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0 pointssixtofour14y ago0 comments

"Why? vi and its derivates has their own (weird) usage-convention which you will find in no other software anywhere on the planet. Learning them gives you very few transferable skills."

Arrgghhh!

man readline, and search (/) for inputrc.

ANY app that uses readline can be set to use vi OR emacs keystrokes and history, by setting an entry in .inputrc. If you use either editor regularly this will set your command line skills in lots of software all over the planet to warp speed.

If you write python command line programs, try "import readline."

Harumph!

0 comments

super_mario14y ago

And even more, there is rlwrap (i.e. readline wrap) command line utility that wrangles the badly behaved tools and allows you to use VI editing mode with almost anything (like cat command etc).

sixtofourOP14y ago

Well that's pretty cool.

josteink14y ago

While I'm still not going to bother with vi, I do have to admit this is probably just another one of those not-widely-known things about "Unix" which deserves some attention. God knows I didn't know about it.

Other cute things I have discovered lately: You can actually click in ncurses dialogs running in your terminal, even over SSH, if you run a proper terminal. Coming from a PuTTYish background, that is definitely not obvious ;)

sixtofourOP14y ago

And, if you've set -o vi in bash (etc?), when you're editing a command line and need more than just the limited set of vi commands that make sense on a command line, do this:

esc v

esc gets you out of input mode, and v takes the current command line that you're editing and opens a full vi/vim session initialized with the command line. After you're done editing it, :wq quits vi and executes the command. If you change your mind, delete everything in the buffer and then :wq

This is handy if you're editing a biggish command, particularly one from recent history like a loop or anything with a block.

fanf214y ago

`set -o vi` is a POSIX shell feature.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointssixtofour14y ago0 comments

"Why? vi and its derivates has their own (weird) usage-convention which you will find in no other software anywhere on the planet. Learning them gives you very few transferable skills."

Arrgghhh!

man readline, and search (/) for inputrc.

If you write python command line programs, try "import readline."

Harumph!

0 comments

super_mario14y ago

And even more, there is rlwrap (i.e. readline wrap) command line utility that wrangles the badly behaved tools and allows you to use VI editing mode with almost anything (like cat command etc).

sixtofourOP14y ago

Well that's pretty cool.

josteink14y ago

sixtofourOP14y ago

And, if you've set -o vi in bash (etc?), when you're editing a command line and need more than just the limited set of vi commands that make sense on a command line, do this:

esc v

This is handy if you're editing a biggish command, particularly one from recent history like a loop or anything with a block.

fanf214y ago

`set -o vi` is a POSIX shell feature.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse