Important Command-Line Arguments (Learning the vi Editor, Sixth Edition)

11.2. Important Command-Line Arguments

vim looks at how it was invoked to decide how it should behave. If invoked as ex, it will operate as a line editor. It also allows the Q command from vi mode to switch into ex mode. If invoked as view, it will start in vi mode, but mark each file initially as being read-only.

When invoked as gvim or gview, vim will start the GUI version, under X Windows or in whatever other graphical interface is appropriate. If a leading r is prepended to any of the names, vim enters "restricted" mode, where certain actions are disabled.

vim has a large number of command-line options. The most useful are described here:

-c command: Execute command upon startup. This is the POSIX version of the historical +command syntax, but vim is not limited to positioning commands. (The old syntax is also accepted.) You can give up to ten -c commands.
-R: Start in read-only mode, setting the readonly option.
-r: Recover specified files, or if no files are listed on the command line, list all the files that can be recovered.
-s: Enter batch (script) mode. This is only for ex, and is intended for running editing scripts. This is the POSIX version of the historic "-" argument.
-b: Start in binary mode. This sets a few options that make it possible to edit a binary file.
-f: For the GUI version, stay in the foreground. This should be used by programs that invoke vim and wait for it to finish, such as mail handling programs.
-g: Start the GUI version of vim, if it has been compiled in.
-o [N]: Open N windows, if given, otherwise open one window for each file argument.
-i viminfo: Read the given viminfo file for initialization, instead of the default viminfo file.
-n: Do not create a swap file. Recovery will not be possible, but this is useful for editing files on slow media, such as floppies.
-q filename: Treat filename as the "quick fix" file. This file should contain a list of error messages that vim will use for navigating to the location of each error in your program. Quick fix mode is discussed in Section 11.9.1.
-u vimrc: Read the given vimrc file for initialization, and skip all other normal initialization steps.
-U gvimrc: Read the given gvimrc file for GUI initialization, and skip all other normal GUI initialization steps.
-Z: Enter restricted mode (same as having a leading r in the name). You cannot start shell commands or suspend the editor when this is in effect.

The -i, -n, -u and -U options are discussed in more detail below. There are several more options; the interested reader is referred to the online documentation for the full details.