Reasons to Use Vim over Vi

This page Difference Between VIM and vi goes over some of the advantages of vim over vi.
(Note: the page disappeared, so now we’re pointing at the Internet Archive’s March 2011 cached version.)

To list some useful features:
Multi-level History

  • Undo – n u (n is the number of levels)
  • Redo – n ctrl-r

Windowing

  • horiz split – :new file
  • vert split – :vs file
  • next window – ctrl-w ctrl-w
  • prev window – ctrl-w ctrl-p

Visual mode

  • start – v
  • finish and…
  • move – h,j,k,l
  • change – c
  • delete – d
  • yank – y
  • alter case – ~,U,u

Command Completion – tab

Insert Completion

  • match dictionary – ctrl-x ctrl-k
  • match from includes – ctrl-x ctrl-i
  • match line – ctrl-x ctrl-l
  • current file
  • next match – ctrl-n
  • prev match – ctrl-p

Additional info: http://csswizardry.com/2014/06/vim-for-people-who-think-things-like-vim-are-weird-and-hard/

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