Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the editor ‘Vi’, with a more complete feature set.
This editor is very useful for editing programs and other plain ASCII files. All commands are given with normal keyboard characters, so those who can type with ten fingers can work very fast. Additionally, function keys can be defined by the user, and the mouse can be used.
Vim is often called a “programmer’s editor,” and is so useful for programming that many consider it to be an entire Integrated Development Environment. However, this application is not only intended for programmers. Vim is highly regarded for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.
Vim’s interface is based on commands given in a text user interface. Although its graphical user interface, gVim, adds menus and toolbars for commonly used commands, the software’s entire functionality is still reliant on its command line mode.
Features include:
- 3 modes:
- Command mode.
- Insert mode.
- Command line mode.
- Unlimited undo.
- Multiple windows and buffers.
- Flexible insert mode.
- Syntax highlighting – highlight portions of the buffer in different colors or styles, based on the type of file being edited.
- Interactive commands:
- Marking a line.
- vi line buffers.
- Shift a block of code.
- Block operators.
- Command line history.
- Extended regular expressions.
- Edit compressed/archive files (gzip, bzip2, zip, tar).
- Filename completion.
- Block operations.
- Jump tags.
- Folding text.
- Indenting.
- ctags and cscope integration.
- 100% vi compatibility mode.
- Plugins to add/extend functionality.
- Macros.
- vimscript, Vim’s internal scripting language.
- Unicode support.
- Multi-language support.
- Integrated On-line help.
Website: www.vim.org
Support: Documentation, vi-vim Cheat Sheet and Tutorial
Developer: Vim developers
License: Charityware. Its license is GPL-compatible.
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