VILE

Section: User Commands (1)
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NAME

vile, xvile - VI Like Emacs

SYNOPSIS

vile [-hVv] [-spattern] [+/pattern] [-ttag] [-gNNN] [+NNN] [@cmdfile] [filename]...

DESCRIPTION

vile is a text editor. This man page is fairly terse. More information can be obtained from the internal help, available with the -h option or by using the ":help" command from within vile.

xvile is the same text editor, built as an X-windows application, with fully integrated mouse support, scrollbars, etc.

SPIRIT

vile retains the "finger-feel", if you will, of vi, while adding the multiple buffer and multiple window features of emacs and other editors. It is definitely not a vi clone, in that some substantial stuff is missing, and the screen doesn't look quite the same. The things that you tend to type over and over probably work. Things done less frequently, like configuring a startup file, are somewhat (or very, depending on how ambitious you are) different. But what matters most is that one's "muscle memory" does the right thing to the text in front of you, and that is what vile tries to do for vi users.

OPTIONS

+NNN and -gNNN: vile will begin the session on the first file at the specified line number.
+/pattern or -s pattern: In the first file, vile will execute an initial search for the given pattern.
-t tag: vile will edit the correct file and move the cursor to the location of the tag. This requires a tagsfile created with the ctags(1) command. The option -T is equivalent, and can be used when X11 option parsing eats the -t.
-h: Invokes vile on the helpfile.
-R: Invokes vile in "readonly" mode - no writes are permitted while in this mode. (This will also be true if vile is invoked as view, or if "readonly" mode is set in the startup file.)
-v: Invokes vile in "view" mode - no changes are permitted to any buffer while in this mode.
-V: vile will report its version number.
@cmdfile: vile will run the specified file as its startup file, and will bypass any normal startup file (i.e. .vilerc) or environment variable (i.e. $VILEINIT).
-25 -43 -50: On PC systems you may be able to set the initial screen resolution from the command line. See vile.hlp for details.

xvile-specific command-line options are detailed in the help file (see "Standard X command line arguments"). The standard ones (e.g. -display, -fn, -geometry, -name, etc.) are all supported.

INVOCATION

vile will edit the files specified on the command line. If no files are specified, and standard input is not connected to a terminal, then vile will bring up a buffer containing the output of the pipe it is connected to, and will re-open /dev/tty for commands. Files (except for the first) are not actually read into buffers until "visited". All buffers are kept in memory: machines with not much memory or swap space may have trouble with this.

STARTUP

If the @cmdfile option is given, then the file given as "cmdfile" will be run before any files are loaded. If no @ option appears, startup commands will be taken from the user's VILEINIT variable, if it is set, from the file .vilerc in the current directory, if it exists, or from $HOME/.vilerc, as a last resort. See the help file for examples of what sorts of things might go into these command files.

COMMANDS

Please refer to the help available within vile for vile-specific commands. (That document, however, assumes familiarity with vi.) Short descriptions of each vile command may be obtained with the ": describe-function" and ": describe-key" commands. All commands may be listed with ": show-commands".

Additional documentation on writing macros using the internal scripting language can be found in the file "macros.doc", distributed with the vile source.

RELATED PROGRAMS

vile may also be built and installed as xvile, in which case it behaves as a native X Windows application, with scrollbars, better mouse support, etc. The help file has more information on this.

There is a program distributed with the vile source which is usually installed as vile-manfilt. (Two versions of the source for vile-manfilt are available, in C (manfilt.c) and in Perl (manfilt.pl).) It may be used in conjunction with vile or xvile (with the help of the macro in the file manpage.rc) to filter and view system manual pages. xvile will even (with your font set properly) display certain portions of the manual page text in bold or italics as appropriate. See the help file for details.

Likewise, there is a vile-c-filt program which can embolden, underline, or perform coloring on C program source code. (And again, two versions of the source, in C and in "flex", are available.) Again, see the help file for more information.

The program vile-crypt can be used to encrypt/decrypt files using the same algorithm as vile's internal crypt algorithm. The encryption key can be specified on the command line with "-k key", and "-m" can be used to treat the file as a mail message; in that case, only text after the first blank line will be crypted, leaving the headers intact and only affecting the body of the message. Text to be encrypted can be specified as filenames on the command line, or provided as the standard input. On systems with a getpass() library routine, the user will be prompted for the encryption key if it is not given on the command line. To accomodate systems (such as linux) where the getpass() library routine is not interruptible from the keyboard, entering a crypt-key password which ends in ^C will cause the program to quit. See the help file for more information on vile's encryption support.

DEBTS and CREDITS

vile was originally built from a copy of microEmacs, so a large debt of gratitude is due to the developers of that program. A lot of people have helped with code and bug reports on vile. Names are named at the bottom of the help file.

AUTHORS

vile was created by Paul Fox, Tom Dickey, and Kevin Buettner.

BUGS

The "VI Like Emacs" joke isn't really funny. It only sounds that way. :-) Other suspicious behavior should be reported to vile-bugs@foxharp.boston.ma.us.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 23:40:48 GMT, February 15, 2023