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Preface to the 5th Edition
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The 5th edition of
Learning the vi Editor
contains many
improvements.
We have expanded the treatment of existing topics, and we
have added some completely new topics and features:
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The book has a quick-reference guide to all commands.
This guide, located at the back of the book, can be
pulled out and used as a handy reference card.
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ex editor commands are discussed more fully.
In Chapters 5, 6, and 7, the complex features of
ex
and
vi
have been clarified by adding more examples, in
topics such as regular expression syntax, global replacement,
.exrc
files,
word abbreviations, keyboard maps, and editing scripts.
A few of the examples are drawn from
articles in
UNIX World
magazine.
Walter Zintz wrote a two-part tutorial[1]
on
vi
that taught us a few things we didn't know,
and that also had a lot of clever examples illustrating
features we did already cover in the book.
Ray Swartz had a helpful tip in one of his columns.[2]
We are grateful for the ideas in these articles.
The increased emphasis on
ex
warranted a summary of all
ex
commands,
so we added an alphabetical listing in
Appendix C, ex commands
.
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Minor additions or corrections
have been made to
the discussions of basic
vi
commands.
Many of these additions are based on comments by Kismet McDonough of
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., and by Steve Simmons, who teaches
vi
on the West Coast. The comments were very useful.
The following people at O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
worked on the 5th edition: Daniel Gilly wrote most of the new
material;
Mike Sierra produced the manuscript; and Chris Reilley
designed the quick-reference guide and redesigned
the original figures.
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