Vim (text editor)

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.

User experience

Text user interface

Building upon the core vi functionality, Vim provides a user experience that integrates keyboard-entered command input with a full-screen editing experience. Vim allows a user with a typical keyboard to keep their fingers on the home row, which can be an advantage for touch typing.

Graphical user interface

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

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 Vim's enhancements include completion functions, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.) including support for plugins, a graphical user interface (gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, bzip3, zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation, spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, Unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search and cursor position histories, multiple level and branching undo/redo history which can persist across editing sessions, and visual mode.

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.

Version 9.0 added Vim9 script, a new script language closer to commonly used languages.

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

<span id="mwAaM"></span><span class="c" id="mwAaQ">" This is the Hello World program in Vim script.</span> <span class="k" id="mwAaU">echo</span> <span class="s2" id="mwAaY">"Hello, world!"</span> <span class="c" id="mwAac">" This is a simple while loop in Vim script.</span> <span class="k" id="mwAag">let</span> <span class="k" id="mwAak">i</span> <span class="p" id="mwAao">=</span> <span class="m" id="mwAas">1</span> <span class="k" id="mwAaw">while</span> <span class="k" id="mwAa0">i</span> <span class="p" id="mwAa4"><</span> <span class="m" id="mwAa8">5</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbA">echo</span> <span class="s2" id="mwAbE">"count is"</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbI">i</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbM">let</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbQ">i</span> <span class="p" id="mwAbU">+=</span> <span class="m" id="mwAbY">1</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbc">endwhile</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbg">unlet</span> <span class="k" id="mwAbk">i</span>

Versions