Vi

• built-in command line text editor for Mac and Linux

• search and replace

  // global replace
  :%s/old-text/new-text/g
  // global replace interactively and case insensitive
  :%s/old-text/new-text/gci
  // global replace limit to 6 occure
  :%s/old-text/new-text/g 6
  // replace all with 10-15 lines
  :10,15s/finder/replacer/g
  // live select replace
  // ctrl-v to set line range then :s/ /g
  
  // replace whole word only
  :%s/\<is\>/was/g
  
  // replace similar whole word
  :%s/\<\(good\|nice\)\>/awesome/g
  
  // replace wildchar pattern, ball01 ball02
  :%s/ball..//g
  
  // express
  \=
  !_\ is the same
  ^ start end $

• delete/cut range

  :n,md
  Deletes lines n through m

• delete line containts

  // delete lines contains keyword
  :g/keyword
  :g/keyword/d
  
  // delete blank lines
  :g/^\s*$/d
  
  // delete all line NOT with pattern, not start with "
  :g!/^\s*"/d
  :v/^\s*"/d
  
  // delete all line NOT with pattern, contains cat or dog or pig
  :v/cat\|dog\|pig/d

• paste

  P

2 modes

• Switch to normal mode: <ESC>
• Switch to edit mode: i or a

Quit

• Exit Vi: :q
• Exit Vi (ignore changes): :q!
• Save: :w
• Save and Exit: :wq
• Switch to (edit) an other file: :edit FILENAME

cheat sheet