2.6 Review of Basic vi Commands

Table 2.1 presents a few of the commands you can perform by combining the commands c , d , and y with various text objects. The last two rows show additional commands for editing. Table 2.2 and Table 2.3 lists some other basic commands.

Table 2.1: Edit Commands

Text Object	Change	Delete	Copy
1 word	cw	dw	yw
2 words, not counting punctuation	2cW or c2W	2dW or d2W	2yW or y2W
3 words back	3cb or c3b	3db or d3b	3yb or y3b
1 line	cc	dd	yy or Y
to end of line	c$ or C	d$ or D	y$
to beginning of line	c0	d0	y0
single character	r	x or X	yl or yh
five characters	5s	5x	5yl

Table 2.2: Movement

Movement	Commands
,,,	h , j , k , l
forward by word	w or W
backward by word	b or B
to end of line	$
to beginning of line	0

Table 2.3: Other Operations

Operations	Commands
place text from buffer	P or p
start vi , open file if specified	vi file
save edits, quit file	ZZ
no saving of edits, quit file	:q!

You can get by in vi using only the commands listed in Table 2.1 , Table 2.2 , and Table 2.3 . However, in order to harness the real power of vi (and increase your own productivity), you will need more tools. The following chapters describe those tools.