Vi 101 - Lather, Rinse, Repeat... (
Page 5 of 9 )
Next up,
deleting and copying text. To delete a single character, position the cursor
under it, make sure you're in command mode, and type
x
to delete it. To delete a word, hit
dw
which stands for "delete word". Nuking an entire line is
accomplished with
dd
while novelists with writers block will appreciate the
thoughtfulness of the
dgg
and
dG
commands, which delete everything from the current cursor
position to the beginning and end of the file respectively.
Oops - you
didn't just try that last one, did you? Not to worry - vi also comes with a very
handy "undo" command, which can be accessed by hitting
u
whenever you feel the urge to undo your previous mistakes.
And since undo and redo go together like strawberries and cream, you might want
to check out the "redo" command, which allows you to repeat past actions by
typing
. [yup, that's a period]
When you delete something in vi, the deleted text usually
finds its way to a temporary buffer in memory, where it resides until it is
replaced. This deleted text can be re-inserted into your document with the "put"
command; if you've been following along, you already know that the "put" command
is accessed with
p
Go on - try it. Delete a line, move down to a new paragraph,
and put it back in a different place. Simple - and equivalent to the cut-paste
functionality available in other editors.
In case you'd like to insert
the deleted text *above* the current cursor position, simply use
P
instead of
p
What about copy-paste? Also pretty easy - vi uses the "yank"
command to copy text in much the same way as the delete command is used to
delete text. To yank a particular word, try
yw
while
yy
yanks a complete line and places it in the temporary buffer,
ready to be "put" somewhere new.
You're probably wondering what all this
has to do with shampoo. Absolutely nothing - this particular lesson was
originally titled "Cut, Copy, Paste...", but I thought "Lather, Rinse,
Repeat..." had a nicer ring to it...
This article copyright 2000. All rights
reserved.
