Vim 7 Released

houseofmore writes "After many years of development, Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, today announced version 7 of the widely used editor. New features included spell checking in up to 50 languages, intelligent completion, tab pages, extended undo branches and much more. Downloads available here for Unix, Windows, Mac and more."

Comments

waiting

[yagu]

I'm waiting for the emacs emulation mode. (kidding, kidding)

Re:waiting

[quokkapox]

M-x shell<enter> vim<enter>

Creating a macro is left as an exercise to the reader.
^X^S
dammit

Re:waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for the emacs emulation mode

Vim now runs on more than 15 different operating systems, so I'm sure emacs can't be far behind.

Re:waiting

[goombah99]

I've never understood the attraction of Vim, maybe someone could explain. It seems like a throwback to keyboard command line editors with it's modal editing.

For my needs I either want a nice gui, in which case I will use kwrite, or bbedit, or some IDE.
or I want something simple from the commandline, in which case pico is almost useful, though I prefer emacs for that. I am not an emacs power user. All I can do is do primive searches, cut and paste. But that's really all I need for quick command line edits.

The other reason I like emacs and it's non-modal behaviour is that on a mac, those simple key bindings are available in every cocoa test window.

So why is Vim so popular?

Re:waiting

[Nos.]

Once you've learned vim, it becomes probably the fastest editor to use. Never having to use the mouse. Being able to quickly move around a document. Complex (regex) searching/replacing. It has a steep learning curve, but it a very powerful and arguably intuitive editor. I first started using it in the mid-90s when I first got onto the big unix boxes at the university I attended. Since then, I continually find myself trying to use vim syntax in different editors. Its not uncommon to see ZZ or :wq at the end of some of my emails or other documents.

Re:waiting

[OrangeTide]

It's popular because it's like vi with some extensions to make it more modern.

It's especially handy for editing source code. Where you have commands to reformat comments, move between functions, jump to definitions and things like that. I'd rather hit [[ to go to the top of the previous function than have to enter a search for it. This is especially useful when you're going through all your callback routines and adding a little bit of code to them.

The ability to have multiple cut/paste buffers is also nice. The modal behavior makes people think Vi is a throwback, but honestly only a handful of editors are able to provide even 90% of Vi's editing features. And none (not even emacs) can do it with so few keystrokes (that does make the learning curve on Vi rather steep).

The disadvantage to such an effecient input system is when the cat jumps on your keyboard, you can have hours of work erased in Vi.

ps- I have vi-like bindings in my Cocoa windows. you can actually change how the input works and plug in something else. Or you can just tweak it to use Ctrl-vi key without even using a plugin by editing DefaultKeyBinding.dict. The emacs bindings that are there by default are pretty weak anyways.

Re:waiting

[VE3MTM]

And this, folks, is the sound of a joke going right over someone's head... *WHOOSH*

Re:waiting

[Tack]

I've never understood the attraction of Vim, maybe someone could explain. It seems like a throwback to keyboard command line editors with it's modal editing.

A lot of it, I'll admit, is habit. My brain is tightly wired to vim's keyboard shortcuts (some of which are quite obscure) to the point where thinking about some action in vim is roughly equivalent to that action actually happening. I've also become accustomed to vim's slightly more esoteric features. Would other editors do the same job and be less obscure about it? Quite probably. But the truth is that vim works for me, I've already overcome the steep learning curve, and there's really very little incentive to use something else.

Now, if I were to start fresh, would I still choose vim? I think the answer is a resounding "probably." Here are some reasons why:

• vi is ubiquitous, and vim is pretty common itself. vim is usually available, and when it's not (on older unixes say) I can still apply what I know to vi to get my job done. Obviously for those who aren't sysadmin types who only use one unix, this isn't much of an argument.
• vim is text-mode; I can shell in and use it remotely just the same as using it locally. Obviously there is a trade-off here, and any text-based editor (joe, nano, etc.) have the same advantage. But it's why I don't use gedit.
• vim is agile and powerful. I never have to reach for a mouse (or rather, I can't reach for the mouse) so you get quite proficient at common operations. vim has features like syntax highlighting and folding that I like for coding. Any modern programmer-oriented editor does this too, but vim does it all while being fast.

vi[m]'s ubiquity I think is its strongest argument. Other editors exist to satisfy the other requirements, and some of them might even do it in less obscure ways. But if you're the type who needs to bounce around on different systems running different unixes, vi is always just there. And once you become proficient enough, you're really not strongly inclined to use anything else.

Re:waiting

[CastrTroy]

The thing that most people don't realize about VI(M), is that it works very well when using things like telnet to edit your files. There are many characters like ctrl, alt, home, and such that don't travel well over telnet. Having a program like VI(M) is great when you're accessing from a remote system, and can only use the keyboard.

Re:waiting

[AnonymousKev]

I can only speak for myself. I like vi because my hands never leave the keyboard. In just a few keystrokes, I can perform actions that take an annoyingly long time with a mouse. (This is coming from a longtime Mac user). There are some tasks that I don't mind using a mouse. But when I'm writing code, I never want to go groping about for the dang mouse. For me, using vi means working much much faster.

I'll admit the initial learning curve is a pain, but once you've mastered the basic cursor movement/find/save set of commands, vi has an easy learning curve. You can use the basic command set for years and add one or two new commands as you need ("There has to be an easier way to do this..." [reaches for vi reference]).

Efficiency is the main reason, but there are many others. Black backgrounds are easier on my eyeballs; syntax highlighting keeps me from making stupid mistakes; it's on every UNIX box by default; and I've been using it for 17 years -- muscle memory is a good thing.

Re:waiting

[kuzelnik]

1. Regular expressions even more powerfull than those in pearl
2. I can configure vim to my tastes from "out of the box" state in a couple of minutes (I was tewaking my .emacs file for years and Xemacs still felt awkward)
3. very, very powerfull and simple way to create macros and scripts
4. Absolutely magnificent documentation
5. fantastic mailing list where gurus and newbies are treated very, very well. I have seen Bram himself answer very simple beginers questions.
6. great site with hundreds of scripts, tips, and other useful stuff.
7. Bram has accepted several of my suggestions for improving some details in documentation and even suggestion for improvement of some code (a script for gunzipping files) ((It wasn't even proper patch, because I have never created patch file))

Re:waiting

[PGC]

<Esc>uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu <Ctrl>-R <Ctrl>-R <Ctrl>-R

Or ... faster :
<Esc>23 u 3 <Ctrl>-R

Re:waiting

[say]

I'll bite. A little enlightenment on vim can't hurt.

instead of being able to undo the undo you just accidentally undid

Well, almost every text editor and word processor in the world has this. The command for 'redo' (undo the undone) is :red or CTRL+R.

vim can be a real surprise when it drops you somewhere into the middle of a file

set viminfo='0 in .vimrc.

And colorized editing!?!

:syntax off (in .vimrc syntax off). Many color hints are given in :help syntax, you might wanna look. A hint could be :set background=dark.

I'd appreciate a "strict vi mode" command

vim -v

Re:waiting

[fbjon]

Since when has ctrl not travelled well over telnet/ssh? Typing e.g. Ctrl-X means you send a control code of the low-ascii kind.

Re:waiting

[pilkul]

You can have hours of work erased just by forgetting that vim has multi-level "undo", and that instead of being able to undo the undo you just accidentally undid, you'll be undoing something else, maybe even an entire paragraph somewhere else in the file.

Ctrl-R to undo undos

Plus, if you count on being able to know where you will start editing a file, vim can be a real surprise when it drops you somewhere into the middle of a file instead of row 1 column 1. If you've not edited that file for months, it is ridiculous for vim to assume that you want to go back to the last place you were.

Put "autocmd BufRead normal gg" in your .vimrc

And colorized editing!?! What a treat for text to show up as dark blue on black when you've set your xterm colors to white on black.

:syntax off

I'd appreciate a "strict vi mode" command to tell vim not to do all the extra stuff that gets in the way of fingers that learned vi a long time ago.

:set compatible

You're welcome :).

Re:waiting

[GigsVT]

vimtutor

Re:waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

for editor in "$editors"; do

echo "Once you've learned ${editor}, it becomes probably the fastest editor to use. Never having to use the mouse. Being able to quickly move around a document. Complex (regex) searching/replacing. It has a steep learning curve, but it a very powerful and arguably intuitive editor. I first started using it ${some_time_ago} when I first got onto ${some_machines} at ${some_place}. Since then, I continually find myself trying to use ${editor} syntax in different editors. Its not uncommon to see ${popular_sequence} at the end of some of my emails or other documents."

done

Personally I use a number of editors depending on the machine I'm using and whatever it is I need to edit at some particular moment. The list goes something like emacs, vim, gedit, nano, and then whatever editing mode is available in IDEs I have to use, such as MonoDevelop.

I understand that people might feel compelled to promote the use of their favourite editor(s), but in all honesty it never ceases to amuse me how some people have the charming naiveness to confidently declare to the world things like "once you learn it, $my_editor is probably the fastest editor to use". It reminds me of a nice interview with Rob Pike where, presented with the stupid question "Emacs or Vi?", he replied:

[..] I don't expect any Slashdot readers to switch editors after reading these papers [..], but I think it's worth reading about them to see that there are ways of editing - and working - that span a much larger gamut than is captured by the question, 'Emacs or vi?'

Re:waiting

[RLiegh]

>Have you heard of google?
Nope. What can you tell me about it?

Re:waiting

[grmoc]

$ vimtutor
This is an effective little program for learning basic vi/vim.

syntax highlighting!

[Gothmolly]

I, for one, welcome our upgraded syntax highlighting overlords. I can't remember the last time I wrote syntactically incorrect code since I switched from vi. Of course, I can still write BAD code, or silly code, but vim catches my typos every time.

Re:syntax highlighting!

[dotgain]

What I really love about vim is that no matter what obscure language I might end up writing in during my computer science studies, there always seem to be a syntax highligt setting for vim.

Dude, you could edit /dev/kmem and vim would somehow figure out syntax highlighting for it.

Vim 7

[Anonymous Coward]

:%s/vim 6.4/vim 7/
:wq

This alone is worth it...

[digitalhermit]

Intelligent completion for C, HTML, Ruby, Python, PHP, etc.

Yup, this one alone is worth it. Need to write some code? Forget your IDE and just use the C "autoprogram" feature of the new Vi. This message was composed with :set autorespond .

Let's try it out

[suso]

quit
q
stop
exit
[esc]
quit damnit
ahhhhh

(just kidding, I know how to quit from vim)

Re:Let's try it out

[gEvil (beta)]

ctrl-q
alt-q
alt-F4
ctrl-c
ctrl-d
esc-esc-esc-esc
awww, screwit...
*power button*

Spell Check

[Danathar]

Now I can die.

vim 8 will do email

[Tack]

A spellchecker? Now, to be fair, I'll probably find that useful. Still I can't help but feel vim is one step closer to proving jwz's law.

I just can't get the hang of vim

[ylikone]

I've tried on and off since 1995 to get into using vi/vim and I just can't. I am unable to make it work as smoothly as "joe". That's right, for my choice of console-based editor, I use niether vi or emacs! "joe" has been doing everything I need a text editor to do easily since 1995. I cringe when I have to use vi/vim.

I know I will get flamed for this. Oh well, it's the truth. I'm sure there are a few others that would agree with me.

Re:I just can't get the hang of vim

[cicho]

"These days, you can even use the arrow keys to navigate to make it even easier"

Said with a straight face too, I'm sure. Only on slashdot!

My history with VIM

[ThePopeLayton]

I was a TA for a basic CS class for over a year. Upon first exposure the VIM (the editor that our system admins installed) many students got really frustrated. Most of them didn't understand how as they scrolled up on down with the mouse that random pieces of text got inserted all over their programs causing a tons of errors.

I too was pretty annoyed with VIM at first as that it is set up in such a way that it expects you to be a power user. I haven't downloaded the latest version but will do so shortly. But I would like to see a version of VIM that the everyday joe shmoe could use. Less clunky font, easier to set preferencess, and a way to turn of all those linux short cuts that we non-linux people are plagued with. I think there is a definate need for a more userfriendly version of VIM

Re:My history with VIM

[AnonymousKev]

I was forcefully introduced to vi in 1989. It was in a two-week "Introduction to C" class from Cray. The instructor (I am not making this up: his name was Kermit) had made sure that vi was the only editor on the class computer. I'll never forget his words:

vi is the most efficient editor ever written. You will hate it intensely for the first two weeks, after that you will discover you can't live without it.

He was absolutely right.

vim plugins

[kwench]

Now I'm waiting for a vim-plugin for Firefox and Opera, just like the Konqueror guys did it. So I can finally spellcheck and syntaxcheck my slashdot comments... ;-)

slightly different paradigm

[everphilski]

The paradigm is different that most other editors. Most other editors use control keys (of some sort) for functions. Vi you enter into edit mode and type away, then leave edit mode and operate on your work. It is a different concept but it has its advantages. (For one: Except for capital letters I've never had to press two buttons at once, ever ... you escape to exit your edit mode and then it is all single key sequences to do what you want. Simple things but, for example, hitting the control button requires shifting your hand in an akward position wheras :w you don't have to move whatsoever ... )

Re:slightly different paradigm

[Coryoth]

I have _never_ met an emacs user that knew how to use it. Its sad.

That's sad, because someone who truly knows how to get the most out of Emacs can be very impressive. Most of the people I know don't really know how to use vi. Sure they can do i for insert, and dd for delete line and so forth, but they hardly use the full feature set. Of course I have witnessed a few people who really know how to use vi, and that is something to behold. A real Emacs user is no different. Just because you haven't met one doesn't mean they don't exist (I've met many myself).

Jedidiah.

My favorite editor

[bennomatic]

When all the other websites were putting badges on saying, "made with dreamweaver", or "made with go-live", or whatever, I made the following for my site:
made with vi

Re:No Mac Version 7

[aardwolf64]

The link from the main MacVIM page is broken, but here is 7.0 for OSX:
http://macvim.org/OSX/index.php

Re:Vim mean...

[h4rm0ny]

Typing with two fingers is simpler than trying to remember which of the "correct" fingers go on which keys. But take the time to learn it properly and you can type far faster than you ever did before, even if there's a temporary drop in speed while you learn.

It's the same with Vi. Even if you don't learn everything that it can do, the simple fact that I can do all the major operations without having to use a bloody mouse is a plus for a touch-typist like myself. Vi is very small, very quick and very powerful. The learning curve is worth it.

Someone had to...

[Nightreaver]

Someone had to remind slashdotters of the superior editor... Ed, man!

Re:On OS X, it's all about SubEthaEdit

[caseih]

Sure but SubEthaEdit has a very annoying and on-going bug that the developers cannot seem to reproduce or fix. Invariably, SubEthaEdit litters my code with random ":" and sometimes ":w". It's very annoying. Occasionally I see other random sequences appear like "gg", "yy", "dd", and "x".

You mean ed users

[Cleveland Steamer]

From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J. LoPresti)
Message-ID:
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Subject: The True Path (long)
Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT
Path: ai-lab!mintaka!olivea!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-stat e.edu!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayu ne.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!patl
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 95
Xref: ai-lab alt.religion.emacs:244 alt.slack:1935

When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.

Ed, man! !man ed

ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)

NAME
          ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
          ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
          Ed is the standard text editor.
---

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed

?
help
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

"Ed is the standard text editor." Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

TEXT EDITOR.

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

On any UNIX box vi is always there for you

[rasper99]

The best reason to know vi is that it is unsually installed on every UNIX box. It is a hoot to see someone who doesn't know vi working on a system that doesn't have emacs do cat >file

Version 7?

[yet another coward]

GNU Emacs is at version 21.4. Can we really trust such an immature editor?

Re:Version 7?

[Coryoth]

You do know that Emacs is at version 1.21.4. They stopped using the major version number because it hasn't changed in the last couple of decades...

I had heard they dropped the major version number, but I always presumed it was 0.21.4, with the expectation that Emacs would finally hit 1.0.0 once it was feature complete.

Jedidiah.

And shockingly enough...

[ylikone]

..your site looks like it was made by someone that only uses vi.

Re:And shockingly enough...

[Cal Paterson]

A quick look at your linked site reveals the following; 91 HTML errors by the W3C html validator A horrible Mac OS X design 8 "use *"/"created by *" buttons "This site best viewed at 1024x768 or higher resolution" Links to Opera and Skype (obviously two perfect examples of good GNU/Linux software) and more a bunch of crappy amazon "paymepaymepaymepaymepaymepaymepayme" links Perhaps you should keep it down.

Re:Cut and Paste?

[Mister Furious]

Try this: :set paste

That should fix that problem, but it has some other weirdnesses. So, once you're done pasting set it back to nopaste: :set nopaste

You could probably map that to a shortcut if you wanted to make it quicker. I don't need it that often, so I haven't bothered.

I 3 VIM

[Gunark]

I'm a long-time-VIM-hater-turned-lover. I've been working with Linux systems for years, but always refused to learn my way around VIM, choosing to stick with nano instead. Why for the love of god not at least make Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Q or 'quit' or SOMETHING work???

After sitting through a presentation of a heuristic analysis of VIM in one of my HCI classes, where VIM was ridiculed for being the most un-intuitive, un-user friendly pieces of software since MS-DOS, I never thought I'd find myself using this tool... and actually LOVING it.

Well... fast forward a few months... I got fed up with nano's lack of a search-and-replace feature, and didn't feel like learning awk or sed. I finally decided to give vim a serious try. The key was finding this cheat sheet.

Now I love it... I'm cw'ing, y'anking, dd'ing away. Mind you I still prefer Eclipse for full-fledged development, but there's nothign like super quick and efficient scripting with vim.

Learn it. It's worth it.

Re:Ahhhhh....

[stuntpope]

This feature (ctrl-n auto-complete) was available in vim 6. The change in 7 is that the possibilities for completion now appear in vertical group; before, I had to press ctrl-n multiple times to cycle through the possibilities.

From what I'm reading in the vim7 docs, what *is* new is "omni completion". You press ctrl-x ctrl-o to invoke it. But when I tried that on a Python file with vim 7 installed from their Windows binary, I got "Error. Required vim compiled with +python."

Re:Interesting...

[Macrobat]

.. When did Perl get demoted to 'etc'?

It didn't. It's right there in '/usr/bin/' where it's been all along.

Re:I HATE VI. Convince me otherwise.

[the_greywolf]

...does Vim do all the stuff jEdit can do?

in a word, yes.

more specifically, Vim can do everything Emacs can do, and has a lot of features i find every other editor lacking in. there's even an IRC client.

Line Numbering,

:se nu or :set number

Folding,

there are lots of ways to do it. there is also a good deal of built-in support that works with most of what you'd do out-of-the-box. (note: i don't use folding much, but i instead rely on '%' to jump around and '#' or '*' to find definitions.)

Bracket Scope Highlighting

in the standard distribution of Vim in Gentoo, that's on by default. as you type, opposing brackets are highlighted and missing pairs are marked with color. elsewise, you can use '%' to find matching parens, brackets, braces, whatever very quickly.

... What's with search and replace across directories, etc.
Or is it that one is expected to use other CLI tools for that?

personally, i find sed to be more than adequate for the job. if you want integration in your editor, these commands might work:

:argdo %s/foo/bar/
:bufdo %s/foo/bar/
:windo %s/foo/bar/

...although if you want to modify files not already open in the editor, again, sed works just as well and can be run from within vim with :!. of course, being somewhat of a fairly new user to Vim (only been using it for a couple years now), i'm always learning new features.

My knowledge of vim...

[FuzzyDaddy]

I've been using vi or vim in some context for over ten years. Here's what I know about it:

Right slash to search

Period to repeat a command

I to insert at the beginning of the line, i to insert at the cursor

:w to write, :q to quit, :wq to do both, :q! to quit without saving

:23 to go to line 23

yy to copy a line, 5yy to copy 5 lines

dd to delete a line

cw to change a word

:syntax on for syntax coloring

ma and y'a or ma and d'a to delete or copy a block

p to paste

u for undo

x to delete a character

% to find a closing bracket or parenthesis

That's really all I've ever learned or needed. It's a pretty small subset (and getting smaller with each release), but I get by on it!

Another Cheat Sheet

[students]

I saw this Quick Reference linked elsewhere on slashdot. It is less comprehensive but prettier and easier to tape to the wall because it is printer-friendly. Normally I'm not printer friendly, but who wants to start a browser just to look up Vim features?