Product Description

For many users, working in the UNIX environment means using vi, a full-screen text editor available on most UNIX systems. Even those who know vi often make use of only a small number of its features. The vi Editor Pocket Reference is a companion volume to O'Reilly's updated sixth edition of Learning the vi Editor, a complete guide to text editing with vi. New topics in Learning the vi Editor include multi-screen editing and coverage of four vi clones: vim, elvis, nvi, and vile. This small book is a handy reference guide to the information in the larger volume, presenting movement and editing commands, the command-line options, and other elements of the vi editor in an easy-to-use tabular format.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53752 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 66 pages

From the Publisher
The vi Editor Pocket Reference is a companion volume to O'Reilly's updated sixth edition of Learning the vi Editor, presenting movement and editing commands, the command-line options, and other elements of the vi editor in an easy-to-use tabular format.

About the Author
Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native, is a professional programmer and technical author. He has worked with Unix systems since 1980, when he was introduced to a PDP-11 running a version of Sixth Edition Unix. He has been a heavy AWK user since 1987, when he became involved with gawk, the GNU project's version of AWK. As a member of the POSIX 1003.2 balloting group, he helped shape the POSIX standard for AWK. He is currently the maintainer of gawk and its documentation. He is also coauthor of the sixth edition of O'Reilly's Learning the vi Editor. Since late 1997, he and his family have been living happily in Israel.

Customer Reviews

Sensible pocket guide for beginners
Contains enough information to turn an absolute beginner into an intermediate-to-advanced vi user - but it's not until your fingers start to "think" in vi that you really start to appreciate it.

Robbins collects all the relevant facts, presents them crisply and provides enough information to see the novice or occasional user safely onto the learning curve.

I'm not quite as sure about the material on vi clones - vim for example comes with a lot of very good documentation itself - but this probably belongs on the shelf of any lab where non-experts might need to use vi or one of its relatives.

Cheap, too - difficult to fault at the price.

This book is incredible in every aspect
Unix has many levels to master and there is no one book that could possibly cover all of them.
I have quite formidable experience with different books on UNIX and related subjects and this one would be in the list of my favorites. It is very well written, very articulate; it goes into many subjects with great attention to details and so on.
As for now there are three major methods had been available: real course, book and knowledgeable friends. I have discovered another one and it is "UNIX Essentials" DVD that I found on Amazon.com and it is well worth mentioning; but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com
The DVD isn't complete as I said there is no way to cover everything in UNIX but, it covers 90% of what one has to know to start work with UNIX independently. It is very nice compilation for someone who likes to learn UNIX but it has to be supplemented by a book like this one. Take both, work trough them for two weeks and there are few people around who could possibly recognize that you are novice. It provides VERY nice training altogether.

Read three times and give to a next vi beginner
Pocket guides should be in pocket. Since I am not willing to carry ten pocket guides this one is somewhere out of reach when I need the guide. I think I should use copying machine to make pocket page of most essential page of the book, but for that there's quick reference cards at internet. The book is best for checking what can be done with vi, something like introduction to editor features. Ones you remember the features this book transforms to reference material that is hardly ever used.