Product Description Ready-to-use hacks with solutions for common situations encountered by users of the Vim editor * Create, install, and use Vim scripts to extend Vim's functionality * Personalize your work-area to fit your workflow * Optimize your Vim editor to be faster and more responsive * Packed with tips and tricks based on the author's practical experience In Detail Vim is one of the most powerful open-source editors used by programmers and system administrators around the world. While Vim itself is inherently a powerful editor, personalizing it to suit your needs can be a daunting task. However, it is possible to do so with the help of this book. This book contains examples that cover everything from personalizing Vim according to the your work cycle to optimizations that will boost the your productivity. The main focus of this book is to make your life, as a Vim user, easier. Each chapter deals with a different aspect, and provides recipes for easy-to-use hacks to customize and simplify your Vim experience. After an introduction covering the derivation of Vim and its relatives from the vi editor, the author explains basic changes that you can make to the appearance of the Vim editor. Further chapters cover improved navigation through files and buffers in Vim; speeding up your work with templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers; and formatting text and code, including using external formatting scripts. The final comprehensive chapter covers everything about using Vim scripts and scripting to extend functionality. This book is written for Vim 7.2, the latest stable version. This latest version of Vim includes many new features like spell-checking, code completion, document tabs, current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and much more. Getting the most out of the Vim editor What you will learn from this book * Gain a deep understanding of Vim to master the editor * Personalize Vim to suit your needs * Navigate through files faster while editing multiple files * Boost your productivity by using templates, auto-completion, folding, sessions, and registers * Improve the formatting of your text and code by mastering simple tricks * Extend Vim with script * Retain your Vim configuration across computers by storing an online copy Approach This book is a tutorial packed with ready-to-use hacks that give solutions for common problems faced by Vim users in their everyday life. Every chapter covers a set of recipes, each of which follows a systematic approach with a self-contained description of the task it covers, how to use it, and what you gain by using it. The minimum version of Vim required for each hack is clearly indicated. Who this book is written for If you are a Vim user who wants to get more out of this legendary text editor, this book is for you. It focuses on making life easier for intermediate to experienced Vim users.

There's nothing that hard-core Unix and Linux users are more fanatical about than their text editor. Editors are the subject of adoration and worship, or of scorn and ridicule, depending upon whether the topic of discussion is your editor or someone else's. vi has been the standard editor for close to 30 years. Popular on Unix and Linux, it has a growing following on Windows systems, too. Most experienced system administrators cite vi as their tool of choice. And since 1986, this book has been the guide for vi. However, Unix systems are not what they were 30 years ago, and neither is this book. While retaining all the valuable features of previous editions, the 7th edition of Learning the vi and vim Editors has been expanded to include detailed information on vim, the leading vi clone. vim is the default version of vi on most Linux systems and on Mac OS X, and is available for many other operating systems too. With this guide, you learn text editing basics and advanced tools for both editors, such as multi-window editing, how to write both interactive macros and scripts to extend the editor, and power tools for programmers -- all in the easy-to-follow style that has made this book a classic. Learning the vi and vim Editors includes: A complete introduction to text editing with vi: * How to move around vi in a hurry * Beyond the basics, such as using buffers *vi's global search and replacement * Advanced editing, including customizing vi and executing Unix commands How to make full use of vim: * Extended text objects and more powerful regular expressions * Multi-window editing and powerful vim scripts * How to make full use of the GUI version of vim, called gvim *vim's enhancements for programmers, such as syntax highlighting, folding and extended tags Coverage of three other popular vi clones -- nvi, elvis, and vile -- is also included. You'll find several valuable appendixes, including an alphabetical quick reference to both vi and ex mode commands for regular vi and for vim, plus an updated appendix on vi and the Internet. Learning either vi or vim is required knowledge if you use Linux or Unix, and in either case, reading this book is essential. After reading this book, the choice of editor will be obvious for you too.