Vim (text editor)

In 1988, Bram Moolenaar began work on what would become Vim. He used the codebase for the Stevie editor ported to Amiga (by Tony Andrews et al.) as a starting point.^[15][16] Version 1.14 (completed 2 November 1991) became the first public release. It was distributed via Fish Disk #591 in January 1992.^{[15][17][18][19][20]}

Vim is released under the Vim license, which includes some charityware clauses that encourage users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda.^[4] The Vim license is compatible with the GNU General Public License through a special clause allowing distribution of modified copies under the GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.^[4]

Text user interface#edit

Building upon the core vi functionality, Vim provides a user experience that integrates keyboard-entered command input with a full-screen editing experience. Vim allows a user with a typical keyboard to keep their fingers on the home row, which can be an advantage for touch typing.^[21]

Graphical user interface#edit

Via its GUI mode (called gVim), it presents an interface with a more modern experience including aspects such as menus, toolbars and icons. The full functionality is still expressed through its command line mode.

Help#edit

Vim has a built-in help facility accessible via the :help command.

The Vim tutorial for beginners, called vimtutor, is usually installed alongside Vim, but is a separate executable and can be run separately.^[22]

The Vim Users' Manual details Vim's features and can be read from within Vim, or found online.^[23][24]

Registers#edit

Vim features various special memory entries called registers (not to be confused with hardware or processor registers). When cutting, deleting, copying, or pasting text the user can choose to store the manipulated text in a register. There are 36 general-purpose registers associated with letters and numbers ([a-z0-9]) and a range of special ones that either contain special values (current filename, last command, etc.) or serve a special purpose.^[25]

Modes#edit

Like vi, Vim supports multiple editing modes. Depending on the mode, entered characters are either processed as command input or inserted as text. Vim has 14 modes (7 basic modes and 7 variants):^[26]

• Normal: For editor commands. Generally, this is the default mode and ESC enters this mode.
• Insert: For editing content like in a modern editor.^[27][21]
• Visual: For selecting areas of text. Commands can be run on the selected area – moving, editing, filtering via built-in or external command, etc.
  • Visual linewise: Selects one or more whole lines.
  • Visual blockwise: Selects a rectangular block of text across one or more lines.
• Select: Similar to visual, but commands are not interpreted. Instead, highlighted text is directly replaced by input from the keyboard. This behavior mimics the selection mode in editors on Windows platforms.
• Command-line (Cmdline): Provides a single line input at the bottom of the terminal. Commands (beginning with :) and some other keys for specific actions (including pattern search and the filter command) activate this mode. On completion of the command, Vim reverts to the previous mode.^[27][21]
• Ex: Accepts a sequence of commands.
• Terminal-Job: Interacting with a job in a terminal window.

Vim is customizable and extensible, making it attractive to those who want control and flexibility in a text editing environment.^[28] Users can execute complex commands with key bindings, which can be customized and extended. The recording feature allows for the creation of macros to automate sequences of keystrokes and call internal or user-defined functions and mappings. Abbreviations, similar to macros and key mappings, facilitate the expansion of short strings of text into longer ones and can also be used to correct mistakes. Vim also features an easy mode for users wanting a simpler user experience.^[29]

There are many plugins available that extend or add new functionality to Vim. These plugins are usually written in Vim's internal scripting language, vimscript (also known as VimL),^[30] but can be written in other languages as well.

There are projects bundling together complex scripts and customizations and aimed at turning Vim into a tool for a specific task or adding a major flavour to its behaviour. Examples include Cream, which makes Vim behave like a click-and-type editor, or VimOutliner, which provides a comfortable outliner for users of Unix-like systems.

Vim provides many features beyond what vi provides.^[31] Some of Vim's enhancements include completion functions, comparison and merging of files (known as vimdiff), a comprehensive integrated help system, extended regular expressions, scripting languages (both native and through alternative scripting interpreters such as Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc.) including support for plugins, a graphical user interface (gvim), limited integrated development environment-like features, mouse interaction (both with and without the GUI), folding, editing of compressed or archived files in gzip, bzip2, bzip3^[32], zip, and tar format and files over network protocols such as SSH, FTP, and HTTP, session state preservation, spell checking, split (horizontal and vertical) and tabbed windows, Unicode and other multi-language support, syntax highlighting, trans-session command, search and cursor position histories, multiple level and branching undo/redo history which can persist across editing sessions, and visual mode.^{[citation needed]}

Vim continually saves information to a file^[33] that allows for recovering from a crash. Generally, the file extension is ".swp", but if the user tries to open a file when the recovery file already exists, then Vim notifies the user of the condition. If the user confirms to proceed, Vim uses a different extension to form a name for a file that does not exist. The extensions are along the progression: ".swo", ".swn", ".swm", etc.^[34][35] The feature can be disabled.^[36]

Vim provides a vi-compatibility mode that limits its functionality to be similar to that of vi. However, even in compatibility mode, Vim is not entirely compatible with vi as specified by POSIX.^[37] For example, Vim does not support vi's open mode. Vim's developers state that it is "very much compatible with Vi".^[38]

Vim script (also called Vimscript or VimL)^[39] is the scripting language built into Vim.^[40] Based on the ex editor language of the original vi editor, early versions of Vim added commands for control flow and function definitions. Since version 7, Vim script also supports more advanced data types such as lists and dictionaries and a simple form of object-oriented programming. Built-in functions such as map() and filter() allow a basic form of functional programming, and Vim script has lambda since version 8.0. Vim script is mostly written in an imperative programming style.

Version 9.0 added Vim9 script, a new script language closer to commonly used languages.^[41][42]

Vim macros can contain a sequence of normal-mode commands, but can also invoke ex commands or functions written in Vim script for more complex tasks. Almost all extensions (called plugins or more commonly scripts) of the core Vim functionality are written in Vim script, but plugins can also utilize other languages like Perl,^[43] Python,^[44] Lua,^[45] Ruby,^[46] Tcl,^[47] or Racket.^[48] These plugins can be installed manually, or through a plugin manager such as Vundle, Pathogen, or Vim-Plug.

Vim script files are stored as plain text, similarly to other code, and the filename extension is usually .vim. One notable exception to that is Vim's config file, .vimrc.

Examples#edit

" This is the Hello World program in Vim script.
echo "Hello, world!"

" This is a simple while loop in Vim script.
let i = 1
while i < 5
  echo "count is" i
  let i += 1
endwhile
unlet i

• Learning the vi and Vim Editors – Tutorial book by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb
• Editor war – Rivalry between Emacs and vi text editors
• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors
• Vimperator – Firefox extension
• Neovim – Fork of the Vim text editor

1. ^ Christian Brabandt (14 February 2026). "Vim 9.2 has been released!". Retrieved 14 February 2026.
2. ^ "vim/LICENSE". github.com. 20 October 2021. Archived from the original on 16 August 2021. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
3. ^ "Vim License". spdx.org. Archived from the original on 29 July 2021. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
4. ^ a b c "Vim: uganda.txt". vimhelp.org. Archived from the original on 13 January 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
5. ^ Vim documentation: intro Archived 13 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine: "Vim is pronounced as one word, like Jim, not vi-ai-em. It's written with a capital, since it's a name, again like Jim."
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16. ^ The original interview: Moolenaar, Bram (18 April 2005). "Rozhovor: Bram Moolenaar" [Interview: Bram Moolenaar]. LinuxEXPRES (Interview) (in Czech). Interviewed by Zapletal, Lukáš. question 2. Archived from the original on 28 December 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2024.; Translation: Bram Moolenaar (n.d.). "Interview with Bram Moolenaar, as published in the Czech magazine LinuxEXPRES, English version". Bram Moolenaar's website. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016.
17. ^ a b c Moolenaar, Bram (13 December 2016). "Vim 25 presentation by Bram Moolenaar on 2016 November 2". Retrieved 30 November 2025. Moolenaar: Fred Fish Disk 591 was published in '92, actually, January '92, so why November 2? Well, that's because if you look at the binary, when it was built (and it's like the birth certificate of Vim), and you can see that it's actually November 2. So that's where it comes from.
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19. ^ "Textfiles.com". Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
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21. ^ a b c Lamb, Linda; Robbins, Arnold (1998). Learning the Vi Editor. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 305. ISBN 9781565924260.
22. ^ Moolenaar, Bram (3 November 2010). "Vim documentation: usr_01". Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
23. ^ Vim help files Archived 13 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine at vimhelp.org
24. ^ Oualline, Steve (April 2001). Vi IMproved (VIM) (PDF). New Riders Publishers. ISBN 0-7357-1001-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
25. ^ McDonnell, Mark (2014). Pro vim. [Berkeley]: Apress. p. 85. ISBN 978-1-4842-0250-0. OCLC 897466496.
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31. ^ Vim help system (type ":help" within Vim)
32. ^ Vim. "vim/runtime/autoload/tar.vim". Retrieved 5 June 2026.
33. ^ The crash recovery file is called a swapfile even though the name implies memory paging which is different technology.
34. ^ "Vim documentation: recover". vimdoc.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 13 December 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
35. ^ "How to handle swapfiles in Vim". cs.longwood.edu. Archived from the original on 7 May 2021. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
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46. ^ Maeda, Shugo. "Vim documentation: if_ruby". Archived from the original on 14 February 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
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54. ^ "Google Groups". groups.google.com. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 11 August 2008.
55. ^ Google Discussiegroepen Archived 22 January 2011 at the Portuguese Web Archive. Groups.google.com. Retrieved on 2013-12-09.
56. ^ Bram Moolenaar. "Vim 8.0 released!". Archived from the original on 22 January 2011. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
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• Official website
• TechTalk by Bram Moolenaar held on 25th Anniversary of first vim release on YouTube