If you make a typing error while in text mode, you can use the delete or backspace keys to rub out characters you have typed in. Here characters are inserted in front of the current cursor position. The insert command i also switches the editor to text mode. The cursor is positioned at the top left corner of the terminal. To begin with the first few lines of the file are displayed. The terminal screen acts as a window on the file and as many lines as can fit into the terminal emulation will be displayed. to edit myfile.c use the following command. Give the name of the file to be edited as an argument to the command. Like all programs on UNIX and Linux you can start vi from the Shell by giving its name. Up to that point, the file on disk is untouched. When you are happy with the edits, you write them away to the file. You edit the file by editing the characters in the terminal. part of file that's being edited is displayed in the terminal emulation window. It is a terminal-screen based editor, i.e. The editor vi can be used in terminal emulation windows on UNIX or Linux workstations, or on terminal emulation windows (like telnet or PuTTY or SSH Client) connected remotely to UNIX or Linux from other systems such as Windows PCs. In general, the description here of vi also applies to vim in vi mode. For example, if the file is a C program, it can highlight reserved words, strings, blocks and many more. If it recognises the type of file it is editing it will highlight parts of the text in colour to show you features of the content. On Linux systems, vi is a mode of the even more powerful editor, vim. Vi can potentially run on any computer with a monitor or vdu screen. It also gives a list of vi and ex (line mode) commands. This page describes a few of the simple commands needed so that you can use vi to create files. However, it is sometimes considered hard to use.

It is a powerful editor with a huge number of commands and options. Vi, the original UNIX screen editor is available on all UNIX and Linux systems in Cardiff School of Computer Science & Informatics.

Vi editor page down shortcut