The Essential VI Commands

1.

Cursor Movement Commands

• hjkl
  Moves cursor in direction of arrow in command mode.
• <linenum>G<CR>
  Goes to beginning of <linenum> line in document.
  If <linenum> isn't included, goes to end of document.
• w b e
  Skip forward one word, back one word, or to the end of the word in a sentence.
• 0 (zero)
  Sends cursor to the beginning of a line.
• $
  Sends cursor to the end of a line.

2.

Screen Management

• H,M
  Move cursor to the Home position (Top of screen).
  Move cursor to the Middle position (Halfway down screen)
• <ctrl-f>,<ctrl-b>
  Move Forwards or Backwards one screenful.
• <ctrl-y>,<ctrl-e>
  Scroll screen up or down one line.
• <ctrl-l>
  Redraw screen. Useful for cleaning up screen if mode information on the lower right of the screen starts to be written in strange places or if a message from another process or from the system is written to your screen.

3.

Text Change Commands

• r <char>
  Replace character under cursor with <char>.
• R
  Replace (typeover) all existing characters.
  Press <ESC> to stop typeover.
• <<,>>
  Shift entire line of text to the left or right.
• J
  Append the following line to the current line.
• 
  Change the case of the character under the cursor and move right one position.

4.

Marking Text

• m <lowercasechar>
  Mark location with a mark named after the lower case character.
• '<lowercasechar>
  Goto line marked with <lowercasechar>.

5.

Text Searches

• /<targetstring><CR>
  Forward search for target string.
• ? <targetstring><CR>
  Backward search for target string.
• n N <targetstring><CR>
  Repeat last search for Next occurrence of target string.
  `n` is a forward search, 'N' is a backward search.
• '' (Two single quotes) Returns cursor to spot where search began.

6.

Text Deletion

• [count]x
  Deletes count characters from cursor position. Default is 1 character.
• [count]dw
  Delete count words from cursor position. Default is 1 word.
• [count]dd
  Delete count lines from cursor position. Default is 1 line.
• D
  Delete from cursor position to end of line.
• u
  Undo last editing change.

7.

Text Buffers

• <numberoflines>Y
  Yanks lines of text into a buffer.
• p P
  Puts text after (p) or before (P) current line.

8.

File Manipulation

Note: to use a colon (:) command, get into command mode then press ':'.

• :r filename <CR>
  Reads in a copy of the file specified on the line after the current line. (if no filename is given, the file you are editing is read in from disk)
• :w<CR>
  Write edit buffer to original file (This assumes that you started vi by typing vi <filename>).
• :w filename <CR>
  Write edit buffer to named file.
• :wq <CR> or ZZ <CR>
  Write edit buffer to original file, then exit vi.
• :e newfilename <CR>
  Start editing a new file.
• :q <CR>
  Quit with a warning if edit buffer not saved.
• :q! <CR>
  Quit with no warning. If edit buffer has not been saved to a file, it will be lost.