Vim is a free and open-source modal text editor available for most major platforms. It allows high efficiency in many text editing tasks but has a steep learning curve. To learn the basics, run ":help vimtutor". For non-programming questions please use https://vi.stackexchange.com/ instead.
Vim is a free and open source text editor with a steep learning curve that leads to high efficiency in many tasks related to text editing. If you wish to start with Vim, run :help vimtutor in Vim or run the vimtutor command in shell, which will teach you basic commands.
Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems and is available on a large number of other systems including Win32, MS-DOS, OS X, AMIGA, OS/2, Cygwin and many more. Vim is written by Bram Moolenaar.
Vim is often called a "programmer's editor," and is so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It's not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.
Before you ask
- If your question is not about programming, consider posting Vim related questions at the dedicated Vim Stack Exchange site.
- Vim has an extensive help system that will often address your questions. Type
:help <subject>within Vim to search for help on a particular subject; for instance::help search. The help documentation is also available online. - Search Stack Overflow for similar or duplicate questions.
Free Vim books
- A Byte of Vim
- Vi Improved – Vim - Steve Oualline
- Learn Vimscript the Hard Way - Steve Losh
Vim books
- Pro Vim
- Practical Vim, Second Edition
- vi and Vim Editors Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
- Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition
Documentation
- Searchable help documentation
Tutorial
See also
- The home page of Vim
- The Official Vim Tips Wiki
- Vim Stack Exchange, a site dedicated to vi/Vim
- There are screencasts available on vimcasts.org.
- Collection of interactive Vim learning tools on openvim
- Vim quick reference card
- VIM Adventures: Learning Vim while playing a game
- Vim Awesome: Vim extensions classified into categories along with installation instructions
License/charityware
Vim is Charityware. You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda. Please see |kcc| below or visit the ICCF web site, available at these URLs:
