Vi Notes

Review of vi Commands

‘a’ will go into insert mode, but one character after the curser, it’s great for appending to the end of a line.
‘o’ will go into insert mode, but it automatically inserts a new line beneath the cursor, and moves the cursor there.
’d$’ will delete to the end of the line
‘dw’ will delete to the end of the current word.
‘0’ will move the cursor to the start of the current line.
‘$’ will move the cursor to the end of the current line.
‘u’ will undo the last operation.
‘ctrl+r’ will redo.
‘p’ will paste what you recently deleted or yanked.
‘v’ is for visual mode, it lets you highlight things for future actions.
‘y’ is for “yanking” (copying) text.
‘yw’ will yank one word. likewise, you can combine it with counts and motions.
‘yy’ will copy the current line.
‘dd’ will delete the current line (you can paste it later with p, so this is effectively a ‘cut’ operation).
‘/’ lets you search
‘?’ lets you search in reverse.
‘gg’ moves to the start of the file.
‘G’ moves to the end of the file.
‘dG’ deletes everything from the cursor to the end of the file.
‘dgg’ deletes everything from the start of the file to the cursor.
‘ctrl+g’ will show you the current line number, and percent through the file.
‘A’ appends at the end of the line. Useful since I frequently do this.
‘I’ inserts at the start of the line.

“:set nu” shows line numbers
“:set nonu” hides line numbers
“:split ” splits the editor into two windows, and shows the other file in one of them.
“ctrl-w ctrl-w” will switch between open windows. You can even have more than two.

‘x’ will delete the character under the cursor, without being in any mode. easily worked around by using the delete character instead.
‘r’ will let you replace the single character under the cursor, without being in any mode. easily worked around by using ‘i’ to insert text.
‘c’ let’s you “change” things, it takes a motion. It spares you from typing one extra key.