• Oct 02, 2020 Vim or its precursor Vi comes preinstalled on macOS and almost all Linux distributions. Knowing the basics of Vim is helpful in a situation where your favorite editor is not available. This article shows how to copy, cut, and paste in Vim / Vi editor. Copy, Cut and Paste in Normal Mode # When you launch the Vim editor, you’re in the normal mode.
• Save/Quit a File Using Vi/Vim If you want to save and exit the current file in vi or vim text editor, and you need to press Esc key to back to normal mode, and type:wq command, then press Enter key in your keyboard.
• Another way to open a file is to start the editor and type:e filename, where filename is the name of the file you want to open. Save a File in Vim / Vi # The command to save a file in Vim is:w. To save the file without exiting the editor, switch back to normal mode by pressing Esc, type:w and hit Enter.
• To save a file, you would normally first leave insert mode by hitting the Esc key one or more times. Then you type the following (and press Enter)::w If you would like to quit Vim simultaneously, you can use the following command::wq Vim also provides an update command that writes the buffer only when there are unsaved changes::up Analogously to:wq, Vim provides a way to save your file.

Vim (Vi IMproved) is an open-source text editor for Unix or Linux systems. It is a powerful and stable tool for editing and writing text, both in the command-line interface and as an independent application in a GUI.

Take the first step in learning Vim with the basic saving commands. Follow this guide and learn how to save a file in Vim / vi and exit the editor.

• Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
• A user with sudo privileges
• Access to a terminal/command line
• The apt tool, pre-loaded in Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros.

There are many other variants of this mode, which you will discover as you learn more about vim. To save your file, ensure you're in NORMAL mode and then enter the command:w. When you press:, you will see your command appear in the bottom status bar. To save and exit, use:x. To quit without saving, use:q.

When Vim launches, files are opened in command mode by default. This means that you can move around and edit the file, but cannot insert new text.

All alphanumeric keys in this mode are equal to commands, and pressing them will not display their value on the screen. For example, pressing the letter w will move the cursor one word forward.

To type text, you must be in insert mode. To switch to insert mode, press the i key. Now you can type text into a file.

To switch back to command mode, press the ESC button.

To save a file and exit Vim:

1. Switch to command mode by pressing the ESC key.

2. Press : (colon) to open the prompt bar in the bottom left corner of the window.

3. Type x after the colon and hit Enter. This will save the changes and exit.

Alternatively, a command that will also save a file and exit the text editor is:

In which case the w stands for write (=save) and q stands for quit.

To save a filewithout exiting in Vim:

1. Switch to command mode by pressing the ESC key.

2. Type : (colon). This will open the prompt bar in the bottom left corner of the window.

3. Type w after the colon and hit Enter. This will save in Vim the changes made to the file, without exiting.

You can also rename an existing file by adding the new name after the commands.

In the picture below, we renamed the existing example1.txt into newexample.

To exit Vim without saving changes:

1. Switch to command mode by pressing the ESC key.

2. Press : (colon) to open the prompt bar in the bottom left corner of the window.

3. Type q! after the colon and hit Enter to exit without saving the changes.

This article explained how to save files in Vi / Vim, with multiple command options.

The more comfortable you feel using keyboard shortcuts, the more you will understand why Vim earned its worldwide reputation. Next learn how to copy and paste in Vim!

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Vi is an one of two powerhouse text editors in the Unix world, the other being EMACS. While obtuse, vi is extremely powerful and efficient. There may be times when vi is the only text editor available, so it helps to at least know the basics.
On Mac OS X (and Linux), vi is symlinked to vim (vi improved), a more modern free software version. Vim It is the default editor when changing a crontab.
If you gave vi a whirl and don't see the beauty of it, give the nano editor a try. It also ships with Mac OS X.

Save In Vim Macbook

Vim Mac Os

note: a chunk of this small guide came from a web page I found long ago, but I don't remember where so I can't give proper credit. I've added and changed things from the original text.

Vi has two modes, command and insert (really, three if you count replace mode). Command mode is used to navigate, search, and issue other commands. Insert mode is used to enter text.

Vi starts in command mode.

You can precede most commands with a number indicating how many times to perform a command. For example, entering 99 followed by the down arrow will move the cursor down 99 lines. '99x' will delete 99 characters.

While in command mode (case sensitive)

Vim

• move the cursor with arrow keys; if there aren't any arrow keys, use j,k,h,l
• i - change to insert mode (before cursor)
• a - change to insert mode (after cursor)
• A - change to insert mode (at end of line)
• r - replace one character
• R - overwrite text
• x - delete one character
• dd - delete one line
• yy - yank line (copy)
• p - paste deleted or yanked text after cursor
• P - paste deleted or yanked text before cursor
• G - go to end of the file
• 1G - go to top of the file
• J - merge next line with this one
• / - search, follow / with text to find
• :wq - write file and quit
• :q! - quit without saving
• %s/old/new/g - substitute; replace 'old' with 'new' on all lines
• :g/pattern/d - delete all lines that match the pattern

Save File In Vim Mac

While in insert mode

Save Changes In Vim Mac

• ESC - change to command mode
• any text typed is entered at the cursor

Typical vi session

1. Type 'vi file.txt' at command prompt
2. Move cursor to where new text will be added
3. Type 'i' to change to insert mode
4. Type new text
5. Type ESC to go back to command mode
6. type ':wq' and ENTER to write the file and quit