Vim (text editor)

Vim, which stands for Vi IMproved, is an open-source, multi-platform text editor. Like vi, Vim is modal – an unusual feature which tends to confuse new users.

Since first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991, Vim has added a myriad of features; many are helpful in editing program source code. Vim remains popular with programmers and users of Unix-like operating systems.

Some of the main features of Vim and improvements of Vim over vi:

• Vim is 99% vi compatible
• portability: there are versions for
  • Unix, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X
  • MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
  • Amiga
  • IBM OS/2
  • Mac OS
  • RISC OS
  • IBM OS/390
  • DEC/Digital/Compaq VMS
  • BeOS
  • Atari MiNT
• multi level undo/redo
• multiple modified buffers
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode
• split windows — both horizontal and vertical
• syntax highlighting for hundreds of file types, even Wikipedia format
• support for Unicode
• trans-session history of commands/searches/registers/positions ...
• command-line editing and extensive completion
• IDE-like build/review/edit features
• session state preservation, including cursor position and history
• configurable status line
• insert-mode completion
• multi-mode text folding
• extended scripting and expressions
• scripted plugins
• remote file editing from ssh, ftp and http servers, among others
• visual mode selection with char/line/block ranges
• comprehensive integrated help system with hypertext via ctags
• code folding
• mouse sensitive

See also

• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors

External links

• Vim home page
• ICCF Holland – The charity that Vim supports.
• Vim FAQ
• Vi-Improved.org (#Vim on FreeNode)
• Manual
• Cream – A free (GPL), easy-to-use configuration of the powerful Vim text editor for Windows and GNU/Linux.
• comp.editors: Vim (Dominated) Newsgroup
• Syntax highlighting in ViM, mappings and the vimrc file
• C editing with VIM HOWTO