Fast,Terse,Powerful. Review on VI Editor

Which editor to use is mainly a matter of taste, style, and needs. Big chance that Vi is OK for---at least---the last one. The long story is that, even though Vi is somewhat awkward to use at first, it enables fast, simple, and effective editing once you get the hang of it. A key concept in Vi is combining a certain action (delete, copy to buffer, capitalize, etc.) with a movement (go to line 25, go to end of document, go to next occurrence of ``foo,'' go to 2nd occurrence of character ``x'' in this line, etc.). The action is performed on all lines or characters between the current cursor position and the destination cursor position. Vi is extremely powerful in moving around within (or between) files---Vim in particular is excellent. You can jump to a specific line, to the line where you were before jumping to the current line, to the line in the middle of the screen, to the line where you just changed ``foo'' into ``bar,'' etc. You'll never have to mess with arrow keys to move around within a file. Finally, I observe that an effective Vi user simply edits files faster than Emacs people. Last but not least, you don't need a third hand (or nose) to type impossible key combinations. Don't get me wrong: Emacs is a great operating system---it lacks a good editor, though. Vi has its dark sides, too. The biggest one is the need to step back before leaping forward when you are new to Vi. You cannot use Vi properly before knowing at least a handful of commands. This makes the threshold rather high. Vi doesn't get fast before you know 25 commands or so, and you won't be the cool dude(tte) before you know even more. Note that this is also true for Emacs.

However, Emacs is much easier to use as a newbie. Rather confusing to new users is the empty screen that stares at them when Vi starts and not being able to simply start typing. There is no conclusion. If you are a Windows user and you are forced to work under Unix for a week: don't learn Vi. However, if you need a good, multi-purpose editor, then Vi is a very good, highly recommended choice. Invest some time and learn Vi. There are many good links on this page to get you started. (from website)