Getting along with vile (version 9.6) ----------------------- ------------- 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 supports many, many "modes" (aka options), which are thoroughly explained in the section entitled "Editor modes". But do note that this help file makes references to modes before the concept is fully described. It's a chicken and egg problem.... 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. Use tab (or back-tab if supported) to scroll the list of 9 buffers right/left. Pressing '_' will select the first listed buffer; the 1-9 digits also work as expected when the list is scrolled. [ 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. ^X-_ Identical to '_', except that the selected buffer is placed in the current window (windows are described in the next help topic). This is most useful when: - two windows show a different view of the same buffer (for illustration's sake, call the views "A" and "B"). - :e is used to open a new buffer (call this view "C"), which obscures "A". - eventually, you decide to return to "A" and "B". ^X-_1 does the trick (reverts to views "A" and "B"), but _1 simply moves the cursor into B's window, retaining views "C" and "B". :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. :set-window Set the current window to the specified buffer. This is useful especially when you have split the screen into a number of windows and want to override the automatic layout of "#" and "%" buffers. :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. :unmark-buffer Clears the "modified" status of a buffer. Useful for the creation of temporary buffer(s) that are discarded when the editor exits. :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. Multiple buffer names may be specified via wildcards (e.g., :ki *.log) and individual buffer names may be selected via name completion (using the same conventions as in filename completion, described below). ^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 ":"). [ I put the following bindings in my startup file (.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 command ":w >> filename" appends one file to another. 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. The write-all-buffers command attempts to write all buffers whether marked "modified" or not. 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 "set-environment-variable" (or "setenv") command can be used to export new or changed environment values to spawned programs. (Note that this might or might not affect the operation of vile features that are themselves controlled by environment variables, since those variables may only be checked once at the time that vile is started.) 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. This variable's path delimiters are host-specific, as follows: Unix colon DOS, OS/2, Win32 semicolon VMS comma Giving an argument to the ": !" (also called "shell-command" when writing macros) will suppress the "Press return to continue" message after the command runs. Additional shell-related features are described in the section of this help file entitled "Working in a project hierarchy". 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". The named marks such as "'a" work as they do in vi. vile allows a decimal digit as a mark. It also recognizes special marks for the beginning and end of a selection: '< for the beginning and '> for the end (see the discussion of the quoted motion command). 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..... ("1p for screen) 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. You can turn it completely off (and purge the undo stack) by setting noundoable. 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- Convert tabs to spaces, using the current tabstop value. ^A- 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'.) See also the q (quoted motion) command. 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. The editor opens a buffer containing the requested tag. Take note that tag completion is supported, so it's possible to type a partial tagname and then press TAB to force vile to complete the name, assuming it's unique. If not unique, press TAB twice to see a list of all possible completions. Example (using the vile sources): :ta is_sl is completed as "is_slashc" . Pressing RETURN following completion opens a buffer on estruct.h, with the cursor positioned at the first definition of this tagname. ^] 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. Take note that the tag locate and pop commands, by default, move the cursor out of the current window if the target tag is located in one of the editor's other windows. To "pin" all locate and pop actions to the current window, set pin-tagstack mode. 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. For further tags usage examples, refer to the section of this help file entitled "Working in a project hierarchy". 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 the DOS/VMS/Win32 versions of vile, since ':' doesn't expand to the word under the cursor on those hosts due to conflicts with filename drive/disk delimiters. For those hosts, substitute '&' instead.] 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 line and column numbers are 1-based, treating tab character as a single column. Use %l and %c, respectively for 0-based values. 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*\([0-9]\+\):\(.\+\) ; example of a macro to add to [Error Expressions] store-procedure AddError ~local %oldbuffer setv %oldbuffer=$cbufname compile-error-expressions yank-line edit-file '[Error Expressions]' unsetl view goto-beginning-of-file put-before unmark setl view buffer %oldbuffer compile-error-expressions ~endm Use the show-error-expressions command to display the contents of the [Error Expressions] buffer, along with the expanded regular expression and annotation for the substitutions. The result is shown in [Error Patterns]. ^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...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 highlighted, and yanked on completion (as well as setting the special named marks '< and '>) as a side effect. The resulting selection can then be manipulated with the ^S pseudo-motion, below. The selection-clear command removes the selection's highlight attributes. 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 on a Unix host, 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 or winvile, 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. select-all On hosts where vile provides mouse support, the select-all command selects, highlights, and yanks all text in the current buffer to the unnamed register. Clear the selection's highlight attributes as follows: Technique Applies To --------- ---------- selection-clear command any host left mouse button (LMB) click winvile click mode line with LMB win32 host press ESC winvile 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") 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-color-schemes -- displays a color chart of the user-definable color schemes (see palettes.rc for examples) show-colors -- displays a color chart of the builtin color names, the internal coding used in the syntax filters (e.g., C0), the $palette mapping and examples in bold, italic, etc. 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" 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") show-mapped!-chars -- displays the strings mapped for insert mode with ":map!". (synonymous with ":map!") show-printable -- displays a table of the printable characters, with associated types. To allow it to fit within 80 columns, abbreviations are used, which are the same names as used in character classes. 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 state $variables and temporary %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 double-quote) 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, buffers, 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 various flavors and types and constitute the editor's primary configuration mechanism. vile supports these mode types: boolean enum int string The value of a mode is specified via "set" or "setl" (the latter command _only_ affects buffer modes, as described below). Mode values may be cleared with "unset" (or "unsetl" for buffer modes), as well as other idioms described later. Clearing a mode, by the way, is a fancy way of saying that its value is set to 0 or "", the latter for string types. When an enum mode is cleared, vile selects whichever enum constant is assigned the internal (read compiled) value of 0. Some concrete examples: mode type mode name example usage --------- --------- --------------- boolean autoindent set autoindent enum visual-matches set visual-matches=reverse int fillcol set fillcol=75 string tags set tags="../tags tags" Flavor: universal modes ----------------------- These modes are not directly associated with buffers, windows, or languages. Consequently, a universal mode affects the editor under all relevant operating conditions. To set/modify a universal mode, use the "set" command. Startup file examples: set vtflash=normal unset flash ; or set noflash set errorbells Since the set command (within a startup file) accepts multiple modes, this oneliner is equivalent: set vtflash=normal noflash errorbells To clear a universal mode use one of these idioms: set no unset setno For completeness sake, note that the "local" version of the set/unset commands ("setl"/"unsetl") do not make sense (and elicit no effect) when used with universal modes. Flavor: buffer modes -------------------- These modes are inherited from a set of "global" buffer modes, but bound to a specific buffer once a "local" value is independently established. To set and reset local modes, use "setl", "unsetl", or "setlno". An actual example is useful for illustration purposes. When vile is started, the global value of "view" mode is unset by default (i.e., false) and all newly visited buffers are editable. But suppose I edited the file "precious.cpp", which I did not want to modify. There are two approaches that could be taken: $ vile :set view ; enable view mode globally :e precious.cpp ; edited in "view" mode :e other.cpp ; ditto or $ vile :e precious.cpp ; initially edited in "noview" mode :setl view ; "view" mode now bound to precious.cpp :e other.cpp ; edited in "noview" mode In the first approach, view mode is enabled globally and consequently affects all existing buffers and all subsequently created buffers. This solution works for the stated goal, but makes it impossible to modify any other buffers. The second approach affects only the targeted file. Flavor: window modes -------------------- Similar to buffer modes, window modes are bound to a specific window once a local value is independently established. These modes are set/cleared with the same commands as buffer modes. Flavor: majormodes (later) -------------------------- Until the subject of syntax coloring is described, it's not very useful to discuss majormodes. So, in the listing of modes below, skip over anything tagged with (M). But don't fret, these modes are described separately in the topic entitled "Majormodes". Current mode settings --------------------- 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. Modes in detail --------------- Shown next is a listing of vile's various modes. Synonyms, if they exist, are shown in parentheses and a trailing U, B, W, or M indicates whether the mode is universal, buffer, window or major. 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] [Color Palette] [Color Schemes] [Command-Bindings] [Error Expressions] [Error Patterns] [Insert-Bindings] [Major Modes] [Map Sequences] [Map! Sequences] [Named Marks] [Printable Chars] [Registers] [Select-Bindings] [Settings] [Tag Stack] [Terminal Characters] [Variables] 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) autocolor (ac) Automatic syntax coloring. If set to zero, automatic syntax coloring is disabled. Otherwise, it should be set to a small positive integer which represents the number of milliseconds to wait before invoking the "autocolor-hook" hook. The editor will wait the specified amount of time for a "quiet interval" during which the user hasn't pressed any keys. (B) autowrite (aw) vile will write out any changed buffers for which this mode is set before performing a ^Z, "stop", "suspend", ":!", or '^X-!'. 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. On most systems, the choice of colors is fixed, although the X11 version (xvile) can be given customized colors at startup or via .Xdefaults. See notes about the color palette down below, under DOS specifics. (U) byteorder-mark (bom) is a prefix used to distinguish different types of UTF-encoding. (B) bufname-expr Regular expression used for parsing of $bufname, subject to the cursor-tokens mode. If the expression is inactive, use character-class based internal function which combines buffer- and filename-classes. This is a buffer mode. (B) ccolor On systems supporting this, will set the cursor color. On most systems, the choice of colors is fixed, although the X11 version (xvile) can be given customized colors at startup or via .Xdefaults. See notes about the color palette down below, under DOS specifics. (U) 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 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. A file is considered "changed" if its modification time changes, or, under UNIX, if it is replaced entirely, resulting in a different inode number. (The "unique-buffers" mode must be active to enable the latter behavior.) (B) cindent (ci) C-style indentation. Helps maintain current indentation level automatically during insert, like autoindent, above. See cindent-chars for additional information. Note that when the majormode cmode is in effect, cindent assumes a local buffer mode value of true. (B) cindent-chars (cic) The list of characters interpreted by the cindent mode. These include '#' when a line starting with '#' is inserted, it is indented to column 1. This is a temporary indent; succeeding lines are indented normally. Also, lines beginning with a '#' will not shift right with the '>>' command. ':' indent the next line further, e.g., after a label. as well as any character that may be listed in fence-pairs. If it is listed in cindent-chars as well, the left-character of a pair causes the next line to be indented more, and the right-character causes the next line to be indented less. (B) cmode C-code mode. A built-in majormode that predefines cindent mode and separate suffix, tab and shiftwidth submodes. The topic "cmode: the original vile builtin majormode" discusses this majormode in more detail. (M) crypt Causes buffer(s) to be decrypted when read, and encrypted when written. This is compatible with the UNIX crypt(1) routines used by vi, and is only available on platforms which have this feature enabled. See the section on "Encryption" for more information. (B) color-scheme (cs) An aggregate of fcolor, bcolor, video-attrs and $palette. Color schemes are defined with the define-color-scheme command. (U) 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. A pattern that consists of an empty comment line usually works well. (B) cursor-tokens Controls whether vile uses regular expressions or character classes for parsing tokens from the screen for various commands. This uses an enumeration: both, cclass and regex. If "both", vile tries matching first with the regular expresion, e.g., bufname-expr for $bufname, and if that does not match anything, uses the character-classes. The main reason for providing the "both" option is that the older character-class based parsing for buffer name does not correspond exactly to a regular expression. (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, MS-DOS, OS/2, and Win32 hosts, 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. On most systems, the choice of colors is fixed, although the X11 version (xvile) can be given customized colors at startup or via .Xdefaults. See notes about the color palette down below, under DOS specifics. (U) fence-begin fence-end Respectively, the regular expressions for balancing simple (character-oriented, non-nestable) fences. (B) 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). (B) fence-limit Iteration timeout for complex fences, to limit pathological cases, e.g., with Perl's ambiguous block syntax. (B) fence-pairs (fences) 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) file-encoding This is the character encoding of the buffer contents, which is not necessarily the same as the display's character encoding. It must be one of the following values: "8bit" "ascii" "auto" "utf-16" "utf-32" "utf-8" The default "auto" tells vile to determine the encoding by inspecting the buffer contents. The "8bit" setting corresponds to the 8-bit locale support used since 9.3i (20021223). (B) fillcol (fc) Sets the value for the fill column, which is the column at which autowrapping and region formatting will break lines. If zero, use the wrapmargin. If negative, count from the right margin. (B) filtermsgs (fm) A few syntax errors are detected and highlighted by the syntax-highlighting filters. If set, this mode directs vile to write into the [Filter Messages] buffer the associated error messages, which can be used with the error-buffer command to step through the errors. (B) filtername (fn) Specify a syntax-highlighting filter, for a given majormode. This is used in the filters.rc file, to handle special cases where different sets of keywords are applicable to a common syntax, e.g., C, C++ and Java. End users will not typically modify this mode. (B) find-cfg Configures the builtin find feature, which is available on win32 and Unix hosts. For further details, refer to the section of this help file entitled "Working in a project hierarchy". (U) 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. See also the vtflash mode (described below). (U) for-buffers (fb) specifies whether globbing or regular expressions are used to select buffer names in the for-buffers and kill-buffer commands. (U) The choices are mixed globbing with special exclusion for internal names, i.e., with square brackets glob the same as filename globbing regex regular expressions 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). highlight (hl) When false, syntax highlighting is disabled in the corresponding buffers. This allows you to disable highlighting for all buffers or only certain ones. (B) 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) identifier-expr Regular expression used for parsing of $identifier, which also corresponds to the pattern under the cursor used in tags and "screen-search-pattern-grab", etc., subject to the cursor-tokens mode. If the expression is inactive, use character-class, e.g., the equivalent of \<[[:ident:]]\+\> This is a buffer mode. (B) ignorecase (ic) Text searches normally match the pattern exactly. With this set, searches are case-insensitive. (B) ignoresuffix (is) Strip the given pattern from a filename before matching it for majormode suffixes. Note well the difference between the mode's name and its behavior. (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) insert-exec (ie) Tells vile to interpret control characters for movement and undo/redo if they are bound to appropriate functions during insert mode. For example, ^F and ^B would scroll forward and backward. ^A and ^X bindings are honored as well. (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) loading A flag whose state may display in the mode/status line, used by the capture.pl script to show when asynchronous data is loading. (B) magic Honor unescaped regular expression metacharacters in search strings. See the section "Regular Expressions" for more detail. (B) mcolor Specify the color of the modelines, normally in reverse video. (U) 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. (U) mode-filename (mf) A regular expression describing filenames for which the corresponding majormode will be set. The expression is applied only to the portion of the complete pathname after removing the directory name. (M) mode-pathname (mp) A regular expression describing pathnames for which the corresponding majormode will be set. (M) mouse for OS/2, enable/disable the mouse in the console-window version. 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) modeline Controls whether a vi-like modeline feature is enabled. This is a different term than the emacs-like modeline which acts as a status-line for each window. When enabled, vile scans the given number of lines from top and bottom of the buffer when it is first loaded into memory. It looks for lines containing one of these special markers after whitespace: "vi:" "vile:" or (depending on the configuration): "xvile:" "winvile:" After that, either a "set" command terminated by a colon, e.g., vile:set txtmode: or one or more mode assignments, treating colons as a whitespace separator, e.g, these are equivalent, vile:ts=4 nu vile:ts=4:nu The modelines at the top of the buffer are processed first (working forward from the top), then the ones at the bottom (working backward from the end). If the buffer is small enough, the available modelines could overlap; but the program interprets each line at most once. This is a buffer mode, enabling its use in majormodes. (B) modelines Controls the number of lines from each end of the buffer to scan for vi-like mode lines. Defaults to 5 (B) overlap-matches Modifies the highlighting shown by visual-matches to control whether overlapping matches are shown. For some conditions, setting this to false will present a more natural view, e.g., "\a+", which would match sequences of alphabetic characters. In the normal case (show overlap), each time a new match begins vile will toggle the highlighting and produce an irregular effect. (B) paragraphs A regular expression defining where the "next-paragraph" ('}') and "previous-paragraph" ('{') commands will go. (B) pathname-expr Regular expression used for parsing of $pathname, which is expanded by ":" (or "&") in the minibuffer, subject to the cursor-tokens mode. If the expression is inactive, use character-class, e.g., the equivalent of \<[[:file:]]\+\> This is a buffer mode. (B) percent-crlf Percentage of total lines which must end with CR/LF for vile to automatically convert buffer's recordseparator to crlf. (B) percent-utf8 Percentage of total characters which contain embedded nulls, making them look like UTF-16 or UTF-32 encodings. If file-encoding is set to "auto", and the match is higher than this threshold, vile will load the buffer data as UTF-8. The default (90) works well for text which is mostly Latin-1; you should set this to a lower value to work with text which does not follow that pattern. (B) pin-tagstack If set, the editor does not change windows when executing tag locate/pop commands. Put another way, all tag push and pop operations are "pinned" to the current window. (U) 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) reader-policy (rp) Control whether buffers are initially read using the fast and/or slow methods. The fast method uses less memory, but in cases where there is little free memory, or the heap is fragmented, the slow method may work. However, the slow method is much slower. This mode defaults to "both", which means that the quick method is tried first, and if it fails to allocate the large chunks needed for the buffer, it will retry using the slow (small chunk) method. Set to "fast" to use only the fast method, and to "slow" for only the slow method. (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) recordseparator (rs) Specify format of files that vile reads and writes. Formats are lf (for Unix), crlf (for DOS), cr (for Macintosh) and default (lf or crlf, depending on the platform). When reading from a file, vile determines the file format automatically, and sets a local value for this mode. When reading from a pipe, it uses the global value of recordseparator to decide how to split lines. Files created within vile do not automatically have a local recordseparator mode; they inherit the global mode setting. The commands set-rs-cr set-rs-lf or set-unix-mode set-rs-crlf or set-dos-mode are aliases which set the corresponding local mode values of recordseparator. Set the recordseparator on a given buffer to control how it is written. (B) norectangle-insert-mode (rim) Insert, rather than overstrike, change changing text in a rectange. (B) 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. (U) report A threshold value that is used to control messages that report the number of lines deleted, changed, etc. Set it to 0 (zero) to disable the messages. (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, and ensures that files are always represented in vile by their "true" names. (This can prevent multiple unintentional edits of the same physical file via different pathnames -- but see also "unique-buffers", below.) 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) sentences A regular expression defining where the "next-sentence" (')') and "previous-sentence" ('(') 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. Note that when the majormode cmode is enabled, shiftwidth assumes the local buffer mode value of 8. (B) showchar (sc) Controls whether the modeline can show the %C formatted character at the current editing position (W). showformat (sf) Controls when/whether recordseparator information is shown in the status line. Values are "always", "differs" to show when the local mode differs from the global, "local" to show whenever a local mode is set, "foreign" to show when the recordseparator differs from the native default and "never". On Unix, the native recordseparator is a line-feed, on DOS it is carriage-return/line-feed. (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) showvariables (sv) If set, causes the [Variables] buffer which is created by the "show-variables" command to be updated each time the screen is updated. (W) 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 routine will insert only one space after each sentence. (U) suffixes (suf) A regular expression describing filename suffixes for which the corresponding majormode will be set. The expression is applied only to the portion of the filename beginning with the first ".". If more than one of mode-pathname, mode-filename and suffixes are given, they are tested in this order. (M) swap-title For xvile/winvile, if set, the editor displays its title as: - The swapped order is especially useful under limited screen real estate conditions. (U) 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-' operator command to eliminate pre-existing tabs from a region of text. (B) tabstop (ts) Set the value for spacing of normal tabstops. Note that when the majormode cmode is enabled, tabstop assumes the local buffer mode value of 8. (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) undo-dos-trim (udt) Controls whether trimming of carriage returns and control/Z done when converting between Unix and DOS line endings is undoable. undoable (ua) Controls whether changes are saved on the undo stack. This is normally enabled, but you may wish to disable it to reduce memory overhead when filtering very large files. (B) 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) unicode-as-hex (uh) If displaying a buffer whose file-encoding says it is one of the Unicode flavors, e.g., "utf-8", "utf-16" or "utf-32", show the values that are non-ASCII in "\uXXXX" format even if the display is capable of showing these as regular characters. (W) unique-buffers When vile is asked to read a file into a buffer, it will first check to be sure that it doesn't already have a copy of that file, by the same or a different name. This can prevent multiple unintentional edits of a file which appears twice in the filesystem due to hard or soft links. On UNIX systems vile uses the combination of filesystem device and inode to check for uniqueness. vile will represent the file by the first name used to refer to it. Note that unless "check-modtime" is also set, a file with more than one name which is edited and then replaced on disk without the knowledge of the editor may still be edited twice. Setting this mode may be a no-op on non-UNIX systems. (U) unprintable-as-octal (uo) If an 8-bit character is non-printing, it will normally be displayed in hexadecimal. 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. (W) video-attrs Overlay all text with the given attribute: bold, italic, reverse, underline or none. (U) 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) vtflash If your terminal does not support a visual flash feature, but does support the DECSCNM control sequences that toggle normal/inverse screen video (a feature available with vt100 and later terminals), then a visual bell effect may be achieved using this mode. Mode Value Mode Semantics off feature disabled (default) reverse on err -> switch screen to normal then reverse video. normal on err -> switch screen to reverse then normal video. As is true with "flash" mode, no audible or visible indication will occur at all if "errorbells" mode is not set on. (U) warn-blanks When prompted for a filename, vile normally allows you to use leading and trailing blanks and other nonprinting characters. Set this mode if you prefer to be prompted. Vile will then prompt you if you want the nonprinting characters to be stripped from the given filename. (U) 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 know 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-fkeys Support xterm's modified function keys by generating system bindings for the shift-, control-, alt-modifiers of each function key listed in the terminal description. 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 should contain the string "xterm" for this to work. (U) xterm-title Enables titlebar updates if you are running within an xterm. Each time you switch to a different buffer, vile can update the title. This uses the same tests of the TERM variable as the xterm-mouse mode. (U) yankmotion (ym) Yanking text will cause cursor movement (just like vi) if the motion is left or up. (B) 8-Bit Operation --------------- vile allows input, manipulation, and display of all 256 possible byte-wide characters. Wide characters are supported, depending on the device type and your locale settings. Output ------ By default, 8-bit characters with the high bit set (decimal value 128 or greater) will display as hexadecimal (or octal; see "unprintable-as-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. If your locale (e.g., the LANG or LC_CTYPE environment variable on a POSIX platform) is configured properly, the "printing-low" and "printing-high" settings are not needed. vile initializes its character type tables based on the system. You can make finer adjustments to those tables as described in "Character Classes". If your terminal (and locale) are set up to support UTF-8, vile can display files which use that encoding. It can also display UTF-16 and UTF-32 files using UTF-8. When the terminal/locale do not support UTF-8 vile displays the wide characters as hexadecimal codes, e.g., \u1234. Even when vile can display wide characters, you can force it to display the hexadecimal codes with the "unicode-as-hex" mode. If your terminal and locale are not set up to support UTF-8, vile displays UTF-8 codes that would map to Latin-1 (8-bit) values with a "\?" rather than "\x" prefix, to distinguish them from ordinary 8-bit values. It will also display this form for bytes found in UTF-8 files that cannot be decoded as UTF-8. 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. If you start vile in a locale that uses UTF-8 encoding, vile will check if there is a corresponding 8-bit encoding by stripping the UTF-8 suffix from the locale name, e.g., "en_US.UTF-8" to "en_US". When reading characters from the keyboard, it will map 8-bit codes to the 8-bit locale when editing a buffer whose file-encoding is "8bit" or "ascii". 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 hexadecimal with a leading 'x' (^VxNN). Wide (Unicode) values can be entered in a similar fashion, though they are stored as more than one byte: Unicode hexadecimal with a leading 'u' (^VuNNNN). If the current buffer's "file-encoding" mode is set to one of the Unicode flavors (utf-8, utf-16 or utf-32), vile will display the value as a wide character. Otherwise it will show the bytes of the corresponding UTF-8 encoding. 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" or ^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 hexadecimal 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 '\'. Character Classes ----------------- The "show-printable" command shows a table of the characters and their classes, e.g., printable, punctuation, etc. You may modify this table by setting or unsetting a given class for a range of characters. The commands which do this are "set-char-class" and "delete-char-class" or "unset-char-class". These commands expect the class name and a regular expression which defines a range of characters. The class names (short to allow "show-printable" to show everything in 80 columns) are arg ex-style line range: 1,$ or 13,15 or % etc. ctl [:cntrl:] control character del delete/backspace fn fence character, e.g., "{" or "}" id [:ident:] normal identifier, used for word boundaries lwr [:lower:] lowercase, e.g., "a" nsp [:graph:] nonspace num [:digit:] digit, e.g., "0" path [:file:] file/path name prn [:print:] printable pun [:punct:] punctuation qid qualified identifiers, used in tags parsing sh may appear in shell/pipe sp [:blank:] space tmp legal in scratch-buffer names upr [:upper:] uppercase, e.g., "A" wld shell wildcard, e.g., "*" You can also reset the table to its initial state using "reset-char-classes". 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.) For configurations that permit it (X and win32, not termcap/terminfo), you may also specify a key modifier, i.e., "alt+", "ctrl+" or "shift+". The modifier follows the ^A or ^X prefix, e.g., shift+#6 for shifted function-key 6. 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' or 'FN-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' or 'FN-A'. Use show-key-names to see a complete list of these key sequences. 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 hexadecimal or octal as well, in the form 0xNN, where NN is exactly two hexadecimal digits. If you know the hexadecimal 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 'FN' sequence form -- the '#' prefix will not work in insert mode.) There are four key binding tables: default - for commands in screen mode as well as those that do not fit naturally into one of the specialized modes. This is initialized by compiled-in definitions for normal (0-127) and special (function and meta-key) definitions. bind-key describe-bindings describe-key unbind-key cmdmode - for command editing. This is initialized with the special keys from the default table, as well as the control characters that are associated with movement, e.g., ^N and ^P. bind-cmdmode-key describe-cmdmode-key show-cmdmode-bindings unbind-cmdmode-key insmode - for insertion. This is initialized with the special keys from the default table, as well as the control characters that are associated with movement, e.g., ^N and ^P. The insert-exec mode controls whether those control characters are interpreted or inserted. bind-insmode-key describe-insmode-bindings describe-insmode-key unbind-insmode-key selmode - for selection highlighting, i.e., multimotion. This is initially the same as the default binding table, but may be customized. bind-selmode-key describe-selmode-bindings describe-selmode-key unbind-selmode-key The following macro will work correctly in both command and insert modes. Note that you must specify the insert mode (insmode) binding separately; default bindings are not inherited automatically because they may conflict with the bindings used for exiting or modifying text within insert mode. store-procedure begin-errtext 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 $mode "command" insert-chars ~endif ~endm ; bind to function key 5 bind-key begin-errtext FN-5 bind-insmode-key begin-errtext FN-5 ; also bind to meta-A bind-key begin-errtext M-A bind-insmode-key begin-errtext M-A Actually the "meta-insert-bindings" setting controls whether meta- keys will have their bound effect when in insert mode. If this setting is not on (or if the meta-key is not bound to any function) then the key's value will simply be inserted into the buffer. Syntax for key-sequences: ------------------------- To summarize, a key-sequence being bound to is specified with: 1) an optional prefix, like this: ^A- (three chars) ^X- (three chars) ^A (one char) ^X (one char) 2) followed by an optional "function" prefix: #- (two chars) or FN- (three chars) 3) followed by an optional "meta" prefix: M- (two chars) (this is the same as with specifying a character in that has the high bit set) 4) followed by a character, like this: C (one char) ^C (one char) ^C (two chars) \NNN (max of four chars, where NNN are octal digits) \xNN (max of four chars, where NN are hex digits) \n,\r,\t,\b,\f,\a (two chars each, usual meanings) \e (two chars, means ESC) \s (two chars, means SPACE) (The "one char" control character entries in the above table are represented in this help file as two printable characters, to ensure they are not deleted by mailers or file transfer programs.) Function Keys ------------- When you bind to a function key, you will see its value printed as a 'poundsign' sequence. And, if you wish to :map a function key, you will need to use its poundsign sequence. This is explained more fully below. The list of function key labels, along with their "vile name", are as follows: Usual Label Vile name Usual Label Vile name ----------- --------- ----------- --------- Up-arrow #A Home #H Down-arrow #B End #E Left-arrow #D Insert #i Right-arrow #C Delete #d Prior (PageUp) #p Find #f Next (PageDown) #n Select #s Help #? Menu #m F1 #1 F12 #@ F2 #2 F13 ## F3 #3 F14 #$ 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 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 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 (hexadecimal), \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" (or ":show-mapped-chars") or ":map!" (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 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 set of keystrokes as you execute vile commands. You can then replay those keystrokes with a single key. ^X-( Begin or end the recording a keyboard macro. The ^X-) keystrokes you type are recorded. For compatibility with previous versions of vile (where separate commands were necessary), these two commands are now both bound to the same function. The start/stop capability is now a toggle, and requires only one command. ^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^, where "a means yank into register-a) 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 (aka macros) ---------------------------------- [ Note 1: the information presented in this section of the help file is a subset of "doc/macros.doc", which is supplied with the vile source code. macros.doc is the authoritative reference manual for the editor's macro language. Note 2: the language features/directives described below are not limited solely to use within macros. These directives are often used within a startup/command file to configure the editor, load registers, etc. ] vile can also be extended by defining macros and optionally 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 throughout this help file. Macros come in two flavors: named and numbered. The syntax and advantages of each format are discussed next. Numbered macros --------------- The numbered macro syntax looks like so: store-macro ... ~endm A numbered macro is executed using this command: execute-macro- To bind a keystroke to this macro, use this command: bind-key execute-macro- The only advantage of numbered macros over named macros is that the former do not share the same namespace as vile's commands. This attribute can be advantageous when creating macros recalled solely via key bindings. Note that numbered macros are allocated from a fixed pool (default is 40 macros). This fixed limit can be changed during the editor's configuration. Given their fixed allocation and the fact that their strictly numeric "names" don't facilitate easy recall, numbered macros are not used that much anymore. Named macros ------------ A named macro, aka "stored procedure", uses this syntax: store-procedure ... ~endm where: unique-name is an alpha-numeric identifier that does not conflict with the name of any existing editor command (the show-commands command generates a list of all existing commands). A stored procedure is executed by simply referencing its name. To bind a keystroke to this macro, use this command: bind-key Here's a trivial example: store-procedure write-msg-tst write-message "this is a test macro" ~endm bind-key write-msg-tst #h Two mechanisms now exist for executing this macro: + press "#h" within the editor, or + simply use the name "write-msg-tst" as if it were any other built-in editor command. This means that "write-msg-tst" can be invoked from another macro, from a startup/configuration file, or from vile's command line, like so: :write-msg-tst Note that named macros may also include parameters and a help string, each of which are described in doc/macros.doc. Macro Language Elements ----------------------- Macros may incorporate any of the editor's built-in commands, directives (e.g., ~if, ~else), any previously defined named or numbered macro, functions (e.g., &error, &sequal), and variables. 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 so-called "state" variables, and mode values). The state variables are: $_ most-recent macro $return value $abufname alternate buffer name (i.e. last visited) (read only) $autocolor-hook name of the hook that runs when autocolor is enabled $bchars number of characters in current buffer (read only) $bflags status flags for current buffer (read only) a autobuffer caused this to be created d directory listing i invisible, e.g., tags m modified s scratch, will be removed when popped down u unread $blines number of lines in current buffer (read only) $brightness RGB levels for gray, normal, bright in the 0-255 range (winvile version only) $buf-fname-expr combined buffer+fname expression (read only) $buffer-hook name of procedure to run when switching to a buffer $bufname current buffer-name under the cursor. $bwindows number of windows open on current buffer(read only) $cbufname current buffer name $cdpath editor's copy of the $CDPATH env var (read/write) $cd-hook name of procedure to run when changing directories $cfgopts comma-delimited list of "interesting" compiled options (read only). Currently tracked options include: athena -> xvile built with Athena widgets curses -> editor uses curses terminal driver locale -> editor uses system's LC_CTYPE locale motif -> xvile built with Motif libraries nextaw -> xvile built with Athena widgets (NeXtaw) noshell -> shell commands are disabled oleauto -> editor supports OLE automation. openlook -> xvile built with OpenLook libraries perl -> editor includes perl interpreter termcap -> editor reads TERMCAP db for screen info. terminfo -> editor reads TERMINFO db for screen info. xaw -> xvile built with Athena widgets (Xaw) xaw3d -> xvile built with Athena widgets (Xaw3D) $cfilname current file name $char character under the cursor $cmd-count repeat-counter for the current macro (read only) $cryptkey encryption key (write only) $curchar character offset in file $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 (unused) $discmd display commands on command line (boolean) $disinp display command line input characters (boolean) $encoding character set associated with locale (read only) $end-of-cmd true if user ended the cmd with $error-buffer buffer name assigned to the error-buffer $error-expr regular expression that matched the error-buffer $error-match text that matched the error-buffer $error-tabstop tabstop to use with error-buffer for %C $exec-path where to find vile (read only) $exec-suffix suffix, if any, for execable programs (read only) $exit-hook name of procedure to run when quitting $favorites path to favorites folder (win32 only) (read only) $fence-limit iteration limit for complex fences $filename-expr actual pattern for %F in [Error Expressions] $filename-ic ignore case in filename completion (read only) $filter-list list of builtin-filters (read only) $findpath editor's copy of the $VILE_FINDPATH env var (read/write) $find-cmd last spawned find command (read only) $font current font name (X11/winvile versions only) $forward-search search direction, true=forward $helpfile $VILE_HELP_FILE env var or "vile.hlp" (read/write) $iconname current icon name (X11 version only) $identifier current "identifier-like" word under the cursor. $kbd-macro the keyboard macro, see ^X-( ^X-) (read only) $kill some of the kill register (read only) $lastkey last keyboard char struck $lcols length of current line, in columns (read only) $libdir-path appended to $PATH when running filters $line text of current line starting with cursor $llength length of current line (read only) $locale locale, which determines character type (read only) $majormode current majormode, if any (read only) $majormode-hook procedure to overrride suffix/preamble rules $match last matched magic pattern (read only) $menu-file the name of the menu file (e.g. .vilemenu) $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? (read only) $ncolors number of displayed colors, must be power of two $ntildes percent of window filled by ~ chars, at end of buffer $ocwd previous directory (read only) $os "dos", "vms", "os/2", "win32", and "unix", although the latter may be replaced with a more specific name derived from vile's configure script. (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) (read only) $pathlist-separator separator for lists of pathnames, e.g., $PATH $pathname current "path-like" word, under the cursor. $pathname-separator separator for levels of pathnames, e.g., '/' $pending typeahead pending flag (read only) $pid returns vile's process-id (read only) $position-format format of ^G command. see "Mode line customization". $progname returns "vile" or "xvile" or "winvile". (read only) $prompt the command-line prompt string ": " $qidentifier current qualified name (as with C++ ::) $read-hook name of procedure to run after a file is read $replace replacement pattern $return set within a macro to provide $_ on completion $search search pattern $seed current random number seed $shell name of the shell program for spawned commands. $sres current screen resolution $startup-file the name of the startup file (e.g. .vilerc) $startup-path where to find the startup file $status returns the status of the last command $term-encoding terminal's encoding support $title current window title (X11, win32 versions only) $title-format format of window title. see "Mode line customization". $version current version number (read only) $with-prefix string set by "~with" directives (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. $xshell-flags command-line flags after $xshell, normally "-e" In addition to the state 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". You may use any unique abbreviation of the function names. func no. of name args ------------------------ &abs 1 absolute value of a number &add 2 add two numbers together &and 2 l