1 What is VIM

According to www.vim.org, "VIM is an improved version of the editor vi, one of the standard text editors on UNIX systems. VIM adds many of the features that you would expect in an editor: unlimited undo, syntax coloring, split windows, visual selection, graphical user interface, and much much more."

2 Insert Mode

Insert mode is used to enter text. Hence, anything you type will be entered into the document. You can also enter some special formating characters while in insert mode, including:

To move from insert mode to command mode press Esc.

3 Command Mode

VIM starts in command mode. In VIM, commands have the following general syntax:

[ number-of-times ] operator [ number-of-objects ] object

where number-of-times is the number of times the operator is repeated, number-of-objects is the number of objects to act on, and an object is either a word (w), sentence, paragraph, section, remainder of the line ($), or "movement" (see movement operators below).

The basic save and exit operators are:

The basic editing operators are:

Editing Operators	Movement Operators
c	Begin a change	w	Forward by word
d	Begin a deletion	b	Backward by word
y	Begin a yank	)	Beginning of next sentence
i	Insert before cursor	(	Beginning of current sentence
a	Append after cursor	}	Beginning of next paragraph
o	Open a line below cursor	{	Beginning of current paragraph
p	Insert last deleted text after cursor	]	Beginning of next section
P	Insert last deleted text before cursor	[	Beginning of current section
=	Fix the indenting	H	Top line of screen
		L	Last line of screen
		%	Move to the matching bracket
Search Operators	Editing Commands
/text	Search forward for text	:s/old/new	Change the next old to new
n	Repeat previous search	:s/old/new/g	Change all old on the current line to new
N	Repeat prev. search in opposite direction	:%s/old/new/g	Change old to new everywhere
?text	Search backward for text	r	Replace the highlighted character
:n	Go to line number n	x	Delete the highlighted character

For example: