The Joy of Vim, Part One
Here’s the first in a series about how vim (“ vi improved”) is improved.
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
If you’re an Emacs user, should you read about vim? If you chose Emacs because you thought vi was crippled, or if you’ve never used more than a few of Emacs’s features, an overview of vim might surprise you: vim is both compatible with vi and is much more powerful. For instance, vim is scriptable, has a windowing version and a graphical user interface, as well as a myriad of other features that only Emacs had up until now.
If you’re a vi user, should you read about vim? Of course. You’ll feel comfortable as you learn all of the new features, which are much more than cosmetic.
Why cover vim in the first place? Are we playing favorites or what? (After all, the text editor you use is almost a religious issue among some Linux and Unix users.) Your columnist uses vi, Emacs, ed, nano / pico, and others, but– admits it– his fingers were trained for vi. In 1981, on an overloaded VAX 750 running BSD, vi started more quickly than Emacs. (Actually, ed was the only really quick-starting editor.) This series of articles will be a look at what’s new in vim from the point of view of a 25-year vi user.
