Editor: vim

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Revision as of 22:36, 26 February 2010 by RobertH (Talk | contribs)

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vim is a console-based cross-platform editor, mostly used by Lunix and other Unix users. It can be a very powerful, but also difficult to learn tool.

vim has two modes, an insertion mode that you can access by using the [Ins] key, and the command mode it starts with, which you can get back to with [Esc]

Useful commands

In command mode, the text can be searched by entering a slash and then typing the text one is looking for. If you want to see the next hit of the search, type "n".

Saving is done by entering ":w" and then hitting enter, quitting by ":q" and if you want to save and quit, the two are just concatenated to ":wq"

Setting up Vim for coding

Add the following to your .vimrc file:

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set softtabstop=4
set smarttab
set smartindent
set expandtab
set autoindent

If you want Vim to do more while you are coding:

syntax on
filetype on
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on