LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vi
built 161 days ago
Vim is backwards compatible with vi. Switching from vi to Vim is easy: you can keep all the things that Vi offers and gain a large range of new features. Any one of these features may be a reason to start using Vim. A few are listed below, but a much more comprehensive list is in the Vim documentation, under :help vi_diff.
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Vi has its dark sides, too. The biggest one is the need to step back before leaping forward when you are new to Vi. You cannot use Vi properly before knowing at least a handful of commands. This makes the threshold rather high. Vi doesn't get fast before you know 25 commands or so, and you won't be the cool dude(tte) before you know even more. Note that this is ... true for Emacs.
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Vi ... has the capacity to copy and paste text. Copying text is much like deleting text. You give it the copy command and then a direction and distance in that direction. The copy command is "y" (yank).
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Vi uses control keys to enter some commands. Control keys are typed the same way as capitalized letters are typed. To type control a, hold down CONTROL and press the letter 'a'. Unix and vi frequently represent the pressing of control keys by placing a circumflex (^) before the key to pressed. ^A, for example, means control A. Letters preceded by a circumflex are typed as lower case letters, even though they appear as upper case letters, so don't press CONTROL and SHIFT.
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Each Vi-Spring bed is built individually, to order, entirely by hand. And while your Vi-Spring bed is utterly luxurious, it is not a luxury. It is the one perfect bed for you, the place you return to every night for deep and restful sleep, for years to come. If you've never slept like that before, it can be a life-changing experience.
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Although other stories exist, the true one tells that Vi was originally written by Bill Joy in 1976. Bill took the sources of ed and ex, two horrendous programs for Unix that try to enable a human being to edit files, and created Vi. A truly remarkable, and somewhat paradoxical, event. Read the interview with Bill Joy for a more accurate history of Vi.
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