CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsvimsshvps
kornkaobat
kornkaobat

Reputation: 93

How to edit this vim file like a normal file editor?

Personally, I am frustrated at most to use vim to edit simple files.

I am following this tutorial to set up Ubuntu on an VPS server which requires the deletion of some lines in ~/.vnc/xstartup file.

Could anyone recommend a better way to deal with this kind of problem, or just ditch vim altogether and use ftp?

enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1174

Answers (3)

Auxilus
Auxilus

Reputation: 217

Go through vim docs.

Also, you need to be in insert mode to be able to insert stuff in the file you can enter insert mode by presseing i after opening a file.

Here is a more simpler guide.

Upvotes: 3

Yedhin
Yedhin

Reputation: 3179

tl;dr Move to the line to be deleted using either h/j/k/l or arrow keys and press the key d twice. Now save and exit with :wq.

I strongly suggest you learn the basics of vim, by simply using the vimtutor command from your terminal emulator(if available in windows) or look up the vim-wiki. It's hard at first. But once you get the feel of it, there's no going back.

Most of the commands are based on mnemonics :

  • d -> short for delete
  • y -> short for yank(or copy)
  • u -> undo
  • h/j/k/l or even arrows -> movement

There are also three main modes of operations in vim that you should know about.

  • Normal mode - where the above mentioned commands work(like pressing d would be a cue for the editor to delete rather than inserting the character "d").
  • Insert mode - you can certainly insert any characters onto the screen just like in any editor.
  • Visual mode - you can visually select characters and perform any of the normal mode commands on that selection and so on.

So here in your case, you want to delete certain lines from the file. First thing go into normal mode by pressing the Esc key and then move to the line you want to delete using the movement keys mentioned above. Then in normal mode press the d twice, that is dd. That deletes your line.

As a final step to save it go into command line mode using the : key. Now look at the bottom of your screen and you can see a ":". No type in wqa to write changes made to all buffers and quit.

Upvotes: 1

Sarim Aleem
Sarim Aleem

Reputation: 170

It takes a while to get used to vim, but once you do it is pretty fast; here are some useful commands

h - left j - down k - up l - right

i - go to insert mode to insert text like normally, you can also use normal shortcuts like ctrl-c and ctrl-v here

finally - if you want to save files, make sure you press esc to go to "normal mode" (the default vim mode where you can use j to go down etc). If you want to quite and save your file type :wq, if you don't want to save your file and quit type :q!

Once you get used to vim it is much faster than a normal editor - I also found it fraustrating at first. If you want to learn more about vim you can also type vimtutor in the terminal (at least in mac) and it will give you a helpful tutorial

Upvotes: 2

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