31.11 Typing in Uppercase Without CAPS LOCK

[You may want to input text in all uppercase letters - maybe for a FORTRAN program. Using CAPS LOCK in vi can be a pain because you have to release CAPS LOCK almost every time you want to type a vi command. Here's a nice way to type lowercase letters during input and ex modes; they'll be mapped to uppercase automatically. -JP]

Try putting this in your .exrc ( 30.6 ) file:

map! a A
map! b B
map! c C
  ...
map! z Z

Anytime you type (during text-input mode) an a , the editor will map it into A . What's that you say? You don't want this all the time? Just put it in a file called .f (for FORTRAN), and type:

:source .f

when you want FORTRAN mode. Of course, you can define a function key ( 31.2 ) to :source this.

[After that, anywhere you want a lowercase letter, type CTRL-v first to temporarily cancel the map. For example, to type the command :w , type [:] [CTRL-v] [w]

You can also go into the ex command mode by typing the vi command Q . That takes you to the ex colon ( : ) prompt - where the map! macros won't affect what you type. To return to vi mode from ex command mode, type :vi . -JP  ]