Open and Quit

1. Open Vim

Okay, ready? Let's open Vim!

In your terminal, simply type vim :

$ vim

Editor features

Vim should have loaded, looking like this:

I know... WHAT IS GOING ON??!

Let's go through some main features:

1. Cursor. This is the solid white rectangle at the top left.

2. Tilde lines. These are the lines beginning with a ~. These indicate lines that are NOT in the file. To use Vim-speak, tilde lines indicate that the end of the buffer has been reached.

3. Message Line. This is the white rectangle at the bottom. It displays useful information such as the file name (We haven't named this file we've just opened, so [No Name] is displayed).

4. Current Mode and Command Line. This is the line below the Message Line. We are currently in Normal Mode, and the Command Line is hidden (we will discuss Modes and the command line later).

2. Close Vim

Now, let's quit Vim.

We need to use 3 keystrokes to exit.

First, type : to enter Command Mode.

:

You should see something like this:

You will notice that the cursor (white block) at the top left has moved to the bottom left, preceded by the : that we just typed. This indicates that we are in Command Mode.

Then, type q, which is shorthand for quit.

:q

Then, press the Enter key to execute our command.

And that's it!

We have exited Vim, and we're back to the command line!

$

Modes

Ok. Vim is a "modal editor" - there are different "modes" or "states" of its user interface.

What this means is that keystrokes do different things in different modes. Editors such as Visual Code or Microsoft word are "modeless" or "unimodal" - they only have one mode. Pressing the "i" key will always insert the i character.

Things are different in Vim, for example:

1. Pressing the i key whilst in Normal Mode will switch the editor to Insert Mode.

2. Pressing the i key in Insert Mode will insert the "i" character into the file.

3. Pressing the <Esc> key will switch the editor back to Normal Mode.

This is why when you open Vim and typing "hello" doesn't result in "hello" being displayed on the screen!

This may seem very confusing - why would this be useful?! - but it will make sense. Modes in Vim are about separation of concerns - grouping "insert" commands (such as inserting text) for Insert Mode, and keeping them separate from "normal" commands for Normal Mode (such as scrolling to a particular line).

Here are the main modes in Vim:

1. Normal Mode
2. Insert Mode
3. Command Mode
4. Visual Mode
5. Replace Mode

Check version of Vim

If you ever need to check the version of Vim, you can do this in the command line:

$ vim --version

You will probably see something like this:

NVIM v0.2.0
... (more information here)

indicating that we are using Neovim, at version 0.2.0

Notation

We will follow a notation for commands to be typed into the Command Line (ie. switch to Command Mode).

This:

:q

indicates these steps:

1. :, to enter Command Mode (this will place the cursor into the Command Line), followed by
2. q, the command (quit in this case), followed by
3. <Enter> key, to execute our command (this is not notated)