kenn...@floss.cat wrote: > I.e. > Check manpage: 'K' > u/Ctrl+r: Undo/Redo > Ctrl+N: Autocompletion > Replace stuff ( [%.N,M] s[/:!]...[/:!]----[/:!]gi > Execute external command in buffer (%! command) > Move with w/b 0/$ > > And a demonstration of some smart-replacement with Regular Expressions > (i.e. invert an IP, very handy for DNSs, or add "DROP TABLE $TABLENAME > IF EXISTS" in SQLDumps missing it).
That sort of thing goes *way* beyond what is on the exam right now. I can see why people would want the exam to cover the BASICS of using vi (the current objective is probably already more than what is really required) in case someone need to edit a file and their actual day-to-day editor isn't around. I completely disagree with overloading the exam with vim (not just vi) arcana that nobody but a dedicated masochist would be willing to learn by heart. This may all be great stuff but it is difficult enough to convince people of the merits of an editor that doesn't let you type stuff right away so that it shows up in the file. In my experience people who grew up on Notepad and MS- Word have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea of having to enter an “insert mode” to be able to type stuff in the first place, and it makes vi, and by extension Linux, look terribly obtuse and inconvenient. You can preach to them until the cows come home about how vi is everywhere and it even works on 1970s-era terminals that don't have arrow keys but that won't make them like it any better. The fact of the matter is that once upon a time vi was the only editor on Unix that was any good at all, and that is why it is so widespread and deeply entrenched. Nowadays there are many editors that are either simpler to pick up and use (nano or pico come to mind) or more powerful (think GNU Emacs or IDE- type things like Eclipse) and there is less pressure on people to learn vi so they can edit files halfway conveniently at all. Vi still has its niches in some of the more obscure corners of system administration but even these are fading fast – nobody cares that vi is the only editor in your recovery system when the more expedient method is simply to automatically reprovision the machine from scratch (where the provisioning template makes sure that the pico package is installed). It won't be long before vi becomes like debugfs – a very specialised and powerful tool that is needed only very rarely and then by experts (not fledgling sysadmins), because expert knowledge of what to do with it is much more crucial to their success than expert knowledge of how to use the tool itself. Finally, all the neat features alluded to above may make vim a great day-to- day editor but it is not the LPI-101 exam's job to proselytise for vim as a great day-to-day editor. That choice can safely be left with individual users. The exam is more about vi (not vim) as a necessary evil. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau · ans...@tuxcademy.org · https://www.tuxcademy.org Freie Schulungsmaterialien für Linux und Open-Source-Software Free Training Materials for Linux and Open-Source Software _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list lpi-examdev@lpi.org http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
