VIM has basically two modes: Command Mode (called also “Normal Mode” below) and Insert Mode. Most likely you are in “insert mode” which does (not surprisingly) insert what you type, while in “command mode” it would try to execute the commands you give (such as :quit). However VIM indicates when it is in insert mode … Read more
Use \r instead of \n. Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things: \n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r … Read more
Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi. You mention cutting with yy and complain that you almost never want to cut whole lines. In fact programmers, editing source code, very often want to work on whole lines, ranges of lines and blocks of code. However, yy is only one of many way … Read more
Hit the Esc key to enter “Normal mode”. Then you can type : to enter “Command-line mode”. A colon (:) will appear at the bottom of the screen and you can type in one of the following commands. To execute a command, press the Enter key. :q to quit (short for :quit) :q! to quit … Read more