Vim (text editor)

Vim (/vɪm/ ⓘ; short for vi improved) is a free and open-source text editor. Vim provides both a terminal screen user interface as well as a graphical user interface (called gvim).

Vim's documentation describes it as an improved form of the older vi text editor (though it is built from a distinct codebase). The name originally stood for "Vi IMitation", but with the release of version 2.0 in December 1993, the expansion was officially changed to "Vi IMproved" because its functionality had increased beyond that of a mere clone of vi.

Since its original release for the Amiga, Vim has been ported to many environments including Atari MiNT, BeOS, MS-DOS, Windows starting from Windows NT 3.1, OS/2, OS/390, MorphOS, OpenVMS, QNX, RISC OS, Linux, BSD, and Classic Mac OS. Vim is also shipped with Apple macOS. Independent ports of Vim are available for Android and iOS.

Vim has been and continues to be popular for software development. In 2018, it was voted the most popular editor amongst Linux Journal readers. In 2015, the Stack Overflow developer survey found it to be the third most popular text editor, and, in 2019, the fifth most popular development environment.

History

In 1988, Bram Moolenaar began work on what would become Vim. He used the codebase for the Stevie editor ported to Amiga (by Tony Andrews et al.) as a starting point. Version 1.14 (completed 2 November 1991) became the first public release. It was distributed via Fish Disk #591 in January 1992.

License

Vim is released under the Vim license, which includes some charityware clauses that encourage users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda. The Vim license is compatible with the GNU General Public License through a special clause allowing distribution of modified copies under the GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.

Interface

Vim provides a user experience like vi's that integrates keyboard-entered command input with a full-screen editing experience.

Same as vi, Vim tends to allow a user with a typical keyboard to keep their fingers on the home row, which can be an advantage for touch typing.

Via its GUI mode (called gVim), it presents an interface with more a modern experience including aspects such as menus, toolbars and icons. The full functionality is still expressed through its command line mode.

Architecture and features

Help

Vim has a built-in help facility accessible via the :help command.

The Vim tutorial for beginners, called vimtutor, is usually installed alongside Vim, but is a separate executable and can be run separately.

The Vim Users' Manual details Vim's features and can be read from within Vim, or found online.

Registers

Vim features various special memory entries called registers (not to be confused with hardware or processor registers). When cutting, deleting, copying, or pasting text the user can choose to store the manipulated text in a register. There are 36 general-purpose registers associated with letters and numbers ([a-z0-9]) and a range of special ones that either contain special values (current filename, last command, etc.) or serve a special purpose.

Modes

Like vi, Vim supports multiple editing modes. Depending on the mode, entered characters are either processed as command input or inserted as text. Vim has 14 modes (7 basic modes and 7 variants):

• Normal: For editor commands. Generally, this is the default mode and ESC enters this mode.
• Insert: For editing content like in a modern editor.
• Visual: For selecting areas of text. Commands can be run on the selected area – moving, editing, filtering via built-in or external command, etc. Visual linewise: Selects one or more whole lines. Visual blockwise: Selects a rectangular block of text across one or more lines.
• Select: Similar to visual, but commands are not interpreted. Instead, highlighted text is directly replaced by input from the keyboard. This behavior mimics the selection mode in editors on Windows platforms.
• Command-line (Cmdline): Provides a single line input at the bottom of the terminal. Commands (beginning with :) and some other keys for specific actions (including pattern search and the filter command) activate this mode. On completion of the command, Vim reverts to the previous mode.
• Ex: Accepts a sequence of commands.
• Terminal-Job: Interacting with a job in a terminal window.

Customization

Vim is customizable and extensible, making it attractive to those who want control and flexibility in a text editing environment. Users can execute complex commands with key bindings, which can be customized and extended. The recording feature allows for the creation of macros to automate sequences of keystrokes and call internal or user-defined functions and mappings. Abbreviations, similar to macros and key mappings, facilitate the expansion of short strings of text into longer ones and can also be used to correct mistakes. Vim also features an easy mode for users wanting a simpler user experience.

There are many plugins available that extend or add new functionality to Vim. These plugins are usually written in Vim's internal scripting language, vimscript (also known as VimL), but can be written in other languages as well.

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for a specific task or adding a major flavour to its behaviour. Examples include Cream, which makes Vim behave like a click-and-type editor, or VimOutliner, which provides a comfortable outliner for users of Unix-like systems.

Improvements

Vim provides many features beyond what vi provides. Some of these enhancements include:

• Interface and workflow: A graphical user interface (gVim), split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, mouse interaction, visual mode, Unicode and other multi-language support, and session state preservation (including search, cursor position, and trans-session histories).
• Editing tools: Multi-level and branching undo/redo history, spell checking, syntax highlighting, folding, and completion functions.
• File management: File comparison and merging (vimdiff), editing of compressed archives (gzip, bzip2, zip, tar), and editing files over network protocols (SSH, FTP, HTTP).
• Extensibility: Extended regular expressions, scripting languages (native Vim script, as well as Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl) for plugin support, and limited integrated development environment-like features.

These capabilities are natively documented within Vim's comprehensive integrated help system.

Vim continually saves information to a file that allows for recovering from a crash. Generally, the file extension is ".swp", but if the user tries to open a file when the recovery file already exists, then Vim notifies the user of the condition. If the user confirms to proceed, Vim uses a different extension to form a name for a file that does not exist. The extensions are along the progression: ".swo", ".swn", ".swm", etc. The feature can be disabled.

Compatibility

Vim provides a vi-compatibility mode that limits its functionality to be similar to that of vi. However, even in compatibility mode, Vim is not entirely compatible with vi as specified by POSIX. For example, Vim does not support vi's open mode. Vim's developers state that it is "very much compatible with Vi".

Vim script

Vim script (also called Vimscript or VimL) is the scripting language built into Vim. Based on the ex editor language of the original vi editor, early versions of Vim added commands for control flow and function definitions. Since version 7, Vim script also supports more advanced data types such as lists and dictionaries and a simple form of object-oriented programming. Built-in functions such as map() and filter() allow a basic form of functional programming, and Vim script has lambda since version 8.0. Vim script is mostly written in an imperative programming style.

Vim macros can contain a sequence of normal-mode commands, but can also invoke ex commands or functions written in Vim script for more complex tasks. Almost all extensions (called plugins or more commonly scripts) of the core Vim functionality are written in Vim script, but plugins can also utilize other languages like Perl, Python, Lua, Ruby, Tcl, or Racket. These plugins can be installed manually, or through a plugin manager such as Vundle, Pathogen, or Vim-Plug.

Vim script files are stored as plain text, similarly to other code, and the filename extension is usually .vim. One notable exception to that is Vim's config file, .vimrc.

Examples

A basic "Hello, World!" program in Vim script:

Because Vim script is deeply integrated with the editor, it is frequently used to create custom text-manipulation commands. The following example defines a custom function and command to automatically remove trailing whitespace from a file:

Versions

See also

• Learning the vi and Vim Editors – Tutorial book by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb
• Editor war – Rivalry between Emacs and vi text editors
• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors
• Vimperator – Firefox extension
• Neovim – Fork of the Vim text editor

Notes

External links

• on YouTube