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Getting along with vile (version 5.5) ----------------------- ------------- Use Ctrl-D and Ctrl-U to scroll through this help information. Type Ctrl-O to make this the only window on the screen. Type Ctrl-K to get rid of this window. First, to leave vile, use any of the following: :q :quit :exit :wq (writes current buffer before quitting) :q! (quits without writing any changes!) Q :wwq or ZZ (will write all changed buffers) ^X-^C (don't know why. _They_ don't put in ":q" for _us_! Actually, if ^C is your interrupt character, this won't get you out of vile.) To get help (probably just this text), use any of: :h :help ^X-h ^A-h The only vile commands described herein are those not present in vi, or differing greatly from those in vi. There is a section at the bottom describing other differences between vile and vi. To get a complete list of all commands, type ":list-commands". To get a list of all commands that contain the string "name", type ":apropos name". These lists will show all command synonyms and key sequences that are bound to the same function, along with a short description of the command, and whether it is a motion or operator command. To get information on a specific key-binding or function, use the "describe-key" or "describe-function" commands. You will be asked for a keystroke or function name, and a short description will be shown. You needn't type full command names -- type a few characters and hit TAB to perform command completion. Hitting a second TAB will pop up a window containing the list of possible completions. If your screen hops around a lot when you scroll, see the "Note on Scrolling" section near the bottom of this file. General Remarks --------------- vile holds text in "buffers". Usually, these correspond to a file that you are editing, but not always. For instance, a buffer might be used to display this help text, or to hold the output of a shell command that you have run. Buffers have names, and these usually match the names of the files they contain. Buffers are sometimes displayed in windows. A buffer may be displayed in more than one window at the same time. There is no such thing as a hidden window. All existing windows are on the screen. There may, however, be hidden buffers, which are not currently associated with any window. All yank/delete registers (the default unnamed register, the numbered registers ("1-"9) that hold line-deletes, and the named registers ("a-"z)) are global to the editor, and not attached to any single buffer. Thus you can delete text in one buffer and put it back in another. Undo operations are attached to a buffer, not a window. Thus if you have two windows to the same buffer, and make a change in one, you can undo it in the other. vile is 8-bit clean, allowing it to be used more easily at non- English speaking sites. See the section on "8-Bit Operation" for more information. Command Prefixes ---------------- To extend the vi command set in vile, two (or three, depending on how you count them) command "prefixes" exist. These keystrokes, in combination with another key, can be bound as a pair to execute any vile function. The default values for these prefixes are Key: Bound to dummy function: ^X Control-X cntl_x-prefix ^A Control-A cntl_a-prefix # poundsign function-prefix If you find any of these keys hard to type, or would prefer that they are all control characters (or all non-control), they can be changed by binding a new key to the function listed above. See the section on "Key Rebinding" below. If you do change the values of these keys, most of vile's informational displays (the Binding List, for instance) will reflect these changes. This documentation, of course, will not change. (The '#' key is used in vi to give terminal independent access to function key bindings. This is also true in vile -- if something is bound to '#2', then it is also probably available with key F2 on your keyboard.) Buffer manipulation commands: ----------------------------- vile stores buffers in a sorted list. Depending on the setting of the "autobuffer" mode, this list is either sorted in "most-recently-used" order (this is the vile default), or in a fixed order dependent on the order of editing (this is how vi normally does it, and can be attained by turning "autobuffer" off, with "set noautobuffer"). _ Show a list of the first 9 buffers. Follow this command with a digit to select that buffer, or simply repeat it ("__") to select the buffer most-recently visited. In autobuffer mode, this is identical to "_1". If autobuffer mode is off, the buffer which will be visited with "__" is flagged with a '#' character in the list. Modified buffers are preceded by a '*' in the history list. There are many different ways to get the previous file: __ _1 (autobuffer mode on) 1_ ( " " ") :e# ^^ (ctrl-^) (but many keyboards can't produce this) The buffer number may also precede the '_' command. This is necessary when visiting buffers numbered higher than '9'. For example, one would type "13_" to visit buffer 13 in the list. [ See the note under "Differences", below, for comments on vi's use of '_'.] :e Edit a file. If the file is already in a buffer, that buffer will be recalled into the current window. This occurs as follows: If the name given contains no path delimiters (i.e. slashes), then it will be compared to the existing vile buffer names. Failing that comparison (or if there are any slashes in the name), the name will be stretched into an absolute path, and will be compared to the existing buffers' filenames. In either case, the matching buffer will be chosen. If there are no such matches, the file will be fetched from the filesystem. This matching technique introduces an ambiguity, since buffer names are created from the last path component of filenames. To force vile to edit a file from the current directory whose basename matches that of one that was edited elsewhere, simply preface the name with "./". For example, if you edit "../Makefile" and later attempt to edit "Makefile", vile will assume you are referring to the _buffer_ named "Makefile". To get the file in the current directory, specify "./Makefile". :e! Re-edit a file. A different filename can be given, and the buffer name will change to match it. This command is not as necessary in vile as it is in vi, since multiple buffers may have outstanding unwritten changes. :n Go to the next buffer. "Next" means "least recently used" in autobuffer mode. In noautobuffer mode, "next" means next in numeric sequence. (The ":n file ..." version of the command is not supported.) :rename-buffer Rename the current buffer. Prompts for a new name. Does not affect the filename associated with the buffer. Use ":f" to do that. This command is useful for renaming the "[Output]" buffer, if you wish to preserve its contents, but run a new command. :rewind Go to the first buffer. This is used only in 'noautobuffer' (vi-style buffering) mode. It does nothing in "autobuffer" mode. Remember that "autobuffer" mode is the default. :b Edit a buffer. Recalls the named buffer. Does not look for a file of that name. Will find "invisible" buffers. :ki Kill a buffer. Remove the buffer and its contents from the editor. Will ask if changes to the buffer should be discarded. ^X-e Edit the file whose pathname appears under the cursor. For example, if you are editing a makefile, you could edit one of the source files by placing the cursor at the start of its name and using this command. Note that this does not know about some characters that your shell might usually translate for you, like the '$' in '$HOME'. ^X-k Kill the buffer whose name or filename appears under the cursor. * Display a list of all buffers, or make that display go away if it's already present. Leave your finger on the key, and it's easy to create and destroy the list. The buffers are numbered; the numbers correspond to the history numbers shown and used by the '_' command, described above. (If the buffer number is greater than 9, then the "nn_" form of the '_' command must be used, since '_' will only accept a single following digit.) The order of the list is either most-recently-used, or fixed, depending on the setting of "autobuffer" mode (see below). vile attempts to keep the contents of the buffer list window up to date if it is left up on the screen while other buffer manipulation commands are given. ^A-* Always display a list of all buffers. Useful for updating the list if it's already on the screen but may be out of date. Any argument will cause the list to include _all_ buffers, even those normally considered "invisible". (For example, macros are stored in "invisible" buffers.) [This command isn't as necessary now that the buffer list is maintained dynamically...] Window manipulation commands: ----------------------------- ^X-2 Make Two windows. Splits the current window in half. This is the usual way to create a new window. ^K or ^X-0 Get rid of (Kill) this window. ^O or ^X-1 Make this the Only window on the screen. ^X-o Move to the next window. ^X-O Move to the previous window. v Make the current window smaller. V Make the current window larger. ^A-^D Scroll the next window down half a screen. ^A-^U Scroll the next window up half a screen. ^A-^E Scroll the next window up one line. ^A-^Y Scroll the next window down one line. (The previous four commands are useful when comparing two buffers. Mnemonic -- think of them as affecting the "A"lternate window.) zH zM zL These are synonyms for vi's 'z+', 'z.', and 'z-', which position the line holding the cursor at the top, middle, or bottom of the screen, respectively. ^X-^R Scroll the window right or left by 1/3 of a screen, or by the ^X-^L number of columns specified. Changes the "sideways" value. Neither of these commands will actually move the cursor in the buffer -- they only reframe your view into the buffer. If the cursor would be forced to move off-screen (which is of course impossible and undesirable) as a result of the requested sideways scroll, then nothing at all will happen. The commands are arguably crippled as is. If for some reason you can't get your screen set right via a TERM variable, try the ":screen-rows" or ":screen-columns" commands (which take their args (number of rows or columns respectively) before you type the ":"). [ Personally, I put the following bindings in my .vilerc: bind-key split-current-window ^T ; split into 'T'wo windows bind-key next-window ^N ; 'N'ext window bind-key previous-window ^P ; 'P'revious window Since ^K already 'K'ills a window, and ^O makes it the 'O'nly window, these give more mnemonic, and faster, access to multiple windows. (These would be the default, but ^N, ^P, and ^T have other meanings in real vi (all of which have alternate bindings in vile.) ] File manipulation commands: --------------------------- The usual ":e", ":r", ":f", ":w" commands are available, though only ":e!" and ":w!" are available of the "!" options. The ":r" command reads the named file in after the current line. To read a file before the first line, use ":0r". File completion works like command completion: using the TAB and '?' keys you can complete or see next character choices. The ":w!" and ":x!" are present, and are synonymous with ":w" and ":x" since there is no "readonly" mode to override. (Actually, ":w!" is not quite synonymous -- it can be used to force a write when an attempt to create a backup file has failed. See the "backup-style" mode, below.) The commands ":ww" and ":wwq" correspond roughly to ":w" and ":wq", but they each write all modified buffers, rather than just the current one. Giving any numeric argument to ":ww" (i.e. "1:ww") will suppress the per-file and "Press return to continue" message. This may be useful when using the command from within a macro. As in vi, ranges of lines specified by line numbers (including '.', '$', and '%' shorthands) or marks may precede these commands. Unlike vi, search patterns cannot be used as line specifiers. In addition, two non-"colon" commands have been added: ^R Prompts for a filename, and then reads it in _above_ the current line. If a register is specified (e.g. "a^R ), the file is read into that named register, but not inserted into the current buffer. ^W is a writing operator, which prompts for a filename, and writes the specified region to that file. Like all operators, if the command is repeated, as in ^W^W, then lines are affected. Use 10^W^W to write 10 lines. If a register is specified (e.g. "a^W ) then the command is _not_ an operator, but writes the specified register to the named file. Shell Access ------------ Anywhere a filename is valid, a command name is also valid, entered in the form "!shell-command". The whole line is handed to the shell, and the read or write operation is done on the commands standard input or output, as appropriate. Thus you can type ":e !date" to edit a copy of today's date. The ": !cmd" shell escape works pretty much as it does in vi. The command ":!!" will rerun the previous such shell command. The '!' operator works as a filter, as expected. In addition, the ^X-! command runs a shell command and captures its output in a specific buffer, called "[Output]". This is almost identical to ":e !cmd", except that in that case the buffer is named according to the command name. These "output capture" commands are most useful in conjunction with the "error finder", '^X-^X', described below. On systems supporting job control, ^Z (or ":stop") will suspend vile. The :cd and :pwd commands are of course supported. Unlike vi, filenames will track their directory of origin, so you can't simply edit a file in one directory, cd to another, and write it. You must explicitly write to ./filename in the new directory to accomplish this. ":cd -" will return to the previous directory, as it does in some shells. Giving an argument to the ": !" (also called "shell-command" when writing macros) will suppress the "Press return to continue" message after the command runs. Text manipulation command: -------------------------- Remember, these are only the new or different commands. The standard vi set should still work. The vi "global" (":g") command is present. So is the "substitute" (":s") command. These both look pretty different while they're being used than they do in vi, due to the interactive nature of the prompting. And, since the searching is done right after the pattern is entered, there may be a slight delay while you're trying to finish typing your complete command. (If the pattern does not exist, you may not get to finish typing your command at all.) You can use the commands just as you would have in vi, i.e. ":g/oldpat/s//newstring/" will work. But you won't see any of the '/' characters. Try it-- you'll get the idea. Line ranges are not possible on ":g", but they are on ":s". The ":g" command can be followed by any of l (list), p (print), < (left shift), > (right shift), r (read file), d (delete), L (lower case), U (upper case), ~ (flip case), put (append yanked text), Put (prepend yanked text), s (substitute), trim (trim trailing whitespace). For example, ":g/pattern/Put" will insert the contents of the default yank register just above every line containing "pattern". The ":g" command can only be used over the entire file -- smaller regions are not permitted. The ":v" counterpart to ":g" is also implemented -- it performs the given command on all lines that don't match the given pattern. The substitute command can be followed by any of 'g', a digit, or 'p', to do the substitution for all occurrences, the n'th occurrence, or to print the resulting line respectively. You can also add a 'c', and you will be asked to confirm each replacement before it occurs. The text being replaced will be highlighted, and you can answer with 'y', 'n', 'q', or 'a'. 'a' will suppress further prompting, and will do the rest of the replacements. The ":&" and '&' commands work much as they do in vi, and repeat the last substitution. The '^A-&' command is a new operator (see below), so it can work on regions: for example use '^A-&}' to "repeat the previous substitution over the rest of this paragraph". Infinite Undo -------------- The regular undo ('u') and line-undo ('U') are available for all commands. They are a little more predictable than their vi counterparts, since they do not share the default yank register for their operation. Also, line-undo ('U') is available until the next change anywhere in the file, rather than until you leave the line. vile also lets you undo all changes made to a buffer since it was first edited (so-called "infinite undo"). The '^X-u' command will undo changes, one by one (or given a count, several at a time). The '^X-r' command will walk forward, redoing the previously undone changes one by one. A fresh change to the buffer will cause previously undone changes to no longer be redoable. Remember that with key rebinding, you can change your 'u' or 'U' command to be an infinite undo, making it easier to type. In addition, the '.' command, which normally re-executes the last buffer-modifying command, has special behavior with respect to undo. If the '.' command immediately follows one of the undo commands ('u', '^X-u', or '^X-r'), then it will perform another undo or redo, as appropriate. If there are any intervening commands, then '.' will re-execute the last command prior to the undo. [ This modification to the behavior of "u." does not conflict (much) with traditional use of '.', since by definition, the sequence "u." is always identical to "uu", and the latter is more easily typed. (Credit goes to the designers of "nvi" for this trick. ] The number of changes stored in the undo "history" is controlled by the numeric mode "undolimit". The default history length is 10 -- that is, only 10 changes may be undone. Set the undolimit to 0 for truly infinite undo. This can consume a lot of memory. The cursor position after an undo may not always be the same as it would be in vi. Operators --------- vi has a class of commands known as "operators". Operator commands are always immediately followed by a motion command. The region of text affected by an operator is bounded on one end by the initial position of the cursor, and on the other by the cursor position after the motion is completed. Thus the delete operator ('d') can be followed by the word motion command ('w'), causing the next word to be deleted. The sequence "dG" will delete from the cursor through the end of the file, and "d/junk" will delete to the next occurrence of the string "junk". As a special "honorary" type of motion, operators can all be "stuttered" to affect lines. Thus "dd" deletes one line, "4dd" affects 4 lines, etc. Most operators affect the region exactly, but some cause only whole lines to be affected. This is usually a function of what sort of motion follows the operator, but can sometimes be affected by the operator itself. The best example of motions having different effects is the 'goto-mark' motions, the ''' and '`' commands. If a mark is set, say mark 'a', with the 'ma' command, then if the command d`a is executed, the exact text between the cursor and the mark will be deleted. If, on the other hand, the d'a command is used, the deleted region will include the lines containing the cursor and the mark in their entirety. Some operators in vile can be "forced" to affect regions of whole lines, though the motion wouldn't normally imply it, by using the '^X' form of the command. (It's not really forced -- it's really a separate operator.) For example, "d%" (assuming you are on a curly brace) will delete a C-style block of code. "^X-d%" will delete that same area, plus anything else on the lines containing the curly-brace endpoints. Note that some operators always affect whole lines, no matter how the motion is specified. The '!' operator is an example: "!w" will always filter an entire line, and not just a single word. vile extends this notion of the "shape" of a region by adding the concept of rectangular regions, whose boundaries are delimited by the rectangle whose opposite corners are at the cursor and at the other end of the motion, respectively. See the section "Rectangular regions" below. The "list-operators" command will show all available operators. The "list-motions" command will show all available motions. Any operator may be followed by any motion. There are several new operator commands in vile: ^A-~ Is the operator form of the '~' command, so "^A-~~" changes the case of all characters on the current line, "^A-~w" does it to a word, "3^A-~}" does it for 3 paragraphs, etc. (In vile, the simple '~' command will take a repeat count, unlike some versions of vi. If you wish it to be an operator, rebind '~' to the "flip-til" command.) ^A-u Like ^A-~, but converts the region to upper case. ^A-l Like ^A-~, but converts the region to lower case. ^A-f Format the region based on the current fill column. The initial indentation of both the first and second lines of each "paragraph" in the region are preserved, and all subsequent lines get the second line's indentation. This makes indented/outdented paragraphs (like this one) work correctly. (This is intentionally _not_ the same behavior obtained by using "!fmt", since that behavior is obviously available elsewhere.) The usual usage of this command is "^A-f}", which reformats the current paragraph. The re-formatting begins again with each new paragraph, where a paragraph has the same boundaries used by the '{' and '}' commands -- i.e. blank lines, or lines beginning in .I .L .P .Q or .b. This makes it possible to use "3^A-f}" or "^A-fG" to reformat multiple paragraphs. The reformatting operation knows a little about both C and shell comments, and will attempt to do the "right" thing with lines that start with '#' or '*' characters. (It also knows about the '>' character, making it fairly easy to reformat mail and news inclusions... but is it ethical? :-) ^X-s For every occurrence of a search string, put in a replace- ment string. This is similar to "s/pattern/replacement/g" over the region. ^A-& Is an operator in vile, similar to the traditional & command. It repeats the last substitution over the specified region. (Unlike the '&' command, this one will remember trailing g, p, l, or numeric options.) ^X-d Delete the region, including the lines it starts and ends on. ^X-c Change the region, including the lines it starts and ends on. ^X-y Yank the region, including the lines it starts and ends on. ^A-t Trim trailing whitespace from all lines in the region. ^A-<SPACE> Convert tabs to spaces, using the current tabstop value. ^A-<TAB> Convert as many spaces to tabs as appropriate. ^A-b Blank out a region. Turns the region to whitespace. Useful with rectangular regions. ^A-r Open up a rectangle. Text to the right of the left edge of the rectangular region will shift to the right by the width of the rectangle, leaving a whitespace "hole". ^A-q Sweep out a rectangle with multiple motion commands. See description of 'q', below. ^A-s Select and yank a region. The region will be highlighted on the screen, as if it had been swept by a mouse. It is also yanked, as with the 'y' operator. This operator is useful in combination with the ^S motion command, which lets one reference the selected region with other operators. (If you use this command much, it is recommended that you bind it to and easier to type sequence, such as 'S'.) Text insertion -------------- ^X-p Causes the previously yanked or deleted text, no matter how it was obtained, to be inserted after the current line. Usually text that did not consist of whole lines where it came from is inserted immediately following the cursor. ^X-P As above, but the text is put before the current line. Thus "dw" followed by a "p" command does a normal insertion of the deleted word, whereas "^X-p" results in the word being inserted on a line by itself. R vi's overwrite mode is supported. Note that the combination of overwrite mode and the (ANSI) arrow keys can be used to give a "picture drawing" mode of operation: anything you type goes into the buffer without moving adjacent text, and you can move around using the arrow keys without leaving overwrite mode. Hint: start with a buffer full of lines that consist entirely of blanks (as opposed to blank lines). ^A-i Like their 'i', 'o', and 'O' counterparts, but any autoindent ^A-o or cmode setting is ignored for the duration of this insert. ^A-O These are most useful when pre-formatted text is being pasted, as when using a mouse. Searching --------- ^X-/ Does a forward search for the "word" located under the cursor. ^X-? Does a reverse search for the "word" located under the cursor. ^A-/ Does not do a search, but sets the search pattern to the "word" under the cursor. Useful for "picking up" a word from one buffer, and searching for it in another. The following two commands may not always be present in vile, depending on how it was built: ^X-S Incremental forward searching. As you enter the search string, the cursor is advanced to the next match with what you've typed so far. Use ^F and ^R to continue the search forward or in reverse, using the current pattern. ^X-R As above, but in reverse. Tags ---- vile supports vi-style "tags" files. ":ta" or ":tag" allows you to enter a tagname to locate. Changes to that file and location. ^] Uses the identifier currently under the cursor as the tagname. ^T or ^X-^] or ":pop" - pops to the file and location just previous to the last tag command. When one of these commands is used, vile will (by default) look for a file named "tags" in the current directory, and load it into a hidden buffer for use during tag searches. This buffer is editable if you wish (":e tags"), but will not appear in the buffer lists. If a buffer named "[Tags 1]" is already available when a tag is first requested, it will be used instead of a file found by searching the tags setting, and of course will remain visible. The name of the default tags file may be changed with "set tags" (see "tags" under "Editor modes", below). If multiple filenames are given in the "tags" setting (separated by whitespace), they are searched in order, and placed in buffers named "[Tags 1]", "[Tags 2]", "[Tags 3]", etc. Tags searched for using '^]' will always be matched exactly. If the ":ta" form of the command is used, tag matches will be exact unless the mode "taglength" is set non-zero, in which case the first tag matching that many characters will be used. Filenames referred to in tags files are expanded, so environment variables and shell special characters like ~ may be used. The stack of buffer locations waiting to be "popped" to with the '^T' (or '^X-^]' or ":pop") command may be viewed with the "show-tagstack" command. The "[Tag Stack]" buffer is animated -- it will dynamically keep track of current tag references. Limitations: In a real vi-style tags file, there are three tab separated fields. The first contains the tagname. The second contains the (relative or absolute) filename. Everything after the second tab is an arbitrary ex-mode command. vile is not quite so flexible as regular vi, and only supports a couple of commands in that last "field". It can be a line number, in which case the tag is an absolute index into the file. Or, it can be a search command. If it begins with a '/', the search goes forward. If it begins with a '?', the search goes backward. In either case, the matching delimiter _must_ be the last character on the line in the tags file. And, in either case, the second character of the command _must_ be a '^', signifying an anchored match of the search string. If a '$' is found just before the trailing delimiter, then the pattern must match the whole line, otherwise it can be just a leading substring match. Also, the tag pattern is _not_ a regular expression, but a simple case-sensitive string match. All of this isn't as bad as it sounds, since ctags, the program most people use to generate tags files, does generate exactly this format. (Surprise, surprise.) However, if you attempt to create your own tags files, or have other tools that do so, you should be aware of these limitations. Miscellaneous commands ---------------------- ^A-d Remove all blank lines ("deblank") containing or immediately following the current line. With an argument, will force that many blank lines at that point, regardless of how many were there before. Moves current location forward, to allow repeated use. ^X-^X The "error finder". Goes to the next file/line error pair specified in the last buffer captured from a command's output. This buffer is usually created with the ^X-! command. For example, "^X-!cc -c junk.c" puts all of the compiler output into the buffer named "[Output]". Repeatedly hitting ^X-^X will position the editor at each error in turn, and will eventually start over again at the top. The buffer searched for "errors" will be the last shell command run, or the buffer named with the "error- buffer" command. The "Entering directory XXX" and "Leaving directory XXX" messages that GNU make puts out with the -w switch are honored, so that files are found with the correct path. (Tip: I use the following macro to quickly grep a source directory for the string under the cursor: use-register g load-register "^X!egrep -n : *.[chs]^M" where the ^X and ^M are each single control characters, entered using ^V to escape them. Then I invoke with @g to execute. [NB: this macro won't work with DOS versions of vile, since ':' doesn't expand to the word under the cursor in those versions, since it conflicts with the driver letter separator.) Unfortunately, the parsing of the command output that vile does to get the file and line numbers is currently hard-coded. ^X-t Set or report on the tab-stop width. To set, the spacing must precede the command, as in "4^X-t". The "set tabstop" command described below does the same thing. The status output indicates whether the buffer is currently using the local or global copy of the tabstop value. ^X-f Set the local fill-column to be used with ^A-f and auto-wrap mode on insert. The default value is 7/8's of the screen size, with a maximum of 70. Since arguments come before commands, you type: 65^X-f. The "set fillcol" command does the same thing. The status output indicates whether the buffer is currently using the local or global copy of the tabstop value. ^X-X Set encryption key. (not well tested, but hopefully not broken) OPT_ENCRYPT must have been on when vile was built for this to do anything. K Count prefix. The first time you type it, it is equivalent to an argument of 4 to the following command. If you repeat it, it becomes worth 16, the next time 64, etc... % In addition to finding matching braces, brackets, and parentheses, the '%' command will find matching #if's, #ifdef's and C-style comments. If the cursor is on the # of "#ifdef"/"#if", the '%' command will find the matching "#endif" or "#else". On an "#else" it will find "#endif", and on "#endif" it will go back up to the "#ifdef"/"#if". If the cursor is on any part of a "/*" or "*/" sequence, it will find the appropriate corresponding C comment endpoint. \ Identical to the ` motion, in that the cursor moves to the specified mark (i.e. \a moves to mark 'a'). When used with an operator command, the resulting region is rectangular instead of "exact". This is similar to the ' motion, which also goes to [the line holding] the mark, and causes regions to become "full line" regions. q A "quoted motion" command. After entering 'q', more motion commands are accepted until another 'q' is entered. The result of the motion is the cumulative effect of all the entered motions. Thus, one might type: dq<arrow><arrow><arrow>...<arrow>q to delete all of the text between the starting point and the final cursor position. Any motion command can appear in between the two 'q' commands. If used alone, i.e. not in an operator context, then the spanned text is selected, highlighted, and yanked as a side effect. The resulting selection can then be manipulated with the ^S pseudo-motion, below. Most motions will select up to but not including their endpoint. The 'e', 'E', 'f', 't', and '%' commands are exceptions to this. If used in an operator context the cursor position may sometimes appear incorrect. This is because operators sometimes change the cursor location internally to force the motion to do the "right" thing, and the 'q' command makes these internal "fudge factors" visible. An example of this is "dq%q" which does the right thing (assuming the cursor is on a '(' to start) but which looks wrong, since the cursor will overshoot the ')' before the second 'q' is typed. If a mouse is available, whether in an xterm via the "xterm-mouse" setting, or in xvile, then button 1 can be clicked to do the extensions, since it, too, is a motion command. (Of course in xvile, it is easier to simply "click and drag" -- the 'q' command isn't really necessary at all. Use the repeat-count to specify types of selection: exact=1 (default), full-line=2, rectangle=3. ^A-q As above, but the motions will sweep out rectangular regions. ^S A motion, or "pseudo-motion" command. If a region of text has been previously selected, either with the mouse (if available) or with the keyboard selection operator (^A-s) it can be referenced by any other operator by applying that operator to the ^S motion. As an example, suppose a word is selected with the mouse, or with ^A-sw. Then, from anywhere in that buffer, one can use d^S to delete that word. ^S used by itself will move the cursor to the start of the selected region. ^S applied to the selection operator (^A-s) will extend the current selection to include the current location of the cursor. ^S makes it possible to select any region (including rectangular regions) of text with a mouse, and then apply any vi operator to that region. = If "visual-matches" is set, then vile will highlight all occurrences of a pattern that is searched for with one of the usual searching commands. The '=' command will clear this highlighting, until the next search for a different pattern. Vile can display more of its internal "state" than traditional vi. Portions of the internal "state" may be viewed using various "show-xxx" commands: show-abbreviations -- displays list of shortcuts defined with the ":abbr" command. (synonymous with ":abbr<CR>") show-buffers -- displays the current list of available buffers. Given any numeric argument, will list _all_ buffers, even those normally invisible or considered temporary. show-commands or show-bindings -- displays the list of commands and the keys bound to them. show-global-modes, show-modes -- both synonymous with ":set<CR>" show-help -- synonymous with ":help", '^A-h', etc. show-history -- displays the user's command line history. show-mapped-chars -- displays the strings mapped for command mode with ":map". (synonymous with ":map<CR>") show-mapped!-chars -- displays the strings mapped for insert mode with ":map!". (synonymous with ":map!<CR>") show-system-mapped-chars -- displays the strings mapped to represent the terminal's function keys. show-registers -- displays the current contents of the named and numbered registers. show-tagstack -- displays the contents of the "tags stack", the list of locations from which the ":ta" or '^]' commands have been used, and to which the ":pop" and '^T' (or '^X-^]') commands will return. show-terminal-chars -- displays the list of special chars normally associated with the TTY driver, i.e. backspace, interrupt, suspend, etc. show-variables -- displays the list of vile $variables and user %variables, and their values. New Registers ------------- In addition to the usual "a through "z, and "1 through "9, vile has additional registers. The register named '<' contains the last few hundred keystrokes that have been typed by the user. The principle use for this is to make it easier to create :map commands based on commands you've already given. [It's also useful sometimes when debugging to be able to see what key sequence led to a problem...] The register name '.' contains the current selected text in xvile. The register name '"' is a synonym for the default unnamed register, which is also sometimes referred to as register 0. Completion ---------- Many responses to vile prompts need not be typed in their entirety. vile can complete the response for you. This applies to command names, file names, vile modes, vile variables, and the "terminal characters". To invoke vile completion, type a few characters and hit TAB (or your current "name-complete" terminal character). Hitting it a second time will pop up a window containing the list of possible completions. The window will go away when the current command is finished. You can also type a question mark (or the current "test-completions" terminal character) to display a list of the characters that you would have to type to complete the command. For example, to complete :unm? -- you type :unm{a}[pr] -- you see This style of completion-display shows curly braces around the string that will be supplied by pressing TAB, and square brackets around characters that you must type to make the command unique. Arrow keys ---------- vile will understand your terminal's arrow keys, as long as they are described correctly in the termcap/terminfo database. The keys are interpreted as function keys, and are by default bound to the up, down, left, and right screen motions. These bindings are honored in insert mode as well as command mode. Rectangular regions ------------------- Just as the regions defined by vi's commands and motions can either be "exact", or encompass "full lines", regions in vile can in addition be "rectangular". The easiest way to use a rectangular region is with the '\' motion, which, like '`' and ''', goes to a named mark. The region it describes, however, is "rectangular" (instead of "exact" or "full line"). The following operators know how to correctly act on rectangular regions: ^A-r Opens up a rectangle. Text to the right of the left edge of the rectangle is shifted right by the width of the rectangle. > Shift right. Identical to '^A-r' when region is rectangular. d Deletes the (rectangular) region. Text to the right moves left to fill the rectangle. < Shift left. Identical to 'd' when region is rectangular. y Yanks the (rectangular) region. (vile remembers that the yanked text is rectangular in shape. c Change the region. If the region is _not_ rectangular, insert mode is entered after the region is deleted. If the region _is_ rectangular, the user is prompted for text with which the lines of the rectangle will be filled. ^A-u ^A-l ^A-~ ^A-b These four operators perform their character transformations on rectangular regions, as well as exact or full-line regions. (uppercase, lowercase, flip-case, and blank, respectively) p P The 'put'ting commands know whether the text being 'put' was originally rectangular, and will do a rectangular insert of the text, in front of or behind the cursor. The cursor position defines the upper left corner of the insertion. ^A-p These two forms of the put command force the text being ^A-P 'put' to be inserted as if it had been rectangular when originally yanked or deleted. The width of the rectangle is the length of the longest line in register being 'put'. Note that because it is sometimes hard to manipulate rectangles containing or bordering on tab characters, currently (for some operations) vile "detabs" the region being operated on before commencing, and re-entabs the lines again after the operation. The re-entabing is limited to leading whitespace, and of course is suppressed if "notabinsert" mode is set. [ This misfeature is arguably a bug, and may be fixed. In the meantime, you've been warned. ] Editor modes ------------ Modes come in three "flavors". They are universal, and affect the editor generally, or are associated with either buffers or with windows, and are usually inherited from a set of "global" buffer and window modes. The value of a buffer or window mode will track changes to the respective global mode, until the "local" value is set independently of the global one. To set or change a global mode, use ":set". To remove the mode, use ":unset", ":setno", or ":set" with the modename prefixed with "no". To set and reset local modes, use ":setl", ":unsetl", ":setlno". To display modes, use ":setall", ":modes", or ":set all". Local mode values are only shown if they differ from the global values, whether they have been independently set or not. The "local" version of the set/unset commands ("setl"/"unsetl") do not make sense when used with universal modes, since there is only one copy of these. The possible modes, with synonyms in parentheses, and a trailing U, B or W indicating whether the mode is universal, or belongs to buffers or windows, are: alt-tabpos (atp) If set, vile will position the cursor over tab and control characters the way emacs would, that is, at the start of a tab or control character display sequence. If turned off (the default), the cursor is positioned over tabs and control characters the way it would be in vi, i.e. at the end of the tab or control character display sequence. (To match the behavior of earlier versions of vile, should be set.) (U) animated Controls whether vile automatically updates the contents of scratch buffers when their contents would change. The animated buffers include: [Binding List] [Buffer List] [Map Sequences] [Map! Sequences] [Registers] [Settings] [Terminal Characters] [Tag Stack] Turning off "animated" is rarely necessary: the capability is present mostly as a debugging aid. (B) autobuffer (ab) Controls whether vile uses "most-recently-used" style buffering, or vi-style (command-line order) buffers. That is, if autobuffer is on, then buffers are sorted in order of use, in that buffers not frequently used will drift to the end of the list. If this mode is not on, then vile will behave more like vi, in that buffers remain in a fixed order, that in which they were edited. (U) autowrite (aw) vile will write out any changed buffers for which this mode is set before performing a ^Z, "stop", "suspend", ":!<cmd>", or '^X-!<cmd>'. The ":sh" command is not affected, nor is ":stop!" or ":suspend!". Since buffers inherit the global value of a mode, simply setting the global autowrite value will cause all buffers to be auto-written. Individual buffers can be forced or prevented from autowriting by setting the local value of the mode for those buffers appropriately. [In real vi, autowrite mode will also force buffers to be written when switching between files. This is unnecessary in vile.] (B) autoindent (ai) During insert, newly created lines inherit their leading indent from the previous line in the buffer. (B) autosave (as) Automatic file saving. Writes the file after every 'autosavecnt' characters of inserted text. Other file changes are not counted. (B) autosavecnt (ascnt) How often (after how many inserted characters) will automatic saves take place. 256 by default. (B) backspacelimit (bl) When in insert mode, this controls whether one can backspace past the point at which the insert began. (B) backup-style Specifies the style used for creating file backups when a file is written. Can have values of "off", ".bak", and (under UNIX) "tilde", for no backups, DOS-style .BAK files, and file.c~ style backups, respectively. Files are copied before being written, to protect links to the original file. Permissions, modification and access times are all preserved. If creation of the backup fails, the write of the file will fail, unless it is forced using the ":w!" form of the write command. (U) bcolor On systems supporting this, will set the background color. Currently only DOS can do color, although the X11 version (xvile) can be given colors at startup or via .Xdefaults. See notes about the color palette down below, under DOS specifics. check-modtime Check modification-time. If a file has changed since it was last read or written, vile will issue a "file newer than buffer" warning and prompt appropriately for confirmation when 1) popping up a window on an existing buffer, 2) reading or writing the buffer, or 3) after performing some shell command. The prompt will occur only once, unless the modification time of the file changes again, in which case the warning will be repeated. The warning will be repeated in any case if the file is being written. Invoking a shell, or suspending/restarting vile, will cause all visible buffers (those currently in windows) to have their times checked immediately. cmode C-code mode. Also useful for other languages. Maintains current indentation level automatically during insert, like autoindent, above. If a line ends with a '{', '(', or ':', then the next line indents further. If a line begins with a '}' or ')', it is lined up with the line containing the matching '{' or '('. If a line starting with '#' is inserted it is moved to column 1. Additionally, if a line begins with a '#' character, it will not shift right with the '>>' command. If the global cmode is set, then the buffer's C mode is turned on automatically only for files whose names are matched by the c-suffixes regular expression (see below). (B) crypt Causes files to be encrypted. This is NOT compatible with the UNIX crypt(1) routines, and may not be built into your version of vile by default. (B) c-shiftwidth (csw) Sets the value for the shiftwidth (see below) which will be used if a file is in cmode. (B) c-tabstop (cts) Sets the value for spacing of tabstops which will be used if a file is in cmode. (B) c-suffixes (csuf) A regular expression describing filenames for which cmode will be set. This is arguably misnamed, since the regular expression need not describe only suffixes. (U) comments A regular expression defining commented paragraph delimiters. This is used in addition to the "paragraphs" expression (see below) when reformatting a region. The net effect is that paragraphs inside of these comments are preserved when doing text reformatting, but are not reachable with the '}' and '{' motions. (B) dirc Causes vile to check each name when scanning directories for filename completion. This is slower, but provides additional information allowing you to distinguish between directory and file names in the prompt. (U) dos On input, if the global copy of this mode is set, then incoming CR/LF pairs are taken as line terminators, the CR characters are stripped out, and the local dos mode is set for the buffer. (Actually, the local dos mode is only set if the _majority_ of lines had CR characters at the end.) If global dos mode is _not_ set, then incoming CR characters will be left visible on the screen (as '^M'), and the local mode will not be set. On output, when writing a buffer with local dos mode set, all lines will be terminated with CR/LF pairs, rather than the usual single LF. When buffers representing non-existent files are created they will inherit the line-style of the operating system (LF-only on UNIX and VMS, CRLF-style on DOS derivatives) regardless of the global setting of dos mode. Setting dos mode makes editing binary files unreliable. The global value for this mode is set on by default in DOS versions of vile, and should therefore be turned off if doing binary editing. (B) errorbells (eb) Controls whether a bell sounds (or whether the screen flashes, if "flash" mode is on") when an error occurs. (U) expand-chars Controls the set of characters that are expanded in command lines. These include '%' (the current buffer), '#' (the alternate buffer) and ':' (the token at the cursor position). (U) expand-path Controls whether %/# are expanded to the full pathname of a buffer, or just to its basename (i.e. the name with the path stripped off). (U) fcolor On systems supporting this, will set the foreground color. Currently only DOS can do color, although the X11 version (xvile) can be given colors at startup or via .Xdefaults. See notes about the color palette down below, under DOS specifics. fence-pairs Each pair of characters in this string is taken to be a set of "fences", which should be matched with the '%' command. The default value is "{}()[]", which produces normal vi behavior. This can, for instance, be augmented with the '<' and '>' characters ("{}()[]<>") to cause angle brackets to be matched as well. See "showmatch" mode for another use of the "fence-pairs" mode. (B) fillcol (fc) Sets the value for the fill column, which is the column at which autowrapping and region formatting will break lines. (B) flash If your terminal can, will flash the screen rather than beeping on errors. No audible or visible indication will occur at all if "errorbells" mode is not set on. (U) glob Controls how wildcard characters (e.g., '*' and '?') are treated in prompts for filenames. Set glob to 'off' to disable expansion, or to 'on' to use the internal globber. The internal globber will handle *, ?, [a-z] style ranges, environment variables, and the ~user notation for finding home directories. On UNIX, glob can be set to be a pipe command that will expand more wildcards. The default value of glob on UNIX is "!echo %s", which should provide globbing that matches that of your shell. If set to a command that will separate filenames with newlines or nulls rather than spaces, then filenames containing spaces may be more easily edited. ("!/bin/ls -d %s" is one possibility, "!glob %s" is another if you use csh.) (U). history (hi) When true (the default), commands from the :-line are logged in a buffer [History]. Turning this off causes the buffer to be removed. (U) horizscroll (hs) If the cursor is moved "off-screen", this mode controls what happens. If set (as it is by default), the whole screen will shift sideways to make the cursor position visible. If not set, then only the current line will shift, which may be desirable on slower displays. (W) ignorecase (ic) Text searches normally match the pattern exactly. With this set, searches are case-insensitive. (B) implybuffer (ib) Causes vile to create a buffer when you write to a new file, or read from one (e.g., with ":r"). (U) linewrap (lw) Displays lines that are too long to fit on one line as a series of "wrapped" lines. Overrides left/right scrolling controlled by "sideways" and "horizscroll" modes. (W) list (li) The buffer will be displayed with tabs and newlines made visible, instead of as whitespace. (W) magic Honor unescaped meta-characters in search strings. See the section "Regular Expressions" for more detail. (B) meta-insert-bindings (mib) Controls behavior of 8-bit characters during insert. Normally, key-bindings are only operational when in command mode: when in insert mode, all characters are self-inserting. If this mode is on, and a meta-character is typed which is bound to a function, then that function binding will be honored and executed from within insert mode. Any unbound meta-characters will remain self-inserting. (B) multibeep If a motion command fails, then vile, like vi, will normally sound the bell. Turning this mode off prevents subsequent identical motion failures from also sounding the bell. That is, if you repeat a failed motion many times (e.g. by holding down the backspace key), you only get one beep. (U) newline (nl) The buffer ends with a newline. This is set when reading a buffer. (B) number (nu) All lines in the buffer will be prefixed by their line number. (W) maplonger Controls whether the longer or shorter of two "nested" map strings will be favored by the editor. When set, vile will match the longest available mapped string. When reset, (the default) vile will match the shortest available map. (U) paragraphs A regular expression defining where the "next-paragraph" ('}') and "previous-paragraph" ('{') commands will go. (B) popup-choices (pc) Must be set to one of the following three values: "off", "immediate", or "delayed". When enabled with either "immediate" or "delayed", vile pops up the [Completions] buffer showing choices for filename and command completion in response to a TAB. "immediate" will force the buffer to be popped up immediately if no progress is made in forming a completion. "delayed" will cause vile to wait until TAB is pressed a second time before popping up the completion choices. (U) popup-msgs (pm) When enabled, vile pops up the [Messages] buffer showing the text that was written to the message line. Closing the window clears its content until the next message is written. This is most useful during the debugging of macros, since many messages may appear, each overwriting a previous one. (U) printing-low The integer value representing the first of the printable set of "high bit" (i.e. 8-bit) characters. Defaults to 0. Most foreign (relative to me!) users would set this to 160, the first printable character in the upper range of the ISO 8859/1 character set. (U) printing-high The integer value representing the last character of the printable set of "high bit" (i.e. 8-bit) characters. Defaults to 0. Set this to 255 for ISO 8859/1 compatibility. (U) remap Controls whether :map or :map! sequences entered with no explicit remapping control should be subject to remapping (i.e. recursive mapping). (U) remapfirst Controls whether the first character of a map expanded due to :map or :map! is eligible for remapping. This is off by default for vi compatibility. report A threshold value that is used to control messages that report the number of lines deleted, changed, etc. (U) resolve-links Controls whether vile fully resolves file names in cases where some path components are symbolic links. This makes vile smarter about symbolic links that provide multiple paths to a given file (preventing multiple unintentional edits of the same physical file via different pathnames). It may trigger long timeouts on systems where symbolic links are used in conjunction with NFS automounted directories. (Note that this does not detect or prevent multiple edits caused by hard file links -- only symbolic ones.) (U) ruler Shows the current line and column in the status line, as well as what percentage of the current buffer's lines lie in front of the cursor. (This percentage is different than that given by ^G (the "position" function), which gives a percentage of characters rather than lines.) (B) samebangs (sb) Controls whether the ":!!" and "^X-!" commands remember the same command string. (U) sections A regular expression defining where the "next-section" (']') and "previous-section" ('[') commands will go. (B) shiftwidth (sw) This is much like a tabstop, except that it is independent of hardware tabs and tab characters. It is the number of columns a line will shift by if the '<<' or '>>' commands are used, and it chooses the next column stop for the cursor if a '^T' or '^D' is typed during insert mode. (B) showmatch (sm) During insert, if a closing "fence" character (usually '}', ']', or ')', but may be changed by setting "fence-pairs") is typed, the cursor will highlight the matching member of the pair for about a quarter second. (B) showmode (smd) Causes an indicator on the modeline to indicate what mode vile is currently in: insert (I), replace (R), or command (none). (B) showram (sr) Displays the amount of ram currently allocated at the end of the message line. (not in all versions) (U) sideways Will prompt for a new value for the sideways scroll offset, which allow display of a section of code normally off the screen to the right. Also affected by the ^X-^R and ^X-^L commands. (W) smoothscroll (ss) Force smooth scrolling. By default, this option is turned off so that vile will try to keep up with your keystrokes instead of keeping the display up to date. Some keyboards repeat faster than the screen can keep up causing the screen to jump. If this bothers you, set smoothscroll to true. Warning: If your keyboard repeats really fast and you have smoothscroll enabled, it may take a while for vile to catch up. (U) tabinsert (ti) Allow the physical insertion of tab characters into the buffer. If turned off ("notabinsert"), and an attempt is made to insert a tab character by explicitly typing it or by using shiftwidth or the line shifting commands, then the appropriate number of space characters will be inserted instead. Use '^V^I' to insert a real tab, and remember that pre-existing tabs will not be affected. Use the '^A-<SP>' operator command to eliminate pre-existing tabs from a region of text. (B) tabstop (ts) Set the value for spacing of normal tabstops. (B) taglength (tl) Sets the significant length for tags. If non-zero, lookups for names longer than the taglength value will only attempt to match that many characters. If a lookup is for a shorter pattern, or the value of taglength is zero, then the tags must match the lookup pattern exactly. This will not effect tags picked up from the cursor -- they are always matched exactly. (B) tagrelative (tr) Causes files looked up via the tags mechanism to be found relative to the location of the tags file, rather than relative to the current directory. This allows the same tags file to be useful from different locations, while not requiring absolute filenames. For example, using `set tags "tags ../tags"' would allow a single tags file (located in the parent) to be used in a small source hierarchy from either the parent or a child directory. (B) tags Gives a path of names of file(s) in which to look up tag references. It is a whitespace-separated list of filenames. Relative pathnames in this list are evaluated with respect to the current directory of vile at the time of the tags lookup. (B) terse vile produces more "status" messages than vi, which may become annoying at low baud rates. Setting terse mode will suppress many of these. (B) terse-selections (tsel) Boolean indicating whether or not additional information is displayed about a selection. When false, the starting and ending positions of the selection are displayed as the selection is extended. The default is true. (W) timeoutlen How long to wait for the characters of a :map'd sequence. Typically needed to resolve the ambiguity between a user-pressed ESCape key and an ESC character that is part of a function key sequence. vile will wait for "timeoutlen" milliseconds after seeing an ESC, in order to check the next character of input. The time defaults to 500, or half a second. Users of fast local screens, like a local xterm, may wish to reduce this to something like 50 for crisper response to a user-pressed ESC. (U) timeoutlen-user If set non-zero, this will enforce a maximum waiting time for characters in a user-defined :map sequence. If zero, the value of timeoutlen, above, will be used for both "system" and user sequences. It is likely that a short time is desired for system sequences, and a long time for user sequences. For this reason the default value of timeoutlen-user is 60000. This will give a full minute to type each character of a user-defined :map. Be careful -- extremely large values may overflow the word size on smaller machines, i.e, you will probably want to avoid setting timeoutlen-user larger than 65535. (U) undolimit (ul) Sets a limit on how many undoable buffer-changing commands will be saved. If set to 0, there is no limit, and all changes are undoable. The default value is 10. (B) unprintable-as-octal (uo) If an 8-bit character is non-printing, it will normally be displayed in hex. This setting will force octal display. Non-printing characters whose 8th bit is not set are always displayed in control character (e.g. '^C') notation. (B) view View the file only. No changes are permitted. This is set automatically for the output of shell commands. (B) view-on-readonly Causes "view" mode to be set for read-only files. (U) visual-matches When a search command is executed, the cursor will move as usual. In addition, all matching occurrences of the searched-for pattern (in the current buffer) will be emphasized according to the value of this mode: "none", "underline", "bold", "italic", or "reverse". The '=' command can be used to clear this sort of highlighting, until the next search is done for a different pattern. Note that setting this mode can significantly slow down the editor's operation when complex or frequently occurring patterns are used, since vile will need to scan the entire buffer for matches on any change to the buffer. (B) warn-unread When leaving the editor, if not all buffers have been "visited", then normally vile will complain, and remind the user to use ":q!". Turning off "warn-unread" mode will suppress this behavior. (U) working If turned off (noworking), will suppress the activity indicator ("working..."/"...working") which appears during long-running operations. (U) wrapmargin (wm) Implements vi's auto-wrap mode. If nonzero, the wrapmargin specifies the number of columns on the screen's right margin to reserve before breaking the input lines on a preceding space. (B) wrapscan (ws) Text searches will continue from past the bottom of the file to the top, and vice-versa. (B) wrapwords (ww) Similar to vi's auto-wrap mode (i.e. "wrapmargin"). While inserting, words are moved to the next line if the current line gets too long. Unlike vi, wrapping is only attempted when a space is typed. (B) xterm-mouse Enables mouse-clicking if you are running within an xterm. That is, it allows vile to receive mouse events. Since this mode overrides xterm's cut & paste, you will need to use the Shift key when pressing the mouse buttons to cut and paste between X windows. Your TERM variable's termcap entry must contain the string "xterm" for this to work. (U) 8-Bit Operation --------------- vile allows input, manipulation, and display of all 256 possible byte-wide characters. (Double-wide characters are not supported.) Output ------ By default, characters with the high bit set (decimal value 128 or greater) will display as hex (or octal; see "non-printing- octal" above) sequences, e.g. \xA5. A range of characters which should display as themselves (that is, characters understood by the user's display terminal) may be given using the "printing-low" and "printing-high" settings (see above). Useful values for these settings are 160 and 255, which correspond to the printable range of the ISO-Latin-1 character set. Input ----- If the user's input device can generate all characters, and if the terminal settings are such that these characters pass through unmolested (Using "stty cs8 -parenb -istrip" works for me, on an xterm. Real serial lines may take more convincing, at both ends.), then vile will happily incorporate them into the user's text, or act on them if they are bound to functions. Users who have no need to enter 8-bit text may want access to the meta-bound functions while in insert mode as well as command mode. The mode "meta-insert-bindings" controls whether functions bound to meta- keys (characters with the high bit set) are executed only in command mode, or in both command and insert modes. In either case, if a character is _not_ bound to a function, then it will be self-inserting when in insert mode. (To bind to a meta key in the .vilerc file, one may specify it as itself, or in hex or octal, or with the shorthand 'M-c' where c is the corresponding character without the high bit set. (Although it is possible to edit and view all 256 characters, it is currently impossible to _search_ for a string that contains the NULL character, since this is used internally to terminate the search string.) Command History --------------- You may scroll through the list of previous replies to the :-prompt by using the up- or down-arrow special keys on your keyboard (if your configuration supports it). Special Character Expansion --------------------------- As in vi, the % and # characters typed while responding to a prompt will expand to the current or "alternate" filename. In addition, the colon character (":") expands to the identifier name under the cursor. Expansion of ! to the last command run is not implemented, except when a shell command is being entered. These expansions can be suppressed by prefixing with a '\'. Key Rebinding ------------- There is a key rebinding facility (if vile is built to include it), which is invoked as follows. One must know the "english" name for the command being rebound. Use ":list-commands" or ":apropos string" to find englishnames containing "string". Then use the command: ":bind-key englishname keyseq" where keyseq is the exact keyboard sequence (i.e. single character, or '^X', '^A', or '#' followed by a single character) to which the command should be bound. In a .vilerc file, keyseq can be either the literal sequence, or the printable representation of the sequence, e.g. ^A-a or ^X-S. (A summary of how key-sequences can be represented appears at the end of this section.) Commands can also be bound to meta keys, which are regular ASCII characters with the eighth bit (0x80) bit set. The "printable" form for these keys is 'M-c'. Commands bound to '#-c' key sequences are usually also available by using the function keys on the terminal. Thus the up-arrow function key can be bound to as '#-A'. Even the ^A and ^X prefix characters can be rebound, using the dummy functions "cntl_a-prefix" and "cntl_x-prefix", and the '#' key itself can be rebound -- it is represented by the command name "function-prefix". Examples: To cause the / and ? commands to perform incremental searches, use: bind-key incremental-search / bind-key reverse-incremental-search ? To make ^N and ^P switch windows instead of cause motion by lines, try: bind-key next-window ^N bind-key previous-window ^P To cause the space bar to move forward by pages, as in the "more" command, use: bind-key next-page \s (Space and tab can be represented with: "\s" and "\t".) Note that when interactive, ^A and ^X are typed using the control key. In a file, however, they can be either a caret (^) followed by a letter, or the literal control key. In the latter case you would not use the '-' separator. So ^A-x as four distinct characters could also be entered as ^Ax, which would only be two characters. Characters can be entered in hex or octal as well, in the form 0xNN, where NN is exactly two hex digits. So if you know the hex value for a key, you can bind to it like: bind-key next-window ^A-\x14 or bind-key next-window #-\213 The sequence 'M-', representing a "meta" character, is equivalent to setting the high bit of the following character, so 'M-e' is has the value of (0x80|0x65), or 0xe5. Function and meta key bindings are available in insert mode, as well as in command mode. (But only via either the "meta bit" or ESC sequence form -- the '#' prefix will not work in insert mode.) So the following macro will work correctly in both command and insert modes: 15 store-macro insert-string "fprintf(stderr, \"" set-named-mark z insert-string "\\n\");\n" goto-named-mark-exact z ; enter insert mode if we weren't already there ~if &seq $mode "command" insert-chars ~endif ~endm ; bind to function key f bind-key execute-macro-15 #-f ; also bind to meta-A bind-key execute-macro-15 M-A Syntax for key-sequences: ------------------------- To summarize, a key-sequence being bound to is specified with: 1) an optional prefix, like this: ^A- (three chars) ^X- (three chars) ^A (one char) ^X (one char) 2) followed by an optional "function" prefix: #- (two chars) 3) followed by an optional "meta" prefix: M- (two chars) (this is the same as with specifying a character in that has the high bit set) 4) followed by a character, like this: C (one char) ^C (one char) ^C (two chars) \NNN (max of four chars, where NNN are octal digits) \xNN (max of four chars, where NN are hex digits) \n,\r,\t,\b,\f,\a (two chars each, usual meanings) \e (two chars, means ESC) \s (two chars, means SPACE) (The "one char" control character entries in the above table are represented in this help file as two printable characters, to ensure they are not deleted by mailers or file transfer programs.) Function Keys ------------- When you bind to a function key, you will see its value printed as a 'poundsign' sequence. And, if you wish to :map a function key (see below), you will need to use its poundsign sequence. The list of function key labels, along with their "vile name", are as follows: Usual Label Vile name Usual Label Vile name ----------- --------- ----------- --------- Up-arrow #A Home #H Down-arrow #B End #E Left-arrow #D Insert #i Right-arrow #C Delete #d Prior (PageUp) #p Find #f Next (PageDown) #n Select #s Help #? Menu #m F1 #1 F12 #@ F2 #2 F13 ## F3 #3 F14 #$ F4 #4 F15 #% F5 #5 F16 #^ F6 #6 F17 #& F7 #7 F18 #* F8 #8 F19 #( F9 #9 F20 #) F10 #0 F11 #! KeyPad_F1 #P KeyPad_F3 #R KeyPad_F2 #Q KeyPad_F4 #S In addition, #M, #t, and #T are used internally to support mouse operations in an xterm. To undo the relationship between a "system-defined" function key and the poundsign sequence it produces, use ":unmap-system-chars". :map, :map!, :noremap, :noremap! --------------------------------- The vi "map" and "map!" commands are implemented in vile. As in vi, mapping works best if the character sequence being bound corresponds to pressing a single key. Multiple key sequences will work as long as the next key in the sequence is pressed within a specified number of milliseconds. The value of "timeoutlen" is used for system-defined character sequences, i.e. function keys. User defined sequences will use this too, unless the value of "timeoutlen-user" is non-zero, in which case this value will be used instead. Because "map" and "map!" may be used to remap arbitrary sequences, these sequences must be entered literally, i.e, the syntax for key sequences as listed above will not work for "map" and "map!". To enter control characters into a .vilerc file, use the ^V escaping mechanism. A map command entered from the command line will require fewer characters be escaped with ^V. To provide a relatively portable way of specifying function key mappings, vile will reapply mapping to the result of a system- defined map. System function keys are mapped to "poundsign" sequences, like '#1' for function key 1, and '#B' for the down-arrow key. The remapping allows one to put map #1 <some-user-map-sequence> in the .vilerc file, and have the user-sequence executed when the system F1 key is pressed. (Otherwise the terminal-specific sequence would have to appear in the .vilerc.) See the section on "Function Keys" above for a full list. The "remap" option controls whether the successfully mapped result of a map is reevaluated for more mapping matches. The "noremap" (and "noremap!") variants of the map commands will force that particular mapping to be applied without subsequent remapping, regardless of the current setting of the global "remap" setting. Long running loops caused by recursive :map definitions are detected and assumed to be infinite. When an (assumed) infinite loop is detected, execution is aborted. Turning off the "remap" option, or doing some of the maps with the ":noremap/:noremap!" form of the map commands will eliminate most such loops. Vile normally duplicates real vi's behavior (but not vim's) in that the first character of the sequence being mapped to is not subject to recursive (map) evaluation. Assuming "remap" is on, pressing 'j' when ":map j jh" is in effect will not cause an infinite loop, whereas ":map j hj" _wlll_ cause such a loop. Setting the "remapfirst" option will allow this sort of remapping (and will cause an infinite loops for both examples). The "maplonger" option controls whether the longer or shorter of two "nested" map strings will be favored by the editor. That is, if both "foo" and "foobar" are mapped (to presumably different values), then with "maplonger" set, vile will not expand "foo" until it is sure (either because the next character is not 'b', or a timeout has expired) that "foobar" will not be seen. Real vi will always expand "foo" immediately, and this is the default behavior. Though not particularly recommended, the "maplonger" mechanism even permits the following types of mappings: :map z j :map zz k When 'z' is pressed by itself it will cause vile to move down one line (assuming j has not been rebound or remapped). But if 'z' is pressed twice rapidly (enough) in succession, vile will move to the previous line. The left hand side of a map[!] definition may contain the usual backslash escapes: \n, \r, \t, \b, \f, \a (^G), \e (ESC), \s (SPACE), \xNN (hex), \NNN (octal). The right hand side is taken exactly literally, so special characters must be expressed as themselves. The current set of mappings or "map!"ings may be viewed with the commands ":map<CR>" (or ":show-mapped-chars") or ":map!<CR>" (or ":show-mapped!-chars"). The system-defined maps, representing the function keys, may be shown with ":show-system-mapped-chars". To undo a mapping, use "unmap", "unmap!", or "unmap-system-chars". :abbr ------ The "abbr" command is also present in vile. It is similar to, but slightly different than, "map!". Whereas "map!" examines characters as they are typed, continuously looking for a match against the stored translation strings, the "abbr" command examines them after they are already in the buffer, and is more sensitive to their surrounding context. First, abbreviations are never expanded unless followed by non-"word" characters. In addition, abbreviations which begin like a "word" (i.e. with letters, digits, or the '_' character) are not expanded if they immediately follow another "word" character -- they must follow whitespace or punctuation or the beginning of the line. Likewise, abbreviations that begin with a punctuation character are not detected within more punctuation -- they must follow whitespace or a "word", or the beginning of the line. If the "backspacelimit" setting is set (and it is, by default), then characters not inserted during the current insertion command are not considered in the above comparisons -- the start of the current insertion behaves much like the beginning of line in that case. Abbreviations are never recursive. vile is more lenient than vi regarding what is a valid abbreviation. vi insists that an abbreviation be all "word" characters, or be all "non-word" characters, except for the last character, which _must_ be a "word" character. vile allows anything at all to be abbreviated, only enforcing the expansion rules mentioned above. To undo an abbreviation, use "unabbreviate". Special "Terminal" Key Rebinding -------------------------------- In addition to the above binding mechanism for vile commands, other keystrokes to the editor are rebindable using the "set-terminal" command. These keystrokes are mostly derived directly from the user's tty settings on entering the editor, but there are a couple of additions related to command and filename completion. The values of these characters can be shown with the "show-terminal" command, and can be changed with the "set-terminal" command. Default value Typical value ------------------------------------------------------------- backspace from tty settings (DEL or ^H) interrupt from tty settings (^C or DEL) line-kill from tty settings (^U or @) name-complete <tab> quote-next from tty settings (^V) start-output from tty settings (^Q) stop-output from tty settings (^S) suspend from tty settings (^Z) test-completions ? word-kill from tty settings (^W) Flow-control ------------ Historically, the flow of data between the computing host and the user's terminal was throttled through the use of special characters in the input stream, known as XON and XOFF (whose values are ^Q and ^S respectively). Most modern systems do not need these characters, and regulate the flow in an "out-of-band" manner. The terminal device driver, however, is usually still set up with software flow control enabled, to allow the user to manually start and stop output with the ^S and ^Q characters. vile normally resets the driver to allow the ^S and ^Q characters to be bound to commands, since most systems no longer need software flow control, and since there is usually no reason for a user to wish to suspend output when running vile. Some older devices (usually older slower terminals), however, still need to be able to automatically control the data flow by generating ^S/^Q without the user's intervention. To accomodate these situations, the "flow-control-enable" command will reset the terminal driver to its original state. Software flow-control will be re-enabled, and commands bound only to the ^S and ^Q characters will be inaccessible. The characters affected in this way may be seen with the "show-terminal-chars" command, where they will appear as the "start/stop-output" characters. The action of the "flow-control-enable" command will be reversed if it is given any argument. Recorded macros --------------- The first type of macro in vile is for temporary, quick macro usage, and lets you record a macro as you execute vile commands. You can then replay those keystrokes with a single key. ^X-( Begin recording a keyboard macro. The keystrokes you type are recorded, until you use ^X-). ^X-) Finish recording a keyboard macro. ^X-& Execute the keyboard macro. The vi '@' command is present as well, and can be used to execute the contents of a named register as if it were entered at the keyboard. To make this more useful, the "load-register" command will allow preloading a named register, from .vilerc file. For example: use-register a load-register ihello^[ will load register 'a' with a command to insert the word "hello". (The ^[ should be a real ESC character, entered by preceding it with ^V.) A better example, is this: use-register w load-register ":!chmod +w %^M:w^M" which makes the current file writable and writes it. (Again, use ^V to get the CR characters into the .vilerc file.) Programmed procedures and macros -------------------------------- [ For more/different information on programmed macros, refer to the file "macros.doc", supplied with the vile source code. ] vile can also be extended by defining macros and then binding the execution of those macros to key sequences. For instance, if the following lines appear in a .vilerc file: 1 store-macro 5 delete-til next-word ~endm bind-key execute-macro-1 ^A-1 then when ^A-1 is executed, 5 words will be deleted. The "-til" suffix on an englishname denotes that it is a vi operator style command, and expects to be followed by a motion command. Also, 1 store-macro 5 delete-til lines ~endm would be the equivalent of "5dd" since the word "lines" represents the stuttered 'dd' style of operation. More examples are given down below. Variables --------- There are some built-in variables that can be used in macros to gain access to parts of vile status, and parts of the current buffer. Built-in variables are accessed by name, prefixed with the '$' character. There are two types of built-in variables (the environment variables, and mode values). The environment variables are: $abufname alternate buffer name (i.e. last visited) $buffer-hook name of procedure to run when switching to a buffer $cbufname current buffer name $cd-hook name of procedure to run when changing directories $cfilname current file name $char character under the cursor $curcol current column position of cursor $curline current line in file $cwd current directory $cwline line offset in current window $debug macro debugging -- set true for line by line tracing $directory controls location of temp-files $discmd display commands on command line $disinp display command line input characters $exit-hook name of procedure to run when quitting $flicker set true to suppress CGA flicker on a PC. ugh. $font current font name (X11 version only) $iconname current icon name (X11 version only) $identifier current punctuated word $kill some of the kill register (read only) $lastkey last keyboard char struck $line text of current line $llength length of current line (read only) $match last matched magic pattern (read only) $mode current mode ("command","insert","overwrite") (rd. o.) $modeline-format format of mode lines. see "Mode line customization". $modified is current buffer modified or not? $ntildes percent of window filled by ~ chars, at end of buffer $ocwd previous directory (read only) $os operating system ("unix", "dos", "vms", "os/2") (rd. o.) $pagelen number of screen lines in use by editor $pagewid current screen width $palette current palette string $pathname current path-like word $pending typeahead pending flag (read only) $pid returns vile's process-id $progname returns "vile" or "xvile". (read-only) $qidentifier current qualified name (as with C++ ::) $read-hook name of procedure to run after a file is read $replace replacement pattern $search search pattern $seed current random number seed $shell name of the shell program for spawned commands. $sres current screen resolution $status returns the status of the last command $title current window title (X11 version only) $tpause length to pause for paren matching (PC versions) $version current version number (read-only) $wline number of lines in current window $word current "word" $write-hook name of procedure to run before a file is written In addition to the environment variables, you may set and use the values of the editor modes (i.e., universal modes, buffer-only modes or window-only modes), e.g., "setv $dos=true". The global values of the editor modes are not visible to the expression evaluator. User-defined variables can also be set and used; their names are prefixed with the '%' character. Response variables (a '@' followed by a prompt-string) cause vile to prompt for input with the given prompt-string. Buffer variables (a '<' followed by a buffer name) return the current line of the specified buffer, automatically setting the position to the next line. Functions --------- There are also functions available, which can act on those variables, or on hard-coded values. Operations are expressed in prefix notation, so to add to numbers you would say "&add 3 5". func no. of name args -------------- &add 2 add two numbers together &sub 2 subtraction &tim 2 multiplication &div 2 division &mod 2 modulus &neg 1 negate &cat 2 concatenate string &lef 2 left string(string, len) &rig 2 right string(string, pos) &mid 3 mid string(string, pos, len) ¬ 1 logical not &equ 2 logical equality &les 2 logical less than &gre 2 logical greater than &seq 2 string logical equality check &sle 2 string logical less than &sgr 2 string logical greater than &ind 1 evaluate indirect value &and 2 logical and &or 2 logical or &len 1 string length &upp 1 uppercase string &low 1 lower case string &tri 1 trim whitespace from string &tru 1 Truth of the universe logical test &asc 1 char to integer conversion &chr 1 integer to char conversion >k 0 get 1 character &rnd 1 get a random number from 1 to n &abs 1 absolute value of a number &sin 2 find the index of second string in first &env 1 retrieve a system environment variable &bin 1 lookup what function name is bound to key &rd 1 is a file readable &wr 1 is a file writable &glo 1 retrieves global mode setting &loc 1 retrieves local mode setting Directives ---------- Primitive flow-of-control within a macro may be obtained with certain directives. Macro directives start with a "~" and include the following: (see the file macros.doc for more detail) ~if cond conditional execution ~else ~endif ~return Return (terminating current macro) ~goto *label Jump to a label in the current macro ~force Force macro to continue...even if command fails ~while cond Execute a loop if the condition is true ~break ~endwhile ~endm End a macro Line Labels begin with a "*" as the first nonblank char, like: *LBL01 Procedures vs. Macros --------------------- Macros are really just a special use of stored "procedures", which are, in turn, really just a special "type" of buffer. To execute the contents of a buffer, it needs to have a name of the form "[buffername]". Then, it can be executed as a procedure with the "run" command, as in "run buffername". The best way to get procedures into buffers named that way (and also to make them invisible, so they don't clutter the buffer list) is to use the "store-procedure" command: store-procedure my_cd_action write-message &cat &cat &cat "moved from " $ocwd " to " $cwd ~if &seq $progname "xvile" set title $cwd ~endif ~endm Macros are a special usage of procedures, which are bindable to keystrokes (i.e. if procedures could be bound directly to keys, then macros would be redundant). When the "9 store-macro" command is used, it creates a procedure whose name is [Macro 9], where 9 is the argument to "store-macro". This can then be executed with either run "Macro 9" or execute-macro-9 Most of the examples given below use the macro form of definition, since one most often wants to bind macros to keys. Hooks ----- There are a few places within vile where a user-specifiable procedure will be executed if desired. These points are referred to as "hooks". Hooks are specified by special variables which hold the name of a procedure to run at that point in the code. For instance, there is a "cd-hook", which is run when you change directories. So, using the "my_cd_action" example given above, if the line set cd-hook my_cd_action is added, then that procedure will print a message and, under xvile, change the window title when the current directory is changed. The following hooks are currently implemented: $buffer-hook run when switching to a buffer $cd-hook run when changing directories $exit-hook run when quitting $read-hook run after a file is read $write-hook run before a file is written Be careful with "buffer-hook". Executing commands in the hook which themselves switch buffers is not recommended. In general, all the hooks are a little dangerous, since vile has not been written with re-entancy foremost in mind. One should avoid putting actions in hooks which might cause the hook to be re-executed. (vile keeps the hook procedure itself from being re-executed, to prevent recursion, but the code surrounding the call to it may not be safe either.) Macro examples -------------- To prevent vile from thinking that a failed command is an error in the macro, you can put "~force" in front of it. So, to write a macro which will run the "man" command on the identifier under the cursor, where you don't really consider it an error if the command fails, you might use: 9 store-macro ~force 1 shell-command &cat "man " $identifier ~endm bind-key execute-macro-9 ^X-m (The argument '1' suppresses the "press return" prompt which normally appears after a command runs, since man runs a pager which does this anyway.) The "screen-search-forward" command could be re-implemented as: 10 store-macro ~force search-forward $identifier ~endm bind-key execute-macro-10 ^X-/ And the "screen-search-pattern-grab" command, normally bound to ^A-/, could be implemented with: 11 store-macro set-variable $search $identifier write-message &cat "Search pattern is now " $search ~endm bind-key execute-macro-11 ^A-/ A variation, which will not find the identifier if it is a substring of another word, is: 12 store-macro ~force search-forward &cat "\\<" &cat $identifier "\\>" ~endm This works by surrounding the string with the \< and \> meta-characters. Here's another example, which finds C++ qualified identifiers, and uses them for a tag lookup: * Implement ^A-^] for qualified-name tag lookup 24 store-macro backward-character set-variable %osearch $search search-forward "^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_:]*" set-variable $search %osearch set-variable %osearch "" write-message &cat "Tag pattern is now " $match ~force find-tag $match ~endm bind-key execute-macro-24 ^A-^] (The "backward-character" is needed because "search-forward" will always skip the cursor position when scanning, so as to always find the next occurrence. The user variable %osearch is used so as not to disturb the search string.) Note that for simple key-remappings, binding is often preferable to creating a macro. Some people prefer using lower-case 'g' to as an equivalent to 'G', to goto a specific line. If done as a macro, like this: 3 store-macro goto-line ~endm bind-key execute-macro-3 g then both g and G go to the end of the file, but whereas 1000G goes to line 1000, 1000g goes to the end of the file 1000 times. It is easier (and more correct) to do: bind-key goto-line g A couple more examples of slightly more complex macros: They cause a jump to the next (or previous) line of the same (or lesser) indent, skipping over empty lines. (Thanks to MIURA Masahiro) ; macro 1 - back to the line of same indent ; 1 store-macro first-nonwhite set-variable %indlev $curcol ~force back-line-at-bol ~if &equ $llength 0 ~goto L1 ~endif ~while &les %indlev $curcol *L1 ~force back-line-at-bol ~if &seq $status "FALSE" ~return ~endif ~if &equ $llength 0 ~goto L1 ~endif ~endwhile ~endm bind-key execute-macro-1 ^X-[ ; macro 2 - forward to the line of same indent ; 2 store-macro first-nonwhite set-variable %indlev $curcol ~force down-line-at-bol ~if &equ $llength 0 ~goto L2 ~endif ~while &les %indlev $curcol *L2 ~force down-line-at-bol ~if &seq $status "FALSE" ~return ~endif ~if &equ $llength 0 ~goto L2 ~endif ~endwhile ~endm bind-key execute-macro-2 ^X-] ; macro 14 - grep for the word under the cursor, and put the result ; in a buffer named after that word. set the error-buffer, ; so that ^X-^X may be used to visit the lines found by grep. ; (we have to set error-buffer explicitly, since we renamed ; the buffer -- otherwise it tracks the last pipe read by vile) 14 store-macro set-variable %grepfor $identifier edit-file &cat "!egrep -n " &cat %grepfor " *.[chs]" rename-buffer %grepfor error-buffer %grepfor ~endm bind-key execute-macro-14 ^A-g As a hint, it is (almost?) never correct to write a ':' command when creating a programmed macro. For instance, if you find yourself writing something like: &cat ":!chmod +w " $cfilname &cat ":e! " $cfilname (in an attempt to make a buffer writable before editing it), then what you really want is: shell-command &cat "chmod +w " $cfilname replace-with-file $cfilname Furthermore, some things are just as easy if done with a "keystroke" macro rather than a programmed macro: ; use this as '@w' use-register w load-register ":!chmod +w %^M:setl noview^M:w^M" or map ^A-w ":!chmod +w %^M:setl noview^M:w^M" (Of course you need to replace the ^M's with real carriage-returns.) Picture Mode ------------ Another example of a fairly complex vile procedure can be found in the file "pictmode.rc". The code there implements a primitive means of drawing "ASCII art": o----------------------------------------o /----------------------------------------/| o----------------------------------------o|| | To use it, first ":source pictmode.rc" ||| | and then "run pic". See the comments ||| | at the top of pictmode.rc for more ||o | information... |/ o----------------------------------------o Regular Expressions ------------------- Searches use regular expressions, which, as in vi, may be magic by default or not. vile introduces some new magic metacharacters. The code that implements the expressions is based directly on Henry Spencer's regexp code. Quoting from the original man page: [For ease of reference, the metacharacters are noted in the margin.) \| "A regular expression is zero or more branches, separated by `\|'. It matches anything that matches one of the branches." "A branch is zero or more pieces, concatenated. It matches a match for the first, followed by a match for the second, etc." "A piece is an atom possibly followed by `*', `\+', or `\?'. An atom * followed by `*' matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the + atom. An atom followed by `\+' matches a sequence of 1 or more \? matches of the atom. An atom followed by `\?' matches a match of the atom, or the null string." [i.e., `\?' matches 0 or 1 occurrences]  "An atom is a regular expression in backslashed parentheses (matching a match for the regular expression), a range (see below), . ^ `.' (matching any single character), `^' (matching the null string $ at the beginning of the input string), `$' (matching the null \c string at the end of the input string), a `\' followed by a single c character (matching that character), or a single character with no other significance (matching that character)." \< \> In addition, vile atoms may be: \< and \>, which match the \s \S beginning and end of a "word", \s and \S, which match characters of \w \W whitespace and "darkspace", \w and \W, which match alphanumerics \d \D (including '_') and non-alphanumerics, \d and \D, which match \p \P digits and non-digits, and \p and \P, which match printable and non-printable characters (whitespace is printable). [ ] "A range is a sequence of characters enclosed in `[]'. It normally matches any single character from the sequence. If the sequence begins with `^', it matches any single character not from the rest of the sequence. If two characters in the sequence are separated by `-', this is shorthand for the full list of ASCII characters between them (e.g. `[0-9]' matches any decimal digit). To include a literal `]' in the sequence, make it the first character (following a possible `^'). To include a literal `-', make it the first or last character." Additionally for vile, if "ignorecase" is set, then all literal matches, including those in character classes, are done without regard to upper and lower case. In magic mode, the following set of metacharacters must be preceded by '\' to hide their special meaning: * [ . ^ $ These characters are special if they _are_ preceded with a '\': ? + ( ) | < > If magic mode is _not_ on, only ^ and $ are special if not escaped. All of the following must be preceded with a '\' to be special, otherwise they are taken literally: ? + ( ) | * [ . < > Replacement subexpressions are supported when substituting. That is, if part of an expression is contained in $ and $, then the part of the matched text in between those symbols will be \1 \9 substituted for an occurrence of \1 in the replacement pattern. Up to 9 such substitutions can be made. The special symbol & will & substitute for the entire match string. The replacement part of the substitution may also contain the \U \L special sequences \U and \L, which cause the replacement to be \E forced to uppercase or lowercase until a terminating \E is found; \u \l \u and \l, which force the case of a single character; and \b, \bfrtn \f, \r, \t, \n, which insert the usual ASCII character. Note that vile mimics perl's handling of \u\L\1\E instead of vi's. Given :s/$abc$/\u\L\1\E/ vi will replace with "abc" whereas vile and perl will replace with "Abc". This is somewhat more useful for capitalizing words. Command files ------------- On startup (in the absence of '@' arguments -- see Invocation below), vile will attempt to read the file ".vilerc" in the current directory, and then in $HOME, and will execute the commands found therein. [This file is called "vile.rc" under DOS, and is searched for in the current directory and along the PATH.] It is possible to nest such executions. For example, you might keep your general default settings in your home directory, and put the following lines in a .vilerc in a directory in which you prefer tabs be set to 4 spaces: source "$HOME/.vilerc" set tabstop 8 The quotes surrounding the filename are necessary to protect the name from interpretation as a vile variable, since it starts with the '$' character. Files can be executed at any time with the ":source" (or ":execute-file") command. There are control structures available, such as ~while, ~if, etc. Refer to the file macros.doc which is distributed with vile for more information. Nesting of source'd files is limited to a depth of ten, to prevent infinite recursion. The ';' character can be used as a comment character in command files, but not necessarily on the same line as valid commands. Put your comments on separate lines to be safe. Invocation ---------- As mentioned above, vile normally looks for files called "./.vilerc" and "$HOME/.vilerc", and executes the first one found. If the variable VILEINIT is set in the environment, it is used as a set of vile commands to initialize the editor. As a not-very-useful example of a VILEINIT sequence, the following setting will exactly recreate the default (i.e. no VILEINIT variable) behavior: export VILEINIT VILEINIT=" ~if &rd \"./.vilerc\" source \"./.vilerc\" ~else ~if &rd \"$HOME/.vilerc\" source \"$HOME/.vilerc\" ~endif ~endif" Command line options -------------------- The command line options are fairly straightforward. vile does not support running just _any_ command after a '+', as does vi, but does support the commonly used '+400' to go to line 400 and '+/foo' to search for foo. Command files can be explicitly executed on startup by prefixing them with the '@' character, as in "vile @mycmds file.c". This will suppress the operation of VILEINIT and the .vilerc files. Use "vile -?" to get the usage message. +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. -h Invokes vile on the helpfile. -v Invokes vile in "view" mode - no changes are permitted to the buffer in this mode. (This will also be true if vile is invoked as view.) -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). Crash Recovery -------------- The "vi -r" option, used to recover an edited buffer after a system crash, is not present in vile. If vile itself crashes (usually (though infrequently :-) due to a bug, but perhaps due to an externally applied signal), it will attempt to save any modified buffers in a directory under /tmp, and send mail to the user to that affect. If system crashes are frequent on your system, you should stop using it. You might also consider the "autosave" and "autowrite" options, which will cause more frequent saves of your work. Mode line customization ----------------------- At the bottom of each window is a mode (or "status") line which is used for displaying certain characteristics of the window and the buffer associated with it. On most displays, this mode line will be highlighted in reverse video or via other means in order to visually separate windows and to distinguish the mode line from text displayed in the window. The editor variable "modeline-format" is set to a string which controls formatting of mode lines. This variable is user settable and thus may be used to customize the display of mode lines. The format specifiers which may appear in the format control strings are as follows: %i insert/overwrite/replace mode indicator, displayed only when in insert, overwrite, or replace mode. When not in one of these modes, the separator character (often "-", "=", or " ") will be displayed. %b buffer name %f file name when not internal buffer and when not the same as the buffer name. %F internal buffer name %m major mode(s), e.g, cmode, view-only, etc. Displayed in square brackets. %l line number to be displayed if "ruler" is set %c column number if "ruler" is set %p line number as percentage of number of lines if "ruler" is set %S rough position of window with respect to buffer (top, bot, all, emp, mid) when ruler not set (or ruler is set, but buffer is empty). %L number of lines in buffer, if ruler is set %= middle separator; should appear at most once in a format string. This indicates where to separate the left and right hand portions of the mode line with a long string of dashes (or whatever the separator character is). %- single occurrence of separator character %| eighty column indicator %% percent sign %: colon Some of the format specifiers (%f, %F, %m, %l, %c, %p, %S, %L) are conditionally displayed. For example "%m" will display the major modes only if there are some major modes set or if the buffer has been modified (which is sort of a major mode). Similarly, "%F" and "%f" will cause the associated file name to be displayed when the buffer is of the appropriate type (a scratch buffer or not) and the shortened file name is different from the buffer name. It is desirable at times to cause a prefix string and/or a suffix string to be emitted along with the string obtained after conversion of the format specifier. This may be done by following the format specifier with a colon, the prefix string, another colon, the suffix string, and another colon. For example, "%l:(:,:%c::) :" might be used to display the line and column number for "ruler" mode. Note that either or both of the prefix and suffix strings may be empty. Characters in the string which are not part of a format specifier are output verbatim. The default format control string is as follows: "%-%i%- %b %m:: :%f:is : :%=%F: : :%l:(:,:%c::) :%p::% :%S%-%-%|" Mode lines for some versions of vile previous to version 4.7 can be obtained with the following format string. This will remove the percentage indication from the mode line when in ruler mode and also shift the ruler indicator to the far right in the mode line. "%-%i%- %b %m:: :%f:is : :%=%F: : %-%-%-%-:%l:(:,:%c::):%S::%-%-:%|" Filtering "man" pages --------------------- When used in conjunction with the vile-manfilt program (supplied as source file "manfilt.c"), either vile or xvile may be used to filter and view manual pages. xvile will even display (with your font set properly) certain portions of the manual page text in bold or italics as appropriate. The file manpage.rc (found in the vile source directory, and also copied below) contains a macro which is bound to ^X-m. It will prompt for a manual page, filter it, attach attributes and display it in the current window. The text of manpage.rc may be either incorporated verbatim into your .vilerc file or may be read from your .vilerc as follows: source ~/manpage.rc This assumes that you have moved the manpage.rc file to your home directory. If you do all of this but use vile rather than xvile, you will still end up with a legible man page, albeit without the spiffy formatting. The manual page filtering program may also be used to look at other text formatted with nroff. From the vile source directory, for example, the following command will format and filter the vile manual page (which is nroff source). :e !nroff -man vile.1 | vile-manfilt Once loaded, it will look rather funny. There will be Cntl-A characters scattered throughout the text followed by a sequence of digits followed by one or more uppercase letters followed by a colon. These Cntl-A sequences specify how the text following the colon should be attributed. The vile command "attribute-cntl_a-sequences-til" (bound to ^A-A) may be used to format a region of text containing these sequences. To continue our example, the following command will translate this representation of attributed text into one which is more pleasing to look at. ^A-AG Here is the macro from the file manpage.rc: ;; ;; Macros for obtaining manual pages and then attributing them. ;; ;; Author: Kevin Buettner 29 store-macro set-variable %manpage @"man page? " ~if &or &seq %manpage "ERROR" & seq %manpage "" ~return ~endif set-variable %manpagebuf &cat "<" &cat %manpage ">" set terse ~force select-buffer %manpagebuf ~if ¬ $status edit-file &cat "!man " &cat %manpage " | vile-manfilt" ~force rename-buffer %manpagebuf ~force error-buffer %manpagebuf write-message "[Attaching attributes...]" goto-beginning-of-file setl noview attribute-cntl_a-sequences-til end-of-file unmark-buffer setl view goto-beginning-of-file write-message "[Done formatting manual page.]" ~endif set noterse ~endm bind-key execute-macro-29 ^X-m Filtering C programs -------------------- C program text may be displayed with keywords and comments highlighted in a similar fashion to the man page filtering described above. A filter which performs this is supplied with vile, and is called "vile-c-filt" (source is "c-filt.c"). Its use is described more fully in comments at the head of the source file. It doesn't provide what one would describe as "tightly integrated syntax coloring". Its usefulness is limited by reliance on an external filter to do the coloring, and the fact that the filter interferes with the normal undo history of the buffer (since it must modify the buffer to do its work). Nonetheless, it's an interesting adjunct to the editor. Here is a macro one might use to invoke the colorizer: 30 store-macro write-message "[Attaching C/C++ attributes...]" set-variable %savcol $curcol set-variable %savline $curline set-variable %modified $modified goto-beginning-of-file filter-til end-of-file "vile-c-filt" goto-beginning-of-file attribute-cntl_a-sequences-til end-of-file ~if ¬ %modified unmark-buffer ~endif %savline goto-line %savcol goto-column write-message "[Attaching C/C++ attributes...done ]" ~endm bind-key execute-macro-30 ^X-q The vile-c-filt program does its work based on the contents of $HOME/.vile.keywords, which contains a set of keyword/attribute pairs. An example (and probably insufficient) .vile.keywords file might contain: Comments:B Literal:B #if:U #else:U #endif:U #define:U if:C3 else:C3 for:C3 while:C3 do:C3 typedef:I struct:I (The "Comments" keyword is a pseudo-keyword which determines the attribute given to C and C++ style comments. "Literal" applies to string literals.) An alternative filter, written using "flex", is available in c-filt.flx. It might suit your needs better, or be a better starting point for creating similar coloring mechanisms for other languages. X Window System specifics ------------------------- If you are using xvile under X11, the following additions are available: Mouse buttons ------------- 1 - Sets cursor position and the start of the selection when mouse pointer is positioned in any vile window (but not the message line). Clicking on a mode line will set the keyboard focus to the corresponding vile window. Double clicking on a mode line will do the above in addition to clearing the highlighting associated with the current selection. Selections may be made by holding button one down and "wiping" with the mouse. Release of the mouse button will cause the selection to be yanked and made available (if desired) for pasting. The region selected may be forced to be rectangular by holding the control key down while wiping with button one depressed. If the wiping motion goes out of the current window, text will be scrolled in the appropriate direction if possible to accomodate selections larger than the window. The speed at which the scrolling occurs will increase with the passage of time making it practical to select large regions of text quickly. Individual words or lines may be selected by double or triple clicking. 2 - Paste the current PRIMARY selection. With a modifier, it pastes at the mouse position, otherwise it pastes at the text cursor position. 3 - Extend the current selection. As with button one, the selection may be adjusted or scrolled by holding down button three and wiping with it. Selections may be extended in any window open to the same buffer as which the selection was started in. [ As described below in the "Scrollbars" section, the buttons are modified by the control key as follows, when used on a scrollbar: Ctrl-Button-1 splits the clicked-on window into two windows. Ctrl-Button-2 deletes the clicked-on window. Ctrl-Button-3 makes the clicked-on window the only window. ] Areas of selected text can be operated on with any vile operator command, in conjunction with the special "motion" command '^S', which applies the operator to the selected region. For example, after selecting text with the mouse, it can be converted to uppercase with ^A-u^S. Remember that some operators (e.g. the shell-filtering operator, '!') are only capable of working on full lines of text. Scrollbars ---------- The X toolkit version of xvile provides default translations similar to the translations for scrollbars found in the Athena widget set. (If you know how to use xterm's scrollbars, you know how to use these scrollbars.) Button one scrolls forward. Button three scrolls backward. The amount of scrolling obtained by these buttons depends on the position at which they were pressed on the scrollbar. Clicking near the top of the scrollbar will scroll the text by a small amount which may be as little as one line. Clicking in the middle will scroll by about half a page. Clicking near the bottom will scroll by a larger amount up to a whole page. Holding either one of these buttons down will cause repeated scrolling. If simply pressed and released, button two will set the position in the buffer to a position proportional to the location of the pointer on the scroll bar. Button two may be held down to "drag" the slider from one place to another causing text to scroll continuously. The Motif and Openlook versions provide scrollbars from their respective widget sets. Both versions have a slider indicating the position of the window over the buffer. OpenLook's slider is fixed in size with little arrows at the top and bottom of the slider. Pressing on one of these arrows will cause scrolling in the appropriate direction. The slider may be "grabbed" and moved by pressing and dragging the middle portion between the arrows. Motif's slider is solid with size varying to indicate the size of the window with respect to the size of the buffer. Any portion of it may be grabbed for movement. There are little arrows at the top and bottom of the scroll bar which may be clicked upon to cause scrolling by one line. In both of these widget sets, clicking on the scrollbar either above or below the slider will cause scrolling by a full page. OpenLook has two additional control areas; the buffer position may be set to either the beginning or end of the buffer by pressing on one of the little rectangular areas at either the top or bottom of the scrollbar. In all versions built with scrollbars enabled, you can resize windows by moving the border between corresponding scrollbars (with the mouse). The X toolkit version is probably the most functional, with the windows being continuously resized as the mouse is moved. The OpenLook and Motif versions wait until after a position is selected to resize the windows. The OpenLook version is perhaps the least functional; there is no visible indication (other than the position of the mouse pointer) to indicate where the new border will be. Splitting and deleting of windows may also be done with the mouse. In each case the action is selected by pressing one of the mouse buttons over a scrollbar with the control key held down. Button one (with the control key held down) will split the scrollbar and the corresponding vile window with the new border at or near the mouse cursor. Button two (with control key) will delete the scrollbar and corresponding window. Button three (with control key) will make the corresponding window the only window. Standard X command line arguments --------------------------------- -fn fontname Font to use (or -font). -rv Use reverse video (also -reverse). +rv Don't use reverse video. -display disp Display to run xvile on. -fg color Foreground color (or -foreground). -bg color Background color (or -background). -bd color Border color (or -bordercolor). -name name Name used for resource lookups. -title name Name to be displayed in titlebar. -geometry geom Initial window dimensions in columns and rows. -iconic Start xvile iconified. -xrm Resource Specify or change an X resource internal to xvile. Additional xvile command line arguments --------------------------------------- -leftbar Put scrollbar(s) on left. -rightbar Put scrollbar(s) on right (default). Setting a new process group --------------------------- Some systems and/or some shells and display managers seem to want xvile to run in its own process group, to help isolate its signals and actions from the signals and actions of the parent process (i.e. the shell or window manager that starts xvile). xvile can be forced into its own process group with the "new-process-group" command, which one would put in the .vilerc file. Using this will cause a call to "setpgrp()" or "setsid()". This behavior is not the default because a) it can't be undone, and b) it seems undesirable on some systems, in that xvile cannot be suspended and put in the background after startup if it's in its own group. Additionally, if given a count as argument, this command will cause xvile to fork(), and the parent to exit before the new process group is set by the child. This will further isolate it from its process environment (and in fact will move xvile into the background if started from the shell). The "new-process-group" command has no effect in non-X11 versions of vile. X Resources ----------- font Font to use. geometry Window dimensions in characters. charClass Character classes for multiple click selections. The format is identical to that of xterm(1). multiClickTime How long between clicks (in milliseconds) to be accepted as a multi-click. foreground background Foreground/Background color of the main xvile text area. cursor.foreground cursor.background Foreground/Background color of the cursor. By default the cursor location is indicated by inverting the foreground and background colors of the cell the cursor is over. Thus the color of the cursor will vary depending upon location. Use of these subresources will cause the cursor to maintain constant coloration of the user's choosing, and may make it easier to see when it appears in a "highlighted" or "selected" area of text. modeline.focusForeground modeline.focusBackground Foreground/Background color of the mode line corresponding to the window with focus, i.e. the "current" window. modeline.foreground modeline.background Foreground/Background color of mode lines corresponding to windows without the keyboard focus. modeline.background is also used for the scrollbar borders and resize grips. focusFollowsMouse If true, the "current" window is the window inhabited by the mouse; no clicking is necessary to change windows. scrollbarOnLeft Either true or false; control the placement of the scrollbars. By default, scrollbars are placed on the right. scrollbarWidth An integer indicating the width of the scrollbar. scrollbar.foreground scrollbar.background Foreground/Background color of the slider or one of the colors of the slider if a stippled pixmap is used. To force the slider to be only the foreground color, you should set sliderIsSolid to true. (X toolkit version only) scrollbar.sliderIsSolid If false, indicates that the stippled pixmap should be used to simulate grey. This will be best on monochrome displays. True works better for color displays. True indicates the slider will be displayed in the foreground color, shaded to look three-dimensional, if possible. (X toolkit version only) scrollRepeatTimeout Amount of time in milliseconds to wait initially before repeating scroll when button one or three are held down. (X toolkit version only). scrollRepeatInterval Amount of time to wait between repeating subsequent scrolls. This parameter is also used for controlling the speed at which selections are scrolled. selection.foreground selection.background Foreground/Background color of the selection regions. "foreground" is the color that the text is displayed in. persistentSelections If true (the default), highlighting of the selection will persist even when button one is pressed to set the cursor position. A false value will behave more like other X applications in which display of the selection is lost as soon as button one is pressed. blinkInterval An integer indicating the time in milliseconds to wait before blinking the cursor. A positive value will cause the cursor to always blink. Setting blinkInterval to zero will cause the cursor to never blink which may be useful on some display servers connected to very slow networks. The disadvantage of setting it to zero is that it is sometimes hard to tell where the cursor is when situated at the boundary of a highlighted region. A negative value (which is the default) will cause the cursor to blink only when situated in a highlighted region such as a selection. This will make the cursor visible no matter where it is. color.fcolor1, color.bcolor1, ..., color.fcolor15, color.bcolor15 When doing text attribution with the "attribute-cntl_a-sequences-til" command (bound to ^A-A), the attribute may be of the form "Cn", where 'n' is a hex digit. This digit picks one of the 16 fcolor/bcolor pairs set up in the color subresource. For example, if the buffer contained the text: ^A6C3:foobar then after the ^A-A command was applied, the leading "^A3C3:" would be gone, and the word "foobar" would appear in the foreground and background colors specified by color.fcolor3 and color.bcolor3. Either of the pair can be left unspecified, and will default to the natural foreground or background color of normal text. Sample .Xdefault entries ------------------------ You may or may not want to use the following as a starting point for the "XVile" section of your .Xdefaults or .Xresources file. If you have a monochrome display server, you will probably not want to use any of the color specifications. You may, however, wish to set up a blinking cursor, using "blinkInterval" (see above). XVile*font: -*-courier-medium-r-normal-*-*-*-75-75-m-70-iso8859-* XVile*geometry: 80x54 XVile.background: darkslategrey XVile.foreground: honeydew XVile.scrollbar.foreground: firebrick2 XVile.scrollbar.sliderIsSolid: true XVile.selection.background: aquamarine4 XVile.selection.foreground: honeydew XVile.cursor.background: yellow XVile.cursor.foreground: darkslategrey XVile.modeline.Background: steelblue XVile.modeline.foreground: darkslategrey XVile.modeline.focusForeground: yellow Fonts ----- To change the font on the fly, use the ':setv' command to set the $font variable, with ":setv $font <fontname>". At present, only xvile is capable of displaying bold and italic (or underline) text associated with attributes. It is anticipated that other versions of vile will catch up to the best of their ability. Users of xvile will find that the italic font in particular is not always available with the font that they've chosen (or have had chosen for them). If an italic font is unavailable, xvile will underline text which is meant to be italic. The program xfontsel is quite useful for determining which fonts are available on your display server and whether there are corresponding bold and/or italic fonts available. Here are some tips on using xfontsel to find an appropriate font. 1) Set rgstry (registry) to iso8859 2) Set spc (spacing) to either "c" (cell font) or "m" (monospaced font). You will be more likely to find a font which will work as italic if you choose a monospaced font, however. You definitely do not want a proportional font. 3) Now pull down the slant menu. Select either "i" (italic) or "o" (oblique). If neither of these are available, go back to step 2 and choose a different spacing. 4) Set avgWdth (average width) next. If you divide the value you've chosen by ten, this will be width of a glyph in the font in pixels. 5) Set wght (weight) to medium. If you have a hard time seeing the characters, you might want to choose bold, but xvile will not be able to use the bold font for displaying bold text. It will be forced to overwrite text that it wants to be bold with the text shifted by one pixel. This works fairly well for larger fonts. 6) Set fmly (family) to a value according to personal taste. By this step, you might not have any choice on the matter anyway. 7) If only one font is available at this point, the other fields don't matter that much. Otherwise set these according to taste. 8) Go back to the slant menu and change either the "i" or "o" to "r". This will be the font to use. xvile will be attempt to get the italic font when needed by substituting either "o" or "i" for the "r". If the above seems too tedious, you can just try the following font which (on many display servers) is pretty close to the size of the default font that xvile will start up with. -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-70-*-* You can try it out by issuing the appropriate "set font" command from xvile. For longer term use, you will probably want to put it in your .Xdefaults file. It will look something like this: XVile*font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-70-*-* You may also set the font from your .vilerc file. This is not recommended, however, as you lose the ability to choose a different font from the command line or resource file. It may also cause the xvile window to be unnecessarily resized during initialization. DOS specifics ------------- The .vilerc file is called vile.rc under DOS. vile should leave your screen in the mode you're in when you enter it, unless you explicitly change it to a different mode with a "set sres=" line in your vile.rc, or if you use a command line option to change it. Command line options consist of a dash followed by one of the following selectors (these are the same values that can be assigned to "sres"): "default", "2", "25", "80x25", "4", "43", "80x43", "5", "50", "80x50", "80x14", "80x28", "40x12", "40x21", "40x25", "40x28", "40x50", [ Currently, under DOS, not all modes may work, as a result of the screen library being used... (in version 5.5). More may work under OS/2. ] If you shell out in 50 line mode, make sure you are in 50 line mode before you exit the dos shell, otherwise you end up with a 50 line edit window with only the top 25 displayed. The vile.rc file can be located in the same directory as your binary executable, since vile searches the PATH for this file. All file globbing, including from the command line, is done using UNIX shell-style wild-carding conventions. The expansion of the ':' character in user input, which normally expands to the "word under the cursor", is suppressed for DOS, due to the conflict with the drive-specifier syntax (e.g. "c:\foo"). In any version of vile there is a command, "set-dos-mode", which will set the "dos" mode, and strip all carriage-return ('^M') characters from the buffer so you don't end up with two of them per line. If you give the command an argument (e.g. "1:set-dos-mode") it will strip CRs but leave you in non-DOS mode. If you wish to change the screen colors which correspond to vile's internal notion of black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white, put a line in your vile.rc which resets the "palette" variable. By default its value is "0 4 2 14 1 5 3 7", which associates each of the above colors with the appropriate PC color attribute. The palette values are masked with 7 before being used as background colors, to prevent blinking characters. Differences from vi ------------------- Of course, this really isn't vi. Some of the following differences deserve changing, others do not. The parser for the ':' commands is not very vi-like. For instance, ":e" will prompt you for a file name. Most commands remember their last argument, and will present it as the default reply to their prompt. The backspace, line kill, word kill, job control, etc. characters are not rebindable. They are, however, read from the tty settings on startup. There is no expansion of ! in filenames. It is expanded in shell escapes, so the command ":!!" does rerun the previous shell command. Occurrences of '#' and '%' are recognized and expanded to the previous or current filename. Paragraph and section boundaries, for the {, }, [, and ] commands are configurable, but may not exactly match those in vi. They are expressed via regular expressions. The default regular expressions are quite complex, to support the traditional nroff and troff boundaries. If you are just editing code, you may want to replace them: ; set paragraph and section r.e.s for speed on C/C++/perl code. set paragraphs=^$ set sections=^[{^L] There is no special lisp support. But then, when was the last time you heard of a lisp programmer that used vi? Of course, ex and open mode aren't there. (Too bad. I'd love to have a companion editor called "exile".) Most, but not all, of the word-motion-with-operator and end-of-line anomalies have been recreated. One missing anomaly: In vile, "dw" on the last word of a line ending in whitespace deletes the trailing whitespace. vi does not delete the whitespace. In the real vi, the '_' command is a little-used motion command, which moves the cursor to the start of the Nth next line, where N is the argument given, less 1. So '2_' takes you to the start of the next line. Primarily intended for use in an operator context, as in "2d_", it is always exactly equivalent in those cases to "stuttering" the operator, as in "2dd". Most people know about and use the stuttered form, so in vile, the '_' command is used by default for buffer history. If the regular vi behavior is desired, put the following in the .vilerc file: bind-key whole-lines _ Sample .vilerc -------------- Here's a sample .vilerc, to help get you started with the syntax and style of vile macros: set autoindent set fillcol 75 set cmode set c-tabstop 4 ; sitting on a brace, run the C code block through indent 1 store-macro write-file filter-til goto-matching-fence "indent -st" ~endm ; format the current paragraph 2 store-macro previous-paragraph filter-til next-paragraph "/usr/ucb/fmt" ~endm ; put 'fprintf(stderr,"\n");" into the file, and ; position the cursor to add to the string 3 store-macro ~force next-line beginning-of-line insert-string "fprintf(stderr, \"\\n\");\n" ; six back, because it counts the newline 6 backward-character insert-chars ~endm ; insert '> ' in front of every line from here til the end ; (this works because without argument, the default action ; for "goto-line" is to go to the end of file. 4 store-macro substitute-til goto-line "^" "> " ~endm ; spelling keystroke: write the buffer, invoke ispell, and force ; it to be read back in. 2 store-macro write-file ; suppress "press return" with "1" argument to shell-command 1 shell-command &cat "ispell " $cfilname replace-with-file $cfilname ~endm bind-key execute-macro-2 = ; the next three give more mnemonic window commands bind-key next-window ^N bind-key previous-window ^P bind-key split-current-window ^T bind-key execute-macro-1 ^A-C bind-key execute-macro-2 ^A-F bind-key execute-macro-3 ^A-K bind-key execute-macro-4 ^A-M Notes on TERM types and Scrolling --------------------------------- vile will determine the window size in one of three ways: first it will ask the tty driver (using a TIOCGWINSZ ioctl call under UNIX). Failing that, it will use the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables. As a last resort it will use the size specified in the TERMCAP entry corresponding to the TERM variable. In addition, vile will attempt to support the SIGWINCH signal, which allows it to track changes to the size of the window in which it is running. If scrolling is really slow, or really ugly (the status line hops around a lot), and you're using a vt102 or compatible terminal that you think should be able to scroll okay, then the problem is almost certainly your termcap entry, which probably doesn't describe scrolling regions adequately. Most standard termcap entries are insufficient. The standard "xterm" entry on many systems falls into this category, and vile contains code that, as a special case, will augment an "xterm" entry with the codes needed for scrolling regions. In any case, here's a termcap entry that should work: dy|vt102|vt-102|dec vt102:\ :do=^J:co#80:li#24:cl=50\E[;H\E[2J:\ :le=^H:bs:cm=5\E[%i%d;%dH:nd=2\E[C:up=2\E[A:\ :ce=3\E[K:cd=50\E[J:so=2\E[7m:se=2\E[m:us=2\E[4m:ue=2\E[m:\ :md=2\E[1m:mr=2\E[7m:mb=2\E[5m:me=2\E[m:is=\E[1;24r\E[24;1H:\ :rs=\E>\E[?3l\E[?4l\E[?5l\E[?7h\E[?8h:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ :ku=\EOA:kd=\EOB:kr=\EOC:kl=\EOD:kb=^H:\ :ho=\E[H:k1=\EOP:k2=\EOQ:k3=\EOR:k4=\EOS:pt:sr=5\EM:vt#3:\ :sc=\E7:rc=\E8:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:vs=\E[?7l:ve=\E[?7h: The crucial entries are cs and sr -- without both of them, vile will attempt to use dl and al, and will scroll by deleting and inserting a block of lines, giving the ugly behavior you're probably seeing. If you define PRETTIER_SCROLL when building vile, it will alternately delete and insert lines, instead of deleting them all and then inserting them all. This makes it look a _little_ better, but it's slower. ( Here is the terminfo entry equivalent to the above termcap entry: vt102|vt-102|dec vt102, xon, cols#80, lines#24, vt#3, bel=^G, blink=\E[5m$<2>, bold=\E[1m$<2>, clear=\E[;H\E[2J$<50>, cnorm=\E[?7h, cr=\r, csr=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dr, cub1=\b, cud1=\n, cuf1=\E[C$<2>, cup=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dH$<5>, cuu1=\E[A$<2>, cvvis=\E[?7l, ed=\E[J$<50>, el=\E[K$<3>, home=\E[H, ht=\t, ind=\n, is2=\E[1;24r\E[24;1H, kbs=\b, kcub1=\EOD, kcud1=\EOB, kcuf1=\EOC, kcuu1=\EOA, kf1=\EOP, kf2=\EOQ, kf3=\EOR, kf4=\EOS, rc=\E8, rev=\E[7m$<2>, ri=\EM$<5>, rmkx=\E[?1l\E>, rmso=\E[m$<2>, rmul=\E[m$<2>, rs2=\E>\E[?3l\E[?4l\E[?5l\E[?7h\E[?8h, sc=\E7, sgr0=\E[m$<2>, smkx=\E[?1h\E=, smso=\E[7m$<2>, smul=\E[4m$<2>, ) Credits ------- This code has been written by a _lot_ of people, with help from a lot more sending in bug reports, fixes, and suggestions. But bug reports should be sent to Paul Fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us, since I'm (still) (principally) responsible for this thing. My co-authors are Tom Dickey (dickey@clark.net) and Kevin Buettner (kev@primenet.com). Names appearing within comments in the micro-Emacs source code are: Dave Conroy, Daniel Lawrence, John Gamble, Roger Ove, Dana Hoggatt, Jon Reid, Steve Wilhite, George Jones, Adam Fritz, D.R.Banks, Bob McNamara, and Brian Straight. Tom Dickey has contributed many code improvements and features, and has stabilized vile on both VMS and DOS. Kevin Buettner has contributed lots of changes for X11 Toolkit support, as well as the bulk of the selection and video attribute mechanisms, and the bulk of the :map command. Rick Sladkey has done great stuff making vile work correctly in Win32 environments, something I might not have done for a long time. Some of the "ex" code is by Steve Kirkendall, author of the vi work-alike "elvis". The regular expression code and documentation is by Henry Spencer. The sample .vilerc was created by Dave Lemke; he also contributed code for new features, including the original native X support. Eric Krohn has done some excellent testing and enhancement. The implementation of rectangles and their operations was inspired by code from the 'notgnu' editor, by Julie Melbin. Patches to support OS/2 and Windows/NT came from Charles Moschel and Joe Greer, respectively. Clark Morgan and Greg McFarlane seem to run full regression tests on each new release, and always seem to find something to report. The reference.doc file supplied with Bram Moolenaar's excellent Vim editor was useful in unravelling some of the less obvious parts of :map functionality. Thanks to Jukka Keto for contributing the c-filt.c code. The initial changes to create vile from micro-Emacs were all done by Paul Fox, who can be reached at home at pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us. (By the way, he is not the Paul D. Fox that wrote the Crisp editor.) Copyright 1995 by Paul Fox, Tom Dickey, and Kevin Buettner ----------------------------------------------------------- $Header: /usr2/foxharp/src/pgf/vile/RCS/vile.hlp,v 1.274 1995/11/21 14:21:07 pgf Exp $