Well it is probably unfashionable to still use the same editor that I first learned in college, but heck, vi is still around. It is arcane and hard to figure out, but man is it efficient. There are two modes, edit and command, but that means that your fingers never need to leave the keyboard. Here are some good VIism that I have learned and then forgotten and then learned again:

  • When you want to get something from the outside work, bang ! is your friend. If you type !G this means that you take everything from the cursor to the end and feed it to the shell command. So that you can run a list through a sort with like two commands. I use it sometimes to get a list of all files

  • If you try to open up a directory, it runs something called netrw. This lets you look through the list of files. Pressing enter opens them for editing. Hitting x runs them. Heck, its like a visual shell

  • But the best thing is that just about every system in the world (ok not Windows) has it loaded and ready to go. So rock and roll, it is always there for you!

I’m Rich & Co.

Welcome to Tongfamily, our cozy corner of the internet dedicated to all things technology and interesting. Here, we invite you to join us on a journey of tips, tricks, and traps. Let’s get geeky!

Let’s connect