words and language

This is the first time I've given any book five stars. That's because this is the best pocket quick reference of VI you're going to find. The information is presented as concisely as it can be and still remain accessible. Other, terser (and, yes, less expensive) quick reference cards for VI are too cryptic to be useful, in my opinion.

If you don't already know VI, try an on-line tutorial (there are plenty) or buy the more complete "Learning VI" book from O'Reilly to get you started. After you've acquired the basics, periodically refer to the Pocket Reference to add yet another "I didn't know VI did that" command to your toolkit.

Just like O'Reilly's other books, this one shows you what you need to know about vi plus the other vi clones out there like VIM and Elvis. I've used Unix for years and it was nice to find this little reference. It's laid out by logical categories which makes finding the commands easy. I should say first 'easy' meaning you've used vi before, just need to lookup the syntax of a command. The last page shows you how to get information on the other vi type editors. I can tell you for sure elvis and vim are open source, which means FREE :-).

If you're a total newbie to vi and Unix, I'd suggest the Unix in a Nutshell book. If you just need vi, try Learning the vi Editor. Then the pocket reference can be for quick lookups. The O'Reilly books are great for the 'how do i do ???'. I've used the Nutshell books for years and haven't found a bad one yet.

The only reason I couldn't give this 5 stars was the price - [$] for about 66 pages seems a bit much. I just like having this small reference than having to drag my Unix In A Nutshell book around with me.

I always only knew enough of vi to get me in and out of it without getting frustrated. A very basic understanding such as the commands i, a, o, dd, dw, Y and P. Actually, those were just about all I used except for wq! I did all of my coding in GUI IDE's and such... Mainly 'Moleskine' (which is a very very nice editor, by the way).

Recently, I realized that I hate having to always remove my hands from the keyboard every time I wanted to cut and paste or even scroll down the page. I decided to move on to vi. I tried elvis and vim. Since I don't like true in my source code, and work suggests 4 spaces instead of , then I had to go with vim because elvis didn't have the expand tab option.

Anyway, I'm amazed at what vim (and elvis too) can do! I started out reading the vim and elvis docs and saw a whole slew of things it can do. This is going to save me a lot of time and effort when coding! I got some nice syntax highlighting set up in vim (to match how elvis does it... just black and white. easy on the eyes.) and learned a lot of about the editor.

I figured that I wouldn't remember everything there was to know about the vi commands and such, so I went out and bought this book. Over the past 2 days I have been diving into it at least 10 times a day to discover if there are any commands or to get the right syntax for the ones I remember. This is already worth the [money] I spent on it!! I've learned a lot of things from it already.

I'd say if you are a seasoned vi user, this book isn't going to be of much help to you. Also, if you are a new user to VI, you need to get a full tutorial such as the parent book to this so they can walk you through some things. This book is just a *Pocket Reference*! Meaning, if you forget a commands syntax, this is a good thing to have on your desk so you can grab it quickly! It's not going to teach you squat about vi if you don' t know how to even enter Insert mode! However, if you're like me and you only know enough to get you in and out of vi, pick this book up! You'll be amazed at the commands you have been missing and the commands that will help you very very much! VI beats a GUI editor for efficiency and productivity, hands down!

Now, back to coding!