
This allows you to use your keyboard to select text for cutting and pasting. The commands come from an earlier editor called Ex. A prompt appears at the bottom of the page and you can enter variable-length commands and send them through with ENTER. You can enter replace mode with R and toggle between insert and replace with the INS key. Similar to insert but new text overwrites old. You can enter insert mode with i or I and return to command mode with ESC. The text is inserted to the left of the current cursor position. All keystrokes are treated as input text. If they are invalid, you get an error bleep. If they are valid commands, they will be obeyed. All keystrokes are interpreted as commands. This is the mode that vim usually starts in. There are five modes for vim (that I know of right now). This means that how your keyboard input is interpreted depends on the mode the program is currently in. This is enabled by using the ":set compatible" ex-command or by running Vim with the -C option. Vim has a compatibility mode which produces an almost vi-compatible experience (the version of vi used seems to be one released with Sun OS 4.x, from Version 3.7 dated on 6/7/85).

VIM is also the latin word for "power" or "force".
VIM MAC OS X COMMANDS WINDOWS
GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and *BSD Amiga Windows Mac "Classic" and OS/2) and supports a variety of graphical toolkits (including GTK, QT, and Carbon) in addition to the command-line interface.

It now runs on a variety of platforms (including Unix work-a-likes, e.g. It started as a personal desire to have a useful vi-clone for the Amiga, but eventually grew as more features were added. Vim was originally written by (and is still primarily maintained by) Bram Moolenaar.

VIM MAC OS X COMMANDS HOW TO
If you don't yet know how to use vi or Vim, and you didn't come from using ed, you'll find the learning curve quite steep (which means, it might take you a while to learn to achieve maximum proficiency). If you know how to use vi, you'll find Vim to be the same except it has a number of useful features added to make editing easier. However, vi lacks some more contemporary features (for example, syntax highlighting). All UNIX machines typically come with the vi text editor.
