vi is one of the most horrible things to work with due to its design
model where you have to go to command mode or editing mode; therefore, I
find the command "`." to be of incredible use.

At some point I find myself switching from command line to editing mode
more often than I probably should. In fact I have remmapped the keyboard
so that CapsLock is my Escape Key. I often hit some editing key while in
command line and my cursor ends up somewhere in the code. I find it most
convinient to hit "`." which takes me back to the last line I edited.

Bookmarking commands such as "ma" to make a bookmark that can be
referenced by a is quite convenient as well. The "`a" command would take
you to the bookmark a just like "`g" would take you to the bookmark "g"
if you had use the command "mg" to create the bookmark.

I am thinking of getting me one of those Midi-Keyboard-Pedals and
attempt to interface it with vi so that I can use my foot to switch
between editing and command line :-)

take care,

Alvaro Zuniga

Brad Bendily wrote:
> 
> > I simply said "I should not have to read a manpage to use an editor", 
> > then it snowballed from there, starting with Joey Kelly's post giving me 
> > some features of VI that I dont' need.  Has nothing to do with whether 
> 
> 
> I have to agree, vi is a tough tool to learn. If you don't have a
> specific need/reason to use some of it's advanced features then it's
> really  hard to remember them to be able to use the next time you
> need it. That's why I have two cheat sheets taped to my wall by my
> desk. I think they've been there about 5 years, and I barely look
> at them anymore! Here's some of the day to day stuff I use:
> 
> yy copy a line
> dd cuts a line
> p paste your copy/cut
> P paste your copy/cut on the line above the one you're on
> dw delete a word
> cw delete a word then put yourself into insert mode
> x delete a character
> r replace a character with the next button you type
> i puts you in insert mode
> a puts you in insert mode
> ESC takes you out of insert mode and puts you back in command mode
> h left one character at a time
> j down one line at a time
> k up one line at a time
> l right one character at a time
> w move forward one word at a time
> b move back one word at a time
> Ctrl-f page down
> Ctrl-b page up
> / to search for text, type your search word after the /
> n find next occurance of your search
> ^ or 0 move cursor to begging of the line
> $ move cursor to end of the line
> [[ move to top of file
> ]] move to bottom of file
> o open a blank line below current line
> O open a blank line above current line
> :q quit the file
> :q! quit the file without saving
> :w write the file
> :wq write the file and quit
> 
> 
> Now, the next couple things are the reasons I wanted to
> and currently do use vi. It's the search/replace functions.
> 
> :s/oldword/replacedword/g
> 
> that will replace every instance of oldword with repacedword
> on one line. if you add a % it will do it in the whole file:
> 
> :%s/oldword/replacedword/g
> 
> also, you can do this, add some text to the begining of every line
> in a file:
> 
> :%s/^/addtext/g
> 
> or add text to the end of every line in a file:
> 
> :%s/$/addtext/g
> 
> You can read in a file:
> :r filename
> 
> 
> The search/replace stuff is what I use most often, while creating
> scripts or editing files.
> 
> Does anyone else have some cool feature of vi that they use that
> they would like to add to the cool feature list??
> 
> 
> BB
> 
> 
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