I've just had my first exposure to vi editor and am not super-hyped over its ease of use. Nothing about it seems intuitive in any way, shape, or form. What is a good alternative to vi editor that is easier to learn and use?
yep, vi's a bitch but you can mostly just get away with the basic shortcuts, ie: i to write, r to overwrite a character, shift+r to overwrite multiple characters, esc to exit editing mode, / and ? to search forwards or backwards, u to undo (repeatable to undo multiple changes) and :w to save, :wq to save and exit, :q! to exit without saving, cursor keys (or h,j,k,l to move around), x to delete a character, d (twice) to delete a line and :%s to search and replace a string, usually using / as separator, but you can choose whatever you want. and append g to globally replace all instances of the string. append c for it to ask for confirmation at each instance of the string. but there are all sorts of plugins and extensions, you can completely customize the vi editor so it bears no resemblance to the default version, extending it's capabilities to turn it into one of, if not the most powerful editor around. these might help you learn it a bit more: VimGenius vim-adventures.com
thanks for the guidance on extensions, which will make it much more user friendly to my untrained self!
Thanks, I do like the simplicity of using a keyboard through a text editor and if this makes it more intuitive it will be worth the investigation.
