Vim (text editor)

In 1988, Bram Moolenaar began work on what would become Vim. He used the codebase for the Stevie editor ported to Amiga (by Tony Andrews et al.) as a starting point.^[15][16] Version 1.14 (completed 2 November 1991) became the first public release. It was distributed via Fish Disk #591 in January 1992.^{[15][17][18][19][20]}

Vim is released under the Vim license, which includes some charityware clauses that encourage users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda.^[4] The Vim license is compatible with the GNU General Public License through a special clause allowing distribution of modified copies under the GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.^[4]

Vim is customizable and extensible, making it attractive to those who want control and flexibility in a text editing environment.^[28] Users can execute complex commands with key bindings, which can be customized and extended. The recording feature allows for the creation of macros to automate sequences of keystrokes and call internal or user-defined functions and mappings. Abbreviations, similar to macros and key mappings, facilitate the expansion of short strings of text into longer ones and can also be used to correct mistakes. Vim also features an easy mode for users wanting a simpler user experience.^[29]

There are many plugins available that extend or add new functionality to Vim. These plugins are usually written in Vim's internal scripting language, vimscript (also known as VimL),^[30] but can be written in other languages as well.

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for a specific task or adding a major flavour to its behaviour. Examples include Cream, which makes Vim behave like a click-and-type editor, or VimOutliner, which provides a comfortable outliner for users of Unix-like systems.

Vim provides many features beyond what vi provides.^[31] Some of Vim's enhancements include completion functions, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.) including support for plugins, a graphical user interface (gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation, spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, Unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search and cursor position histories, multiple level and branching undo/redo history which can persist across editing sessions, and visual mode.^{[citation needed]}

Vim continually saves information to a file^[a] that allows for recovering from a crash. Generally, the file extension is ".swp", but if the user tries to open a file when the recovery file already exists, then Vim notifies the user of the condition. If the user confirms to proceed, Vim uses a different extension to form a name for a file that does not exist. The extensions are along the progression: ".swo", ".swn", ".swm", etc.^[32][33] The feature can be disabled.^[34]

Vim provides a vi-compatibility mode that limits its functionality to be similar to that of vi. However, even in compatibility mode, Vim is not entirely compatible with vi as specified by POSIX.^[35] For example, Vim does not support vi's open mode. Vim's developers state that it is "very much compatible with Vi".^[36]

Vim script (also called Vimscript or VimL)^[37] is the scripting language built into Vim.^[38] Based on the ex editor language of the original vi editor, early versions of Vim added commands for control flow and function definitions. Since version 7, Vim script also supports more advanced data types such as lists and dictionaries and a simple form of object-oriented programming. Built-in functions such as map() and filter() allow a basic form of functional programming, and Vim script has lambda since version 8.0. Vim script is mostly written in an imperative programming style.

Vim macros can contain a sequence of normal-mode commands, but can also invoke ex commands or functions written in Vim script for more complex tasks. Almost all extensions (called plugins or more commonly scripts) of the core Vim functionality are written in Vim script, but plugins can also utilize other languages like Perl,^[39] Python,^[40] Lua,^[41] Ruby,^[42] Tcl,^[43] or Racket.^[44] These plugins can be installed manually, or through a plugin manager such as Vundle, Pathogen, or Vim-Plug.

Vim script files are stored as plain text, similarly to other code, and the filename extension is usually .vim. One notable exception to that is Vim's config file, .vimrc.

" This is the Hello World program in Vim script.
echo "Hello, world!"

" This is a simple while loop in Vim script.
let i = 1
while i < 5
  echo "count is" i
  let i += 1
endwhile
unlet i

• Learning the vi and Vim Editors – Tutorial book by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb
• Editor war – Rivalry between Emacs and vi text editors
• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors
• Vimperator – Firefox extension
• Neovim – Fork of the Vim text editor