Vi 101 - Of Files And Windows (
Page 8 of 9 )
You've
already seen that
$ vi <filename>
starts vi with the file specified already loaded. But why
restrict yourself to one - you can load multiple files in this manner:
$ vi file1 file2 file3
To switch between files, use these commands:
:next =
go to the next file in the file list
:rewind = go to the first file in the
file list
:last = go to the last file in the file list
To exit all
files at once, use
:qa!
to exit without saving, or
:wqa
to save all changes and exit [the "a" here means
"all"]
Once you've started vi, you can also load a new file into the
editor with the "edit" command, like this
:e /path/to/file.txt
If you'd prefer to insert the contents of another file
directly into the document you're currently editing, there's a "read" command
designed to do just that. Try it!
:read /path/to/file_to_be_inserted.txt
If you're a programmer, you'll definitely appreciate vi's
ability to provide you with multiple views of the same file, referred to in geek
speak as "window splitting". And the command is, naturally,
:split
Each of the windows created can be manipulated independent of
the others, although changes made to the file will be immediately visible in all
of them.
Let's take it one step further - how about having *different*
files loaded into each of the windows? For example, wouldn't it be nice if you
could load an HTML form into one, the associated CGI script into another, some
help documentation into the third, and have all three visible at the same
time?
Well, you can - simply use the "new" command to create a new window
for each file, like this:
:new form.html
:new mailform.cgi
:new help.txt
To switch between windows, use
^W W [that's Ctrl-W, immediately followed by W]
This article copyright 2000. All rights
reserved.
