Text editing is one of the most common tasks on any computer system, and vi is one
of the most useful standard text editors on a system. With vi you can create new files
or edit any existing text-only file.
vi, like many of the classic utilities developed during the early years of Unix, has a
reputation for being hard to navigate. Bram Moolenaar’s enhanced clone, Vim (“vi
Improved”), has gone a long way toward removing reasons for such impressions. Vim
includes countless conveniences, visual guides, and help screens. It has become probably
the most popular version of vi, so this seventh edition of this book devotes seven
new chapters to it in Part II, Vim. However, many other worthy clones of vi also exist;
we cover three of them in Part III, Other vi Clones.
