Re: vi in Debian (slink)
On 04-Apr-1999, Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 03, 1999 at 06:18:57PM -0000, Pollywog wrote:
> > vi is acting weird, and I just discovered that vi on my system is not really
> > vim. Isn't vi really just a symlink to vim on most systems?
> >
> > vim works well, but vi is weird. It acts buggy.
>
> vi could be nvi, elvis, or vim, or another VI if we had one.
>
> I use nvi here and I've never found it to be buggy. Most likely you're
> used to the way vim does things. nvi is much more authentic. I've never
> seen an advantage to using vim personally.
Major Advantages to using vim over nvi:
- multiple undo
- region select
- recordable macros
- :command history
- filename completion
- multiple buffers/split windows
- identifier completion (^P, ^N).
- intelligent reformatting (Q)
- syntax highlighting
- good online help
I believe vim is responsible for a large productivity increase over vi,
and has further pushed back any need to learn emacs. I haven't yet any
vi user who hasn't been converted after being shown a few major vim
conveniences.
--
The quantum sort:
while (!sorted) { do_nothing(); }
Tyson Dowd <tyson@tyse.net> http://tyse.net/
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