edit text files

Our Goal is to create and run a shell scripts

Suggested Reading
Or if your really need to know about vi try Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition from Oreilly.Com

What is vi ?
The visual editor on the Unix. Before vi the primary editor used on Unix was the line editor

User was able to see/edit only one line of the text at a time

The vi editor is not a text formatter (like MS Word, Word Perfect, etc.)

you cannot set margins center headings Etc

Vi History
Although other stories exist, the true one tells that vi was originally written by Bill Joy in 1976. Who is Bill Joy you ask?

Joy's prowess as a computer programmer is legendary, with an ofttold anecdote that he wrote the vi editor in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion.

He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and served as chief scientist until 2003.

Some Vi Ports
All Unix OSs MS-Dos Windows 3.x Windows 9x/2k/NT/XP OS/2 Macintosh Atari Amiga OpenVMS/Alpha OpenVMS/VAX

Characteristics of vi
The vi editor is:

a very powerful but at the same time it is cryptic It is hard to learn, specially for windows users

The best way to learn vi commands is to use them So Practice

Vim equals Vi
The current iteration of vi for Linux is called vim

Vi Improved http://www.vim.org

Starting vi
Type vi <filename> at the shell prompt After pressing enter the command prompt disappears and you see tilde(~) characters on all the lines These tilde characters indicate that the line is blank

Vi modes
There are two modes in vi

Command mode Input mode

When you start vi by default it is in command mode You enter the input mode through various commands You exit the input mode by pressing the Esc key to get back to the command mode

How to exit from vi

First go to command mode

press Esc There is no harm in pressing Esc even if you are in command mode. Your terminal will just beep and/or or flash if you press Esc in command mode

There are different ways to exit when you are in the command mode

How to exit from vi

(comand mode)
:q <enter> is to exit, if you have not made any changes to the file :q! <enter> is the forced quit, it will discard the changes and quit :wq <enter> is for save and Exit :x <enter> is same as above command ZZ is for save and Exit (Note this command is uppercase) The ! Character forces over writes, etc. :wq!

Moving Around
You can move around only when you are in the command mode Arrow keys usually works(but may not) The standard keys for moving cursor are:

h - for left l - for right j - for down k - for up

Moving Around
w - to move one word forward b - to move one word backward $ - takes you to the end of line <enter> takes the cursor the the beginning of next line

Moving Around
- - (minus) moves the cursor to the first character in the current line H - takes the cursor to the beginning of the current screen(Home position) L - moves to the Lower last line M - moves to the middle line on the current screen

Moving Around
f - (find) is used to move cursor to a particular character on the current line

For example, fa moves the cursor from the current position to next occurrence of a

F - finds in the reverse direction

Moving Around
) - moves cursor to the next sentence } - move the cursor to the beginning of next paragraph ( - moves the cursor backward to the beginning of the current sentence { - moves the cursor backward to the beginning of the current paragraph % - moves the cursor to the matching parentheses

Moving Around
Control-d scrolls the screen down (half screen) Control-u scrolls the screen up (half screen) Control-f scrolls the screen forward (full screen) Control-b scrolls the screen backward (full screen).

Entering text
To enter the text in vi you should first switch to input mode

To switch to input mode there are several different commands a - Append mode places the insertion point after the current character i - Insert mode places the insertion point before the current character

Entering text

I - places the insertion point at the beginning of current line o - is for open mode and places the insertion point after the current line O - places the insertion point before the current line R - starts the replace(overwrite) mode

Editing text
x - deletes the current character d - is the delete command but pressing only d will not delete anything you need to press a second key

dw - deletes to end of word dd - deletes the current line d0 - deletes to beginning of line

There are many more keys to be used with delete command

The change command

c - this command deletes the text specified and changes the vi to input mode. Once finished typing you should press <Esc> to go back to command mode cw - Change to end of word cc - Change the current line There are many more options

Structure of vi command
The vi commands can be used followed by a number such as
n<command key(s)> For example dd deletes a line 5dd will delete five lines.

This applies to almost all vi commands This how you can accidentally insert a number of characters into your document

Undo and repeat command

u - undo the changes made by editing commands . (dot or period) repeats the last edit command

Copy, cut and paste in vi

yy - (yank) copy current line to buffer nyy - Where n is number of lines p - Paste the yanked lines from buffer to the line below P - Paste the yanked lines from buffer to the line above (the paste commands will also work after the dd or ndd command)

Creating a shell script using vi

Create a directory call class Change into class vi myscript.sh inside the file enter following commands
clear echo "===========" echo "Hello World" echo "===========" sleep 3 clear echo Host is $HOSTNAME echo User is $USER

Creating a shell script using vi

Save the file Change the permissions on myscript.sh
chmod 700 myscript.sh <enter>

Now execute myscript.sh

myscript.sh <enter>

Did the script run? Why not?

Hint, think about absolute vs relative path Type echo $PATH to see your PATH variable Try this ./myscript.sh <enter> The ./ mean right here in this directory!