What Is vi Text Editor

This section provides a quick introduction of 'vi' text editor, a display screen oriented editor, that allows files to be displayed on the screen and edited anywhere on the screen.

What Is "vi" (visual)? - "vi" is a display oriented interactive text editor. When using vi the screen of your terminal acts as a window into the file which you are editing. Changes which you make to the file are reflected in what you see.

"vi" was developed by Bill Joy in 1976 on a Lear-Siegler ADM3A terminal at University of California, Berkeley. The ADM3A terminal has no separate arrow keys on the keyboard. Arrows are located on h, j, k and l keys. This is why 'h', 'j', 'k', and 'l' are used as commands to move the cursor on the screen in vi.

"vi" was built upon the "Ex" editor, a line-oriented text editor that edits a text file one line at a time.

"vi" offers the following main features:

The picture below shows an ADM3A terminal keyboard, on which Bill Joy developed the 'vi' display screen text editor:

ADM3A Terminal Keyboard
ADM3A Terminal Keyboard

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 2002 - .NET Framework Developed by Microsoft

 1995 - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor Created by Rasmus Lerdorf

 1995 - Java Language Developed by Sun Microsystems

 1991 - WWW (World Wide Web) Developed by Tim Berners-Lee

 1991 - Gopher Protocol Created by a University of Minnesota Team

 1984 - X Window System Developed a MIT Team

 1984 - Macintosh Developed by Apple Inc.

 1983 - "Sendmail" Mail Transfer Agent Developed by Eric Allman

 1979 - The Tcsh (TENEX C Shell) Developed by Ken Greer

 1978 - Bash (Bourne-Again Shell) Developed by Brian Fox

 1978 - The C Shell Developed by Bill Joy

 1977 - The Bourne Shell Developed by Stephen Bourne

 1977 - Apple II Designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

1976 - vi Text Editor Developed by Bill Joy

What Is vi Text Editor

 'vi' Commands to Move Cursor and Search for Locations

 'vi' Commands to Insert and Change Text

 'vi' Miscellaneous Commands in 'ex' Line Mode

 1974 - Internet by Vinton Cerf

 1972 - C Language Developed by Dennis Ritchie

 1971 - FTP Protocol Created by Abhay Bhushan

 1970 - UNIX Operating System Developed by AT&T Bell Labs

 1957 - FORTRAN Language Developed by IBM

 References

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