Your Ad Here

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Common Ubuntu vi editor command list

I would like to share some commonly used vi editor command which will be useful for the beginners who love to work in vi editor.
This will be more useful for new linux users.

Purpose vi Command
To insert new text esc + i ( You have to press ‘escape’ key then ‘i’)
To save file esc + : + w (Press ‘escape’ key then ‘colon’ and finally ‘w’)
To save file with file name (save as) esc + : + w “filename”
To quit the vi editor esc + : + q
To quit without saving esc + : + q!
To save and quit vi editor esc + : + wq
To search for specified word in forward direction esc + /word (Press ‘escape’ key, type /word-to-find, for e.g. to find word ‘work‘, type as
/work)
To continue with search n
To search for specified word in backward direction esc + ?word (Press ‘escape’ key, type word-to-find)
To copy the line where cursor is located esc + yy
To paste the text just deleted or copied at the cursor esc + p
To delete entire line where cursor is located esc + dd
To delete word from cursor position esc + dw
To Find all occurrence of given word and Replace then globally without confirmation esc + :$s/word-to-find/word-to-replace/g For. e.g. :$s/work/workers/g
Here word “work” is replace with “workers”
To Find all occurrence of given word and Replace then globally with confirmation esc + :$s/word-to-find/word-to-replace/cg
To run shell command like ls, cp or date etc within vi esc + :!shell-command For e.g. :!pwd
 


Basic "vi" features
One edits a file in vi by issuing the command: vi file-to-edit.txt
The vi editor has three modes, command mode, insert mode and command line mode.
  1. Command mode: letters or sequence of letters interactively command vi. Commands are case sensitive. The ESC key can end a command.
  2. Insert mode: Text is inserted. The ESC key ends insert mode and returns you to command mode. One can enter insert mode with the "i" (insert), "a" (insert after), "A" (insert at end of line), "o" (open new line after current line) or "O" (Open line above current line) commands.
  3. Command line mode: One enters this mode by typing ":" which puts the command line entry at the foot of the screen.
Partial list of interactive commands:
Cursor movement:
Keystrokes Action
h/j/k/l Move cursor left/down/up/right
spacebar Move cursor right one space
-/+ Move cursor down/up in first column
ctrl-d Scroll down one half of a page
ctrl-u Scroll up one half of a page
ctrl-f Scroll forward one page
ctrl-b Scroll back one page
M (shift-h) Move cursor to middle of page
H Move cursor to top of page
L Move cursor to bottom of page
W
w
5w
Move cursor a word at a time
Move cursor ahead 5 words
B
b
5b
Move cursor back a word at a time
Move cursor back a word at a time
Move cursor back 5 words
e
5e
Move cursor to end of word
Move cursor ahead to the end of the 5th word
0 (zero) Move cursor to beginning of line
$ Move cursor to end of line
) Move cursor to beginning of next sentence
( Move cursor to beginning of current sentence
G Move cursor to end of file
% Move cursor to the matching bracket.
Place cursor on {}[]() and type "%".
Use the matchit or xmledit plug-in to extend this capability to XML/XHTML tags.
'. Move cursor to previously modified line.
'a Move cursor to line mark "a" generated by marking with keystroke "ma"
'A Move cursor to line mark "a" (global between buffers) generated by marking with keystroke "mA"
]' Move cursor to next lower case mark.
[' Move cursor to previous lower case mark.
Editing commands:
Keystrokes Action
i Insert at cursor
a Append after cursor
A Append at end of line
ESC Terminate insert mode
u Undo last change
U Undo all changes to entire line
o Open a new line
dd
3dd
Delete line
Delete 3 lines.
D Delete contents of line after cursor
C Delete contents of line after cursor and insert new text. Press esc key to end insertion.
dw
4dw
Delete word
Delete 4 words
cw Change word
x Delete character at cursor
r Replace character
R Overwrite characters from cursor onward
s Substitute one character under cursor continue to insert
S Substitute entire line and begin to insert at beginning of line
~ Change case of individual character
ctrl-a
ctrl-x
Increment number under the cursor.
Decrement number under the cursor.
/search_string{CR} Search for search_string
?search_string{CR} Search backwards (up in file) for search_string
/\<search_string\>{CR} Search for search_word
Ex: /\<s\>
Search for variable "s" but ignore declaration "string" or words containing "s". This will find "string s;", "s = fn(x);", "x = fn(s);", etc
n Find next occurrence of search_word
N Find previous occurrence of search_word
. repeat last command action.

No comments:

Post a Comment