SOLUTION: @gumnos came up with the idea of piggy-backing :nohl onto control-l for refresh:

Hey #vim wizards,

The number one reason I don't use search more freely when editing is that all the highlights triggers my #CDO a little bit, and :nohl is a little clumsy to type in a hurry.

I wanted to map :nohl to an easy-to-press keybind, like ctrl-/, but I can't seem to get it to work.

Any ideas?

#vi #vim #nvi #nvim #VimWizards #AskFedi #HiveMind

One of the things which encouraged me towards less "trendy" software is that it hasn't gotten totally caught up in ai-hype. Books written before the slop-pocalypse are really useful, and turn out to be a nice way to soothe my inner nerd while I continue to learn new (to me) things.

As an example, the venerable "Unix Power Tools" has a wonderful chapter on the vi editor:

https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/part05.htm

Enjoy!

#vi #viTips #nvi #text-editor #plaintext #stopSlop #noAI

As I continue to escape into the obscuria of elder text mangling tools, I've found myself enjoying the opportunity to act as the local #viTips fairy when I find anything interesting or useful.

And here's another cool vi trick I found!

You can append to a file rather than overwriting it by prefixing >> to the filename:

:w >>appendtofilename

This can work on parts of a buffer by prefixing line numbers or ranges:

2,+1w >>appendfilename

This appends the second and subsequent line.

#vi #nvi

A while back, I learned that this incantation will delete all the blank lines in a vi buffer:

:%g/^$/d

Today I had my brain handed to me when a helpful person from 1991 pointed out that this easier to type version works:

:%v/./d

Relatedly, the #usenet archives (and in this case comp.editors) are a lovely place to take a break from the world.

https://usenetarchives.com

#nvi #vi #plaintext

In my faffing about with text editors, I ran into something kind of funny:

So, there's not a straightforward way to install vi (not vim) on termux. There is, however, a copy of ed in the base install.

And so I started poking at it. Amusingly, it turns out to be a surprisingly decent editor for the constraint that is grumpily poking at a piece of glass with my thumbs.

I'm sure @ed1conf will be delighted.

#vi #nvi #ed #plaintext

I'm still poking at #nvi and #vi, and learning interesting little details every day.

Today I learned about the `tildeop` setting, which modifies the tilde command to take an associated motion.

As a result, I no longer miss gU and gu from vim-land. :)

#SimpleTools
#SimplePleasures

In #openbsd what is called #vi is actually #nvi, and when you install #nvi from ports, it is #nvi2.
To danes with our national characters æøå we need the latter because #vi prints two byte hex sequences for æ, ø, or å. #vi handles them correctly except for the printing of them.
#vi and #nvi use the same #man page.

Update:
On #netbsd #vi is also #nvi. Here you must install #nvi2 to get #nvi if you need æ, ø, and å support.

Best wishes from T. R. Dane (The Real Dane ;)