Using vi on unix...

I don't want to take away posts from the poll on vi or emacs but after seeing that, I was wondering if anyone could help in starting to use vi...i type vi at the command line and all this ~ comes up at the side of the screen.

I can't type anything or do anything unless i suspend the process.
Could anyone point me in the right direction of actually getting somewhere with it, as there must be something for it to do, apart from displaying scores of ~ ?

Thanks

Ba$tard

Moonhawk,

You are in VI then.... ~ denotes a null line.

Pressing 'I' (insert) or 'A' (append) will put you to type mode.
Type away then....

Pressing escape will bring you back to command mode, where you can do a : then w (write) and then q (to quit)

Go on and read the Vi documentation.....plenty of fun...
Very easy when you get used to it

Lemming

follow these two links. Quick, clean and to the point about using vi

Intro to vi
Using vi

Have fun

Typedef

You are probably in command mode.

for example;

Typedef@Uber_Slackware$ vi hello.c

vi starts and we are probably in command mode ok, so in command mode we can do lots of fun things like type i if I want to input or a if I want to append or whatever vi command you want to use, if we make a mistake press escape now type :viusage, this should give you some information on vi's usage /or something\

Typedef

moist

If you have vim installed you can use
the command vimtutor to start the vim tutor funnily enough
Its a little bit more friendly than vi, and also has a lot more features.

Also you should try to get yourself a decent vimrc theres a minimal sample on www.vim.org
In the meantime there are 2 commands that really make things easier

set bs=2
set nocompatible

Stick that (append?) in ~/.vimrc

leeroybrown

When in Vi:

At any time you want to use an editor command hit the Escape key.

Then i for insert

dd for delete the current line

:w to write to file

:q to quit

:q! to quit without saving.