Which unix text editor should I learn?

Question

Maybe it should be a community wiki page ...

Which unix text editor should I learn? My employees mostly use vi. I think of vim because syntax highlighting seems attractive. Are there any advantages to vi over vim?

I know there are a lot of emacs fans out there? Is there any reason to study a particular editor?

Can you point me to some good training links (for your proposed editor)?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Learn nvi, vim (essentially the same thing for the main operation) and emacs to the extent that you can make minor changes. Then decide which one you prefer and study it more carefully. I have a preferred editor, which is one of these three, but can perform basic editing tasks with all of them.

Answer 2

If you are not sure, try a few of them:

• vi / vim
• emacs
• joe
• pico
• ed

Use what works best for your needs. Providing someone else with a solution is not a great idea for you.

Here is a more comprehensive list with feature comparisons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors

Answer 3

The advantage of vi over vim is that it is 100% available everywhere. vim cannot be.

You might want to try vi and emacs. This is a religious thing - you can never get a good answer, preferring each other, because the answer depends mainly on your own preferences / unhealthy / preferences / needs.

If you know pico, as you noted in one comment, emacs might be easier for you to find out than if you hadn’t, since pico was made by IIRC as "emacs very lite"

In addition, it cannot be said that most good Windows editors support editing files from Unix file systems via FTP or if you have available, mounted disks. You need to learn A unix editor just in case (more than one), but you will not block its use, even if you perform Unix programming as the main editor.

Answer 4

With this question you are looking for an answer in a holy war. This probably means that vi (m) and emacs will suit your needs.

For vim, I often used this site: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki

And this cheat sheet: http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/QRC/VIM%20Quick%20Reference%20Card.pdf

Answer 5

use emacs of course! :)

i only got into emacs because bash command line editing uses emacs-like key sequences, but by default; U may include vi keys if U wants. it is a matter of taste, I think. emacs can process binaries transparently, but again, since I only know how to get out of the scary vi (: q), I don’t know how vi handles them. as already noted, try a few of them to see what suits your needs.