A Visual Walkthrough of New Features in Vim 7.0

An anonymous reader writes "Anybody who has used Linux or any other OS would be aware of the very powerful and feature rich text editor Vi. This interesting article takes a visual look at some of the new features in the latest version of Vim 7.0 — a Vi clone created by Bram Moolenaar. From the article: 'Just for once, I wouldn't mind siding with the beast if that is what it takes to use Vi. The modern avatar of Vi is Vim — the free editor created by Bram Moolenaar. Riding from strength to strength, this editor in its 7th version is a powerhouse as far as an editor is concerned. When ever I use Vim (or GVim for that matter), it gives me the impression of the Beauty and the Beast.'"

Comments

editors are for wimps

[joss]

Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c
Of course, "real men" score higher on machismo than common sense.
C'mon.. there is nothing that really needs saying on this topic, let the flame
wars begin.

Re:editors are for wimps

[Anonymous Coward]

>Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c

Huh? Try directly typing into GCC next time, you know, like:

gcc -x c - && ./a.out
  #include <stdlib.h>
  #include <stdio.h>
 
  int main(void) {
      if(puts("H., w.!")==EOF || fflush(stdout)==EOF) {
          fputs("Failed writing to standard output!\n", stderr);
          return(EXIT_FAILURE);
          }
 
      return(EXIT_SUCCESS);
      }
  ^D

Re:editors are for wimps

[Armer Hund]

Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c
A real man writes directly to the disk with a magnetised paperclip.

Re:editors are for wimps

[include($dysmas)]

a disk? you luck pucker.

in my day we had to arrange stones monoliths on hills to store data.

Re:editors are for wimps

[orasio]

Chuck Norris just stares at the phosphor triads, and the inscription starts glowing from then on.

Re:editors are for wimps

[roystgnr]

So you're the one who littered a bunch of tiny 40 ton monoliths all over the database hills I arranged, huh? Jerk. Now I have to wait for the next glaciation to reformat.

Re:Its been decided.

[SumoRoti]

EMACS ? you mean Escape Meta Alt Control Shift ??

Looks good

[1310nm]

I can see myself using the tab and undo features, but the spillchucker adn autocomplete seme useliss 2 me.

New features

[dp_wiz]

How do i enable that clippy?

"later" command ...

[martinmarv]

From the Article:
I realise that I have made a mistake. I can easily take the document to a point 10 minutes back by using the command :
:earlier 10m

Or for that matter, move to a point 5 seconds ahead by using the command:
:later 5s

... So I don't need to actually do the work any more? I can just start a new file "Project Plan", enter the command ":later 7200s" then print it out?

Re:"later" command ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats actually pretty cool. Funny thing happened though.

I cranked up my emacs to see if it had that-

M-x earlier 10y

And I got vi.

After searching the internet on how to do fucking anything in vi (I forgot the :) (thats not a smiley, its a colon), I did a :later 10y

And I'm back again. Whew. So yah, later works too.

Re:"later" command ...

[ajs318]

You've been down to the lower (higher?) levels on Nethack, haven't you?

Re:No, it's *not* Moolenaar

[Hal_Porter]

Umulated is when you emulate an umlaut on an pure ASCII system by replacing ü with ue. Or ö with oe.

#ifndef READER_IS_GERMAN

An example
E.g. Göring -> Goering, or Führer to Fuehrer.

#else

// can someone else think of some examples that don't make German's spit their coffee?

#endif

When Pressed For Time... use VIM

[chub_mackerel]

FTFA:

I can easily take the document to a point 10 minutes back by using the command :
:earlier 10m
Or for that matter, move to a point 5 seconds ahead by using the command:
:later 5s

AWESOME! Need to finish writing a paper? Normally take about 2 hours? Just type in

:later 2h

No muss, no fuss.

Woohoo: Eight Megabytes And Continuously Swapping

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, hang-on, that doesn't sound as bad-ass as it did in the nineties.

Re:Its been decided.

[Anonymous Coward]

EMACS ? you mean Escape Meta Alt Control Shift ??

Nope, as in Generally Not Used / Except by Middle Aged Computer Scientists.

Prime Difference between Linux and Windows Users

[MickDownUnder]

Windows Users DON'T get excited about text editors !

Ed, man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim is nothing compared to Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html

Re:Its been decided.

[mjj12]

No, he means Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping.

(And I even remember the days when that was a lot).

Re:Prime Difference between Linux and Windows User

[rucs_hack]

'it looks like you're writing a c++ file!'

Noooooooooooooo......

Burn him!

[kahei]

Recently, Richard Stallman gave a speech in which he illustrated an academic point about programming history by quoting a guy who described vi as 'an editor spread at sword-point and which is really hard to use'.

I think I speak for all moderate vi(m) users when I say -- DEATH and DAMNATION (in that order) to this Cardinal of the CTRL key! Needless to say my own local vim user group has dispatched assassins to kill Mr. Stallman, but this is hardly the end of the story. The fact is that a man has referred to another man who in turn expressed some often-voiced reservations about OUR EDITOR! On behalf of all editors of text everywhere, I implore EMACS users to return to the true path, lest you be burned at the stake and then go to hell, the Buffer From Which There Is No Unloading. We'll see how productive you are then, with your ctrl-meta-alt and your ELISP and your 'ring buffer', whatever THAT is.

Peace and love to all.
^C
^X
quit
q
QUIT
exit :exit
zz
ZZ

Re:Its been decided.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, wait! Don't just go to sleep without telling us what those bindings are!

Re:Its been decided.

[Anonymous Coward]

I resemble that remark.

Actually, it's the only way

[njdj]

I know the best way to learn to use Vim is to use it every day.

That's the only way. Getting to like vi (or vim) requires that you damage your brain, and a tool to do that is already to hand - vi. After using it every day for a while, it will seem quite natural to you that the letter "l" is the command to move the cursor to the right.

Real men of genius

[cabazorro]

Real men of genius
Today we salute you Mr. vi editor coder guy.
Mr. vi editor coder guy!
You type at lightning speed while while the rest of us squint our eyes in wonder.
What the hell you just did to my file!?
You scour through code like a red-hot knife on butter
now my file looks funny in Notepad!!
Thanks to you Mr. vi editor coder guy, you remind us, it's all about the code!
Mr vi editor coder guy!

B*rn you, vimperialist!

[tgv]

May the colon key on your keyboard stop working for you and the seven generations to come after you!

Re:Emacs

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said....

Enough said, yet the author goes on to write an entire paragraph?

Perhaps Neal Stephenson does not quite grasp the meaning of "enough?" Judging by the length of his books, I guess that's probably true.

Re:Bill Joy

[Nimey]

All hail Bill Joy, god of agriculture!

Re:Its been decided.

[Alioth]

I thought it meant "Eventually Mallocs All Core Storage"...

Re:Meanwhile...

[arth1]

Meanwhile, a real woman just goes and manually does whatever it is her husband's silly "program" was supposed to do.

Fetch porn?