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Getting along with vile (version 8.1)
----------------------- -------------
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 ":show-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
zt zm zb
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. (Any of the second
characters can be upper or lower case.) Mnemonically, these
correspond to the H, M, and L screen positioning commands,
or to "top", "middle", or "bottom" -- take your choice.
In a macro, only the first character of the argument is
significant, but something like "position-window middle" is
most readable. Supplying a count will offset that far
from the top or bottom of window. (But the middle is
always the middle.)
^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. Additionally, on unix hosts, backquotes
may be used to invoke a shell command that returns the path of a
desired file. For example:
:e `which locks` # csh looks for script called "locks"
:e `type -path locks` # bash equivalent
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.
Filename completion is performed on words of the shell command
in response to a TAB character. To actually include a TAB character
in the shell command, escape it with ^V. Command completion is
not currently implemented -- so, for instance, $PATH is not searched
for possible completions to the first word of a command line.
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. The CDPATH environment variable provides a
search path for the :cd command.
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
(almost) always identical to "uu", and the latter is more easily
typed. (Credit goes to the designers of "nvi" for this trick.)
(BTW, the one case i know of where "u." is not identical to "uu" is
when putting back the contents of the numbered registers: the
sequence "1pu.u.u.u. would successively insert the contents of "1,
"2, "3, "4, and "5, allowing you to choose the "correct" register.
This sequence no longer works. You can still put them _all_ back
with "1p..... and then delete the ones you _don't_ want. ]
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 "show-operators" command will show all available operators.
The "show-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, 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'.)
^X-C Encrypt or decrypt the region, using the current encryption
key. If no key has been set, user will be prompted. See
"Encryption" below.
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.
^A-^] or ":next-tag" continues searching through the tags file(s)
for additional matches.
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.
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 blank lines ("deblank"). If the cursor is on a blank
line, then it and any blank lines surrounding it will be
removed. If a non-blank line, then any immediately following
blank lines will be removed. If given an argument, will force
exactly that many blank lines to exist 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.)
The command parsing is done with regular expressions. Vile
compiles these from the buffer [Error Expressions], which are a
set of regular expressions with extra embedded information.
Unescaped '%' followed by 'V', 'B', 'F', 'L', 'C' or 'T'
substitute verb (Entering/Leaving for gmake), buffer (i.e.,
scratch buffer with a bracketed name), file, line, column and
text fields. The V, B, F, T substitutions are for nonblank
fields, which is not always enough, so vile additionally
recognizes a range in brackets, e.g.,
^%[^: ]:\s*%L:%T
is compiled as
^\([^: ]\+\):\s*\([0-9]\+\):\(.\+\)
^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 current encryption key for this buffer. See "Encryption"
below for more information.
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.
(See fence-if, fence-pairs to customize this behavior).
\ 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-majormodes -- displays the builtin and user-defined major modes.
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-printable -- displays a table of the printable characters,
with associated types.
show-registers -- displays the current contents of the named and
numbered registers.
show-system-mapped-chars -- displays the strings mapped to
represent the terminal's function keys.
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.
Also in xvile, the register name ';' is a synonym for the clipboard.
Other versions of vile permit use of '.' and ';' as supplemental
register storage.
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, tags 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. If there are more completions than will fit in the
window, hitting further TAB characters will cause that window
to scroll through the choices. The window will go away when the
current command is finished.
An older form of completion is also supported:
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 the "unmark" or "unmap" commands:
: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.
You can also define new modes, called "majormodes", which are
collections of buffer mode values, together with qualifiers that
automatically assign a majormode to new buffers. Vile has one
built-in majormode, "c" (displayed as "cmode"). The associated
majormode values are named according to the corresponding buffer
modes, e.g., the "c" majormode's tabstop is predefined as
"c-tabstop", or "cts" for short.
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.
To define majormodes, use ":define-majormode". To remove the
majormode, use ":remove-majormode". Some keywords (e.g., suffixes)
are automatically associated with each majormode. To associate a
buffer mode with a majormode, use ":define-submode". To remove the
association, use ":remove-submode". Once associated, submodes can
be set and unset just like regular buffer modes. Use
":show-majormodes" to display the list of majormodes with their
associated submodes. The ":setall" command displays the names of
the majormodes only, showing which are currently enabled (i.e.,
vile compares each new buffer against the preamble and suffixes to
determine if the majormode should be set for that buffer. Only one
majormode can be set for a buffer.
The possible modes, with synonyms in parentheses, and a trailing U,
M, B or W indicating whether the mode is universal, or belongs to
majormodes, 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]
[Major Modes]
[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 terminfo/termcap, OS/2 and PC's (Win32, 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. A built-in majormode. 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. (M)
crypt Causes buffer(s) to be decrypted when read, and encrypted
when written. This is NOT compatible with the UNIX
crypt(1) routines. See the section on "Encryption" for
more information. (B)
comment-prefix A regular expression denoting the portion of a line
that is replicated and untouched, except for leading
indentation when doing text formatting. The expression
should begin with "^", e.g., the default value
^\s*\(\s*\([#*>]\)\|\(///*\)\)\+
is useful for matching shell comments (#), multi-line C
comments (*), multi-line C++ comments (//), and email (>). (B)
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),
'!' (the last shell command) and
':' (the token at the cursor position). For VMS
and MS-DOS, this is '&'.
(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 terminfo/termcap, OS/2 and PC's (Win32, 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-begin
fence-end Respectively, the regular expressions for balancing simple
(character-oriented, non-nestable) fences.
fence-if
fence-elif
fence-else
fence-fi Respectively, the regular expressions for balancing
line-oriented, nested fences, e.g., as C-preprocessor lines
(the default).
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 regular expression metacharacters 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
(i.e. a character with the 8th bit set) 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)
mini-hilite (mh) When user toggles editing mode in the minibuffer
(^G, mini-edit), display the minibuffer with the given
attribute. These are the same as for visual-matches.
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)
maplength Controls the maximum length of a :map string, to prevent
runaway recursion. This is the total number of characters that
can be gotten during a :map expansion; vile pushes characters
onto the stack, so this is only a rough measure. (U)
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.
For more information, see the section describing the ":map"
command, below. (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. This mode is treated
specially during startup; unless the startup file
(e.g., .vilerc) sets it, all messages will be popped
up, then the mode will be initialized to "false". (U)
preamble (pre) A regular expression describing the first line of
filenames for which the corresponding majormode will be
set. For example, you may have a majormode "sh", with
sh-preamble set to "^#\s*!\s*\/.*sh\>" to match the
lines "# ! /bin/sh", "#!/bin/csh -f", etc. (M)
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. Characters 128-159 are
control characters in the ISO scheme (e.g., ISO 8859-1). (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. The printing-low and printing-high modes
are not necessary if your system supports the locale
functions. (U)
readonly (ro) Prevent writing a buffer to its associated file. Unlike
"view" mode (see below) which prevents any modifications to
a buffer, this mode allows changes, but prevents updates.
This is set automatically for the output of shell commands
and pipes. (B)
readonly-on-readonly (roro) Causes "readonly" mode to be set for
read-only files. Normally vile will attempt to write files
whether the operating system will allow it or not. This
mode should be turned on to truly mimic vi's default
behavior. (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)
spaces-after-sentence (sas) Insert two spaces after each sentence
when formatting a paragraph. By default this option is
turned on. When disabled, the format routiine will insert
only one space after each sentence. (U)
suffixes (suf) A regular expression describing filenames for which
the corresponding majormode will be set. This is arguably
misnamed, since the regular expression need not describe
only suffixes. (M)
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)
tagignorecase (tc) Causes tag searches to be done ignoring upper
and lower case. (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)
tagword (tw) When scanning the word to lookup from the cursor position
for the tags mechanism, grab the whole word rather than the
substring starting at the cursor position. The latter, which
is vi-like, is the default. (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. (B)
view-on-readonly (viewro) 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". Additionally,
on systems which support color, this mode may be used to set
the text foreground color using any of the color values.
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-rename When using ":e" to find a file that has the same name
as another buffer, vile will normally offer for you to edit
the proposed alternate name for the buffer constructed by
adding a "-1", "-2", etc. to the end of the name. Turning
off "warn-rename" will make vile choose buffer names without
user intervention. (U)
warn-reread When using ":e!" to reread a buffer from the file on
disk, vile will normally warn you that you are about to
clobber a modified buffer. Turning off "warn-reread" mode
will make vile assume you known what you are doing. (U)
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. Thus a value of 5 and an
80 column screen will result in 75 character lines. This
mode is different from the "wrapwords" mode (below) which
uses the "fillcol" setting as its target column. The two
modes probably shouldn't both be used at once.
(B)
wrapscan (ws) Text searches will continue from past the bottom of
the file to the top, and vice-versa. (B)
wrapwords (ww) [deprecated] Similar to, but different from, vi's
auto-wrap mode (i.e. "wrapmargin"). While inserting,
words are moved to the next line if the current line gets
too long. Wrapping is only attempted when a space is
typed. The target maximum width of lines is changed with
the "fillcol" setting. (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
-----
There are basically three ways of getting 8-bit characters into
a vile buffer:
Directly -- if the user's input device (i.e. the terminal or
xterm) can generate all characters, and if the terminal
settings are such that these characters pass through
unmolested, then vile will happily incorporate them into the
user's text, or act on them if they are bound to functions. On
an xterm, try "stty cs8 -parenb -istrip". Real serial lines
may take more convincing, at both ends, but use that stty
command as a starting point.
As numbers -- the ^V prefix (or, more correctly, the key bound to
the "quote-next-character" function), if followed by up to
three digits, will insert a character whose value is that
number (no greater than 255) into the buffer. The number may
be entered in decimal (^VNNN), octal with a leading '0' (^V0NNN),
or hex with a leading 'x' (^VxNN).
As digraphs -- Perhaps more useful to some people is using a set of
":map!" commands to aid insertion of 8-bit text. The file
"digraphs.rc" distributed with the vile source contains a set
of mappings which should aid the input of ISO 8859/1 text. As
examples, the mappings in digraphs.rc allow one to type ^Ku"
to get an umlaut character, ^K12 to get the little '1/2'
symbol, ^KY- to get the Yen currency symbol, or ^K:- to get an
arithmetic division symbol.
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).
Editing the Minibuffer
----------------------
The minibuffer (i.e., the last line on the screen, aka the :-prompt)
can be edited using arrow keys, the delete character, or by toggling to
vi-mode with the ^G (mini-edit) character. In mini-edit mode, you may
use commands that do not move the cursor to a different line, as well
as the following editing commands: i, a, I, A.
Vile treats the minibuffer specially. Completed lines are written
to the history buffer. When scrolling up/down in the command history,
vile displays the data that correspond to the command which you have
entered, e.g., a :set command will display the variables entered for
preceding :set commands.
Special Character Expansion
---------------------------
As in vi, the % and # characters typed while responding to a prompt
will expand to the current or "alternate" filename.
Also as in vi, the ~ character will expand to be the previous
replacement pattern when entering either a replacement or search
pattern,
In addition, the colon character (":") expands at most prompts to
be the identifier name under the cursor.
Expansion of ! to the last command run is implemented, but only
when a shell command is being entered.
Any of 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 ":show-commands" or ":apropos string"
to find english names 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-', represents a "meta-key", or a "meta" character.
It 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 $mode "command"
insert-chars
~endif
~endm
; bind to function key f
bind-key execute-macro-15 #-f
; also bind to meta-A
bind-key execute-macro-15 M-A
Actually the "meta-insert-bindings" setting controls whether meta-
keys will have their bound effect when in insert mode. If this
setting is not on (or if the meta-key is not bound to any function)
then the key's value will simply be inserted into the buffer.
Syntax for key-sequences:
-------------------------
To summarize, a key-sequence being bound to is specified with:
1) an optional prefix, like this:
^A- (three chars)
^X- (three chars)
^A (one char)
^X (one char)
2) followed by an optional "function" prefix:
#- (two chars) or
FN- (three chars)
3) followed by an optional "meta" prefix:
M- (two chars)
(this is the same as with specifying a character
in that has the high bit set)
4) followed by a character, like this:
C (one char)
^C (one char)
^C (two chars)
\NNN (max of four chars, where NNN are octal digits)
\xNN (max of four chars, where NN are hex digits)
\n,\r,\t,\b,\f,\a (two chars each, usual meanings)
\e (two chars, means ESC)
\s (two chars, means SPACE)
(The "one char" control character entries in the above table are
represented in this help file as two printable characters, to
ensure they are not deleted by mailers or file transfer programs.)
Function Keys
-------------
When you bind to a function key, you will see its value printed
as a 'poundsign' sequence. And, if you wish to :map a function
key, you will need to use its poundsign sequence. This is
explained more fully below.
The list of function key labels, along with their "vile name",
are as follows:
Usual Label Vile name Usual Label Vile name
----------- --------- ----------- ---------
Up-arrow #A Home #H
Down-arrow #B End #E
Left-arrow #D Insert #i
Right-arrow #C Delete #d
Prior (PageUp) #p Find #f
Next (PageDown) #n Select #s
Help #? Menu #m
F1 #1 F12 #@
F2 #2 F13 ##
F3 #3 F14 #$
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.
Since key sequences starting the '^X', '^A', or '#' prefixes
are normally expected to act as a unit, no remapping is done on
characters that follow such prefixes. For instance, this keeps a
map like:
:map h ihello<ESC>
from breaking the '^X-h' command.
Long running loops caused by recursive :map definitions are
detected and assumed to be infinite. When such a 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" _will_ 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 @)
mini-edit (^G)
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 accommodate 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.
^X-^ Copy recorded keyboard macro to a named register, for saving,
or for execution using '@a', as below. (Type "a^X^ )
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)
$bchars number of characters in current buffer (read only)
$blines number of lines in current buffer (read only)
$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
$cryptkey encryption key (write only)
$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
$end-of-cmd true if user ended the cmd with <CR>
$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/winvile versions only)
$forward-search search direction, true=forward
$helpfile help-filename (vile.hlp)
$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)
$majormode current majormode, if any (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 "unix", "dos", "vms", "os/2", "win32" (read only)
$pagelen number of screen lines in use by editor
$pagewid current screen width
$palette current palette string
$patchlevel current patch-level (empty for release)
$pathname current path-like word
$pending typeahead pending flag (read only)
$pid returns vile's process-id (read only)
$progname returns "vile" or "xvile" or "winvile". (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)
$wlines number of lines in current window
$word current "word"
$write-hook name of procedure to run before a file is written
$xdisplay the value to set $DISPLAY when running $xshell.
$xshell name of the terminal program for spawned xvile commands.
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
>s 0 get keycode sequence, e.g., #1
&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
~elseif 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
(you would jump to this with:
~goto LBL01
)
Lines ending with '\' are joined before interpreting them.
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-entrancy 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 \> regular
expression metacharacters.
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 &seq &trim $line ""
~goto L1
~endif
~while &les %indlev $curcol
*L1
~force back-line-at-bol
~if &seq $status "FALSE"
~return
~endif
~if &seq &trim $line ""
~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 &seq &trim $line ""
~goto L2
~endif
~while &les %indlev $curcol
*L2
~force down-line-at-bol
~if &seq $status "FALSE"
~return
~endif
~if &seq &trim $line ""
~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 tilde (~) character will expand immediately when it is typed
to be the contents of the previously entered replacement pattern.
[ Earlier versions of vile made this version of the pattern
available immediately, as a default response, but this made it
difficult to substitute nothing after previously substituting
something. ]
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"
Other environment variables:
VILE_HELP_FILE
override the name of the help file, normally "vile.hlp".
VILE_STARTUP_FILE
override the name of the startup file, normally ".vilerc"
(or "vile.rc" for non-UNIX systems).
VILE_STARTUP_PATH
override the search path for the startup and help files.
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).
Encryption
----------
vile implements a simple encryption algorithm, and can apply this
to your buffers either automatically (via a mode setting) or
manually (via an explicit command). The algorithm is reversible,
so crypting a previously crypted buffer or region will undo that
encryption.
The encryption key for a buffer will be a) inherited from the
global cryptkey which was set via the vile command line (-k) if it
exists, b) set with the set-crypt-key (^X-X) command, or c)
obtained from the user interactively. The details of this are a
little messy, and should probably be cleaned up somewhat. The
buffer's key will remain active until changed or reset.
If "crypt" mode is on, then when the buffer is written the user
will be prompted for the encryption key to use in none has yet been
set. If "crypt" mode is on, and an encryption key has been set,
then the buffer will be crypted when read. In practice this means
you need to read the file, then set crypt mode, then reread the
file. (Or, equivalently, create the buffer, set crypt mode, and
then insert the file into it (with ":r").
The ^X-C operator will crypt an arbitrary region of a buffer, using
the current key. Note that crypting two adjacent regions
separately will _not_ produce the same result as crypting their
single equivalent region once.
vile's encryption algorithm is also available externally, via the
"vile-crypt" program built from the same sources. vile-crypt will
encrypt/decrypt a file using vile's crypt algorithm. You can use
"-k key" to supply the key on the commandline, and "-m" to treat
the file as a mail message -- in that case, only text after the
first blank line will be crypted. Text to be encrypted can be
specified as filenames on the command line, or provided as the
standard input. All output appears on stdout. On systems with
a getpass() library routine, the user will be prompted for the
encryption key if it is not given on the command line. To
accomodate systems (such as linux) where the getpass() library
routine is not interruptible from the keyboard, entering a
crypt-key password which ends in ^C will cause the program to quit.
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
Cpp: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. "Cpp" applies to C preprocessor lines, e.g., #if,
etc.
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.
Writing your own filters
------------------------
Filters may be written as either an external program or with
the Perl interface. Both the manual page filter and the C
program colorizer are examples of external programs which do
the filtering. The hgrep.pl perl script is an example of a
filter which uses the vile's interface to Perl.
Regardless, the goal of the filter is to embed in the text
a control sequences which describe how the subsequent text
should be attributed by the vile command
attribute-cntl_a-sequences-til
(See above for examples of how to use this command.)
The control sequences take the following form:
^A<Count><Attr>:
<Count> is a sequence of digits representing the number of
characters following the ':' to be attributed.
<Attr> is a sequence of characters which indicates how to
attribute the required number of characters following the
':'. The following sequences are recognized by vile:
I -- italic
B -- bold
R -- reverse (or inverse) video
U -- underline
C<hex digit> -- color number (one of 16)
H<command>\0 -- hypertext command
The <command> for hypertext commands may be any sequence of
characters except for newlines and null characters. A null
character must terminate the hypertext command. The command
should be a valid vile command such as you might enter into
your .vilerc file.
The attribute characters may be used together in any
combination. So, for example, you could use the following
to make some text appear both bold and italic:
^A15IB:Bold and italic
Hypertext
---------
Vile does not currently supply a builtin key binding for
executing hypertext commands. The following macro and
key binding will cause the space bar to be bound to a macro
which will follow a hypertext link when the cursor is placed
on top of it. If no hypertext link is present, then the
normal default action of advancing one character to the
right is taken:
22 store-macro
~force execute-hypertext-command
~if ¬ $status
~force forward-character-to-eol
~endif
~endm
bind-key execute-macro-22 \
[ Note to Paul and Tom: Maybe we should just add a little
bit of code to make this the default binding for space bar?
Or is some other key binding preferable? In any event,
it'll only take 7 or 8 lines to do the job... ]
When using xvile, double clicking on a hypertext link will
cause the hypertext command to be executed. If no hypertext
command is associated with the text under the cursor, the
default action of selecting the word under the cursor will
occur instead.
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 accommodate 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 shift modifier,
it pastes at the mouse position, otherwise it pastes at
the last text cursor position before selecting.
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.
Clipboard
---------
Data may be exchanged between many X applications via the
PRIMARY selection. This selection is set and manipulated as
described in the above section entitled "Mouse Buttons".
Other applications, most notably OpenLook applications, use
the CLIPBOARD selection to exchange data between applications.
On many Sun keyboards, selected text is moved to the clipboard
by pressing the "Copy" key and pasted by pressing the "Paste"
key. If you find that you can not paste text selected in
xvile in other applications or vice-versa, it may well be that
these applications use the CLIPBOARD selection instead of the
PRIMARY selection. (The other mechanism used among really old
applications involves the use of a ring of cut buffers.)
xvile provides two commands for manipulating with the
clipboard. These are copy-to-clipboard and
paste-from-clipboard. When copy-to-clipboard is executed, the
contents of the current selection are copied to the special
clipboard kill register (denoted by ';' in the register list).
When an application requests the clipboard selection, xvile
gives it the contents of this kill register. The
paste-from-clipboard command requests clipboard data from the
current owner of the CLIPBOARD selection.
Users of Sun systems may want to put the following key
bindings in their .vilerc file in order to make use of the
Copy and Paste keys found on their keyboards:
bind-key copy-to-clipboard #-^
bind-key paste-from-clipboard #-*
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
---------------------------------------
-fork to spawn xvile immediately on startup
+fork to force xvile to not spawn on startup
-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.
menuBackground
menuForeground Optional (OPT_MENUS_COLORED, works with Motif) resources
for setting the background and foreground colors of
menubar and pulldown menus.
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.
forkOnStartup If true, xvile forks after initialization.
focusFollowsMouse If true, the "current" window is the window
inhabited by the mouse; no clicking is necessary
to change windows.
pointer.foreground
pointer.background Foreground/Background color of the pointer.
pointer.normalShape
pointer.watchShape Set the shapes for the normal and watch pointers
respectively.
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.
selectionSetsDOT If false (the default), the cursor will be restored
to its previous position prior to making the selection.
If true, the cursor will be positioned at the location
of the mouse at the end of making a selection (usually
at either the start or end of a selection).
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.
menuHeader
menuEntry The names given to the menu header and entries,
respectively.
menuHeight resource controlling the Athena menu-height
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 is perfectly happy (and even tries very hard) to use the
UNIX-style "forward-slash" ('/') as a path delimiter. Entering the
"backslash" ('\') will work, but you should be aware that vile uses
this character as an escape mechanism for entering special
characters (e.g. "\t" for TAB) in strings. As an example setting
"tags" to "tags ..\tags" will not have the intended result.
Instead, use "tags ..\\tags" or better, "tags ../tags".
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").
The character '&' may be used for this instead.
In any version of vile there is a command, "set-dos-mode", which
will a) strip all carriage-return ('^M') characters from the ends
of lines in the buffer and b) set the "dos" mode so that carriage
returns are appended when the file is written. There is also a
corresponding "set-unix-mode" command, which strips carriage
returns, and forces "nodos" mode, so that they don't come back when
you write the file. In both cases, "dos" mode becomes a so-called
"local" mode, so that the rest of your buffers will be unaffected.
Vile supports a 16-color palette under DOS, which includes:
black, red, green, brown, blue, magenta, cyan,
lightgray, gray, brightred, brightgreen, yellow,
brightblue, brightmagenta, brightcyan, white
If you wish to change vile's internal notion of these colors, put
a line in your vile.rc which resets the "palette" variable. By
default its value is "0 4 2 6 1 5 3 7 8 12 10 14 9 13 11 15",
which associates each of the above colors with the appropriate
PC color attribute. Under MS-DOS, the palette values are masked
with 7 before being used as background colors, to prevent blinking
characters.
Win32 specifics
---------------
Flavors
-------
The editor may be invoked/built as a console or GUI application.
The former is known as vile.exe and the latter as winvile.exe .
For the remainder of this section of the help file, a generic
reference to "vile" refers to both the console and GUI editor,
unless otherwise stated.
Heritage
--------
The Win32 version of vile supports almost all of the features and
changes listed directly above in the section entitled "DOS
specifics", with the exception that the editor's screen resolution
cannot be changed using explicit -43, -50, etc. command-line
switches or via the sres command.
Winvile Command-Line Switches
-----------------------------
Winvile accepts these command-line options in addition to the
standard ones:
-geometry <C>x<R> Initial window dimensions in Columns and Rows
(ex: -geometry 80x30).
-fn <fontspec> Initial font (or -font). The "Winvile Font"
section below describes <fontspec> syntax.
Pipes
-----
Internally, vile uses two radically different mechanisms for piping
data to and from the shell. One mechanism uses temporary files and
the other simply calls native Win32 services (no temp files). This
dichotomy exists because the NT shell (cmd.exe) handles native
pipes relatively cleanly, but the Win95/98 shell (command.com) does
not. If using Win95/98, refer to the file doc/w32modes.doc for the
gory details. By default, then, on a WinNT host, vile's pipes are
implemented with Win32 services and via temp files on a Win95/98
host. If the user's replacement shell does not exhibit problems
similar to those described above (e.g., Thompson Toolkit Shell),
vile may be forced to use native Win32 pipes by setting the global
mode "w32pipes" (e.g., "se w32pipes").
Mouse
-----
Selecting and dragging with the left mouse button yanks text to the
unnamed register. Press a control key during the selection to
sweep out a rectangular region. Extend the selection beyond the
bottom of the current window by continuing to hold the left mouse
button down while moving the cursor back and forth across the
window's mode line.
Change vile's window focus via left mouse button clicks (when
multiple windows are displayed).
Clipboard
---------
Copy data from the unnamed register to the windows clipboard via
the copy-unnamed-reg-to-clipboard command (bound to Alt+Insert).
Copy data from a named register or region to the clipboard (a la
vile's ^W operator) via the copy-to-clipboard command (bound to
Ctrl+Insert). The paste-from-clipboard command copies data from
the clipboard to the current buffer (bound to Shift+Insert). Some
examples, assuming <CI> => Ctrl+Insert and <AI> => Alt+Insert:
4yy<AI> ;copy 4 lines from unnamed reg to clipboard
"a<CI> ;copy register 'a' to clipboard
<CI>3w ;copy 3 words to clipboard
OLE Automation
--------------
Winvile may be invoked as an OLE automation server and thereafter
controlled by an OLE client. Refer to the file doc/oleauto.doc for
further details. Additionally, the OLE client "visvile.dll"
provides a mechanism for substituting winvile as the default
Developer Studio editor. Refer to the file doc/visvile.doc for
detailed information.
Winvile Font
------------
Winvile's font may be set via a command-line switch or from within
the editor by modifying the $font environment variable. In either
case, a <fontspec> string describes the desired font, where:
<fontspec> :== [<face>,]<size>[,<style>]
<face> :== font-name
<size> :== point size (as an integer)
<style> :== { bold | italic | bold-italic }
Note 1: if <style> is unspecified, "normal" is assumed.
Note 2: if <face> contains a comma, escape it with '\'.
Note 3: if <face> is omitted, the current font is modified.
Note 4: if <face> contains spaces and the font is set from the
command-line, delimit <fontspec> as appropriate for the
current shell/desktop environment.
Note 5: <face> must be fixed pitch. To obtain a list of all fixed
pitch fonts on the current win32 host, invoke winvile and
browse the "Font" dialog box accessible from the System menu
(accelerator key is ALT+<space bar>+f).
Cmdline Examples Internal Examples
**************** *****************
-fn 'Letter Gothic,8' :setv $font r_ansi,7
-font r_ansi,8,bold :setv $font 8
Vile.rc Example
***************
~if &sequal $progname "winvile"
set-variable $font "courier new,8"
~endif
Utilities
---------
vile-c-filt has been ported and may be used to statically color
source files (refer to the section of this file entitled "Filtering
C programs" for further info). There exist detailed, win32-related
comments within the source file c-filt.c that describe minor
porting changes, as well as providing example usage that leverages
the editor's 16-color palette.
Perl
----
At the user's discretion, vile may be built with an embedded perl
interpreter. To date, only the perl [binary] distribution at the
following URL is supported:
http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/ports/win32/Standard/x86/
If you acquire (i.e., do not personally build) a copy of
"perl-embedded" vile, these external configuration steps are
necessary:
1) Obtain the [binary] perl distribution from the aforementioned
URL and install it. Included in this distribution, among many
other items, is a required DLL and the usual perl packages.
2) [Optional] To invoke vile-based perl scripts distributed with the
editor, create an exported environment variable called
VILE_LIBRARY_PATH that specifies a directory of your choice. Then
create a subdirectory called %VILE_LIBRARY_PATH%\perl and copy the
scripts to same. The list of scripts known to work in a Win32
environment includes:
hgrep.pl glob2re.pl visit.pl search.pl hilite.pl syntax.pl
Modes
-----
force-console Boolean indicating whether or not winvile forces
console creation prior to initiating a native read
pipe or filter region operation. Must be set when
the host shell doesn't properly communicate with
consoles created as a side effect of the
CreateProcess() API. Reset by default on a Win95/98
host, since command.com exhibits this problem.
Note: this mode is applicable only when w32pipes
is set. (U)
scroll-pause An integer indicating the time in milliseconds to
wait after scrolling the display. A value of zero,
the default, disables this mode. This mode is
necessary when rapid scrolling operations cause
improper screen refresh by the console editor
(should only be a problem with inexpensive video
HW). Typical values, if required, are 20-80
(msec). (U)
w32pipes See discussion of pipes above. (U)
Windows 95/98 Considerations
----------------------------
Refer to the file doc\w32modes.doc for a discussion of the optimum
settings of force-console and w32pipes.
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
-------
Since version 6.1, Tom Dickey has been maintaining the "official"
source tree, and release responsibilities. Paul Fox maintains the
mailing lists.
This code has been written by a _lot_ of people, with help from a
lot more sending in bug reports, fixes, and suggestions. The
authors of vile are Tom Dickey (dickey@clark.net) and Kevin Buettner
(kev@primenet.com), and Paul Fox (pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us).
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 came from Charles Moschel and for Windows/NT
from Joe Greer and Clark Morgan. Clark Morgan and Greg McFarlane seem
to run full regression tests on each new release, and always seem to
find something to report. Sean Ahern is also always dependable for
finding a bug or two per release. The reference.doc file supplied with
Bram Moolenaar's excellent Vim editor was useful in unraveling some of
the less obvious parts of :map functionality. In addition, his
implementation of digraph insertion was used directly in the creation
of digraphs.rc. 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 (pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us). (By the way, he is not the
Paul D. Fox that wrote the Crisp editor.)
Problems
--------
Send bug reports to
vile-bugs@foxharp.boston.ma.us
Requests to be put on the announcement list should go to
vile-announce-request@foxharp.boston.ma.us
Copyright 1995,1996,1997 by Paul Fox, Tom Dickey, and Kevin Buettner
--------------------------------------------------------------------
$Header: /usr/build/vile/vile/RCS/vile.hlp,v 1.371 1998/10/03 02:42:01 tom Exp $