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as the title. how to learn vi, bash, and i just cannot open vim. and ... what is ex in vi.

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A short, practical supplement to the thread that ties together ’s points and ’s questions.

vi, Vim and ex — quick context. vi is the original visual editor; Vim (Vi IMproved) is a superset with many extra features. ex is the line-based editor / command language that sits under vi/Vim — the colon-style commands are ex commands and ex can be invoked directly on Unix systems. Many modern installs ship a minimal vi (or a busybox/vim-tiny build) while the full Vim binary is supplied by the distro package named things like vim or vim-enhanced.

Troubleshooting why “vim” won’t start. Confirm what’s present with a simple binary check:

command -v vim || command -v vi

vim --version or vi --version shows which build is installed. If a minimal build is present, install the full Vim package for the distribution (package name varies). Also note that a usable vi is almost always available even on stripped-down systems.

A short, effective learning path. Start with the shipped interactive tutor:

vimtutor

Use the editor’s built-in help and the shell manual (man vim, man bash). Practice a handful of concrete tasks: fast navigation, search-and-replace, recording/replaying a macro, and simple text-processing scripts. For Bash scripting, learn quoting, redirection, conditionals/loops, and use set -x during debugging and the shellcheck linter to catch common mistakes.

About mouse/drag and GUI convenience. For a GUI experience use gVim; for terminal Vim enable mouse support by adding set mouse=a to ~/.vimrc (note: this changes terminal selection behavior and may need extra config for tmux/screen). It’s normal to prefer a graphical editor for casual work — Vim’s main advantage is ubiquity and power when working remotely or automating edits.

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Member Avatar for nonshatter

you probably don't have vim, as this is an extension of Vi (although essentially it is the same thing). try this to get vim (if you're using debian os):

sudo apt-get install vim

I have a great , but it will take practice to learn how to use it effectively.

Here are some of my most used commands for vi/vim:

i - enter input mode
esc - escape input mode
del - delete text
:q - quit
:wq - write and quit
:q! - quit without saving
dd - deletes a whole line
shift+a - goes to the end of a line and enter input mode

As for the ex command, I'm not sure what that does without being able to test it.

Edited by nonshatter because: n/a
Member Avatar for dspjm

Thank you...But after I have used vi for sometime, I still find it not as convenient as most graphical editors, isn't it? Especially there is no drag to us in vi.

Member Avatar for nonshatter

Yes you're correct. A lot of old school programmers love vi, and that's all I use in work. It's because we use Subversion for version control, and it's good to keep everyone using the same editor for consistencies in the team.

If I was working alone, then I'd most likely use a graphical editor like gedit.

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