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A Reference for the VI Editor

Welcome to VICmds.com! This is a reference for VI commands. VI is one of the most powerful and popular text editors for Linux and Unix yet is also one of the most complicated. However, with this site and a little bit of practice, you can master the art of VI. Click here for the master cheat sheet.

About VI

VI was written in C by Bill Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems. Joy is also known for his work with NFS, csh, and BSD Unix. Originally written in 1976, Joy wrote it because of frustrations with existing editors like ed. Admittedly, a lot of the ideas used in VI came from editors like ed and Bravo. The name VI comes from "visual". VI is a mode-based, or modal, editor. This stems from the fact that there are two modes in which VI operates: insert mode and normal mode. Insert mode allows you to type into the document. As I am writing this, my VI is in the insert mode. Normal mode allows your keystrokes to act as commands that control VI. As I am writing this, I am periodically going into normal mode in order to save the document, after which I go back into insert mode to continue writing.

One of the most powerful features of VI is the user's ability to quickly navigate around a document. Those users that need to make smaller changes in various places throughout a document (such as a config file), will come to greatly appreciate this. An interesting point to note is that Joy used a Lear Siegler ADM3A terminal when writing VI. On this terminal, the h, j, k, and l keys also served as arrow keys (in normal mode) to allow for basic navigation through a document. That is why VI uses them in this way as well.