Getting started
Overview
Using UNIX
Usernames
Logging in
Logging
out
Commands
Typing in
commands
Commands and
options
Communication with other
users
Email
Other
communication facilities
Files
The editor Vi
Vi commands (command
mode)
Vi commands (colon mode)
Other editors
Input
and output
Scripts
Here-documents
Pipes
Making copies of input
and output
Pagers
Emergencies
Getting
help
Summary
Exercises
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Other editors
Another text editor that is in common use is
Emacs (Emacs is not POSIX), and is invoked with
the command emacs. The Emacs and Vi editors differ
greatly in style, and being competent in using one will not
necessarily help you when you use the other. If your system
administrator recommends another editor in place of Vi you may wish
to use that editor instead, and you should refer to the relevant
system documentation. The principal advantage of Vi is that, being
a 'standard' editor, you can rely on it being available on all UNIX
systems. In common with many UNIX utilities, Vi is somewhat terse,
and some people simply don't like it. Advantages of Emacs are that
you can 'customise' its commands, and that it includes many
powerful facilities not available in Vi. However, these benefits
are offset by the complexity of Emacs for the novice user. Several
other editors should be mentioned. The 'simplest' editor is
ed (edit), which looks to the user similar to
ex in colon-mode. It is used where full-screen editing
may be problematic, for instance if you are accessing the UNIX
system via a slow communications link such as a telephone line with
a 56k modem. If you can use ex, then learning
ed should present no major problems. Like
ex, ed is a standard editor that you can
expect to find on all UNIX systems. The commands available to
ed are similar (though not all are identical) to those
used by ex, but ed cannot be used as a
full-screen editor. The machine can also edit files as well as the
user; this can be done using Sed, which we discuss later on. Simple
text editing can be done with graphical editors, such as
NEdit or KEdit (neither of which
is POSIX). These are point and click applications, which
allow you for instance to cut and paste. They are fine,
but complex editing may require many mouse movements. Also, unlike
the Microsoft Windows environment, there is no standard graphical
editor, but they are simple to use and require no instruction here.
There is also an open-source version of Vi called
Vim, which supports a graphical interface.
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