vis —
a highly
efficient text editor
vis |
[-v]
[+command]
[--]
[files ...] |
vis is a highly efficient screen-oriented text
editor combining the strengths of both
vi(m) and
sam. This manual page is intended for users
already familiar with
vi/
sam. Anyone else
should almost certainly read a good tutorial on either editor before this
manual page. The following options are available:
- -v
- Print version information and exit.
-
+command
- Execute command after
loading file.
- --
- Denotes the end of the options. Arguments after this will
be handled as a file name.
The special file
- instructs
vis to read from standard input in which case
:wq will write to standard output, thereby
enabling usage as an interactive filter.
If standard input is redirected and all input is consumed,
vis will open
/dev/tty to gather further commands. Failure to
do so results in program termination.
vis uses selections as core editing primitives. A
selection is a non-empty, directed range with two endpoints called
cursor and
anchor. A
selection can be anchored in which case the anchor remains fixed while only
the position of the cursor is adjusted. For non-anchored selections both
endpoints are updated. A singleton selection covers one character on which
both cursor and anchor reside. There always exists a primary selection which
remains visible (i.e. changes to its position will adjust the viewport).
vis employs the same
modal editing approach as
vi. It supports a ‘normal’,
‘operator pending’, ‘insert’,
‘replace’ and ‘visual’ (in both line and character
wise variants) mode. The visual block and ex modes are deliberately not
implemented, instead
vis has built in support for
multiple selections and an
interactive variant of
the structural regular expression based command language of
sam.
In normal mode all selections are non-anchored and reduced to a single
character.
vis uses an undo tree to keep track of text
revisions. The
u (undo) and
⟨
C-r⟩ (redo) commands can be used
to traverse the tree along the main branch.
g+
and
g- traverse the history in chronological
order. The
:earlier and
:later commands provide means to restore the text
to an arbitrary state.
A mark associates a symbolic name to a set of selections. A stored selection
becomes invalid when its delimiting boundaries change in the underlying
buffer. If said changes are later undone the mark becomes valid again.
m sets a mark,
M
restores it. For example,
'am
sets the mark
a while
'aM
restores it.
Available marks are:
- ''
- default mark
- '^
- active selections when leaving visual mode
-
'a–'z
- general purpose marks
No marks across files are supported. Marks are not preserved over editing
sessions.
A per window, fixed sized file local jump list exists which stores marks (i.e.
set of selections).
- g<
- jump backward
- g>
- jump forward
- gs
- save currently active selections
Registers are named lists of text. Uninitialized register slots default to the
empty string. Available registers are:
- ""
- default register
-
"a–"z
- general purpose registers
-
"A–"Z
- append to corresponding general purpose register
-
"*,
"+
- system clipboard integration via shell script
vis-clipboard(1)
- "0
- yank register, most recently yanked range
-
"1–"9
-
- "&
- sub expression matches of most recent
x or y
command
- "/
- search register, most recently used search pattern
- ":
- command register, most recently executed command
- "_
- black hole (/dev/null)
register, ignore content is always empty
- "#
- selection number (readonly)
If no explicit register is specified the default register is used.
The general purpose registers
"a–
"z
can be used to record macros. Use one of
"A–
"Z
to append to an existing macro.
q starts a
recording,
@ plays it back.
@@ refers to the most recently recorded macro.
@: repeats the last
:-command.
@/ is
equivalent to
n in normal mode. These operations
always use the first register slot.
vis always assumes the input file to be UTF-8
encoded with
\n
line endings. If you wish to edit
files with legacy encodings or non-Unix line endings, use
iconv(1) and
dos2unix(1) to convert them as needed.
⟨
Tab⟩ can optionally be expanded to
a configurable number of spaces (see
SET OPTIONS).
The mouse is currently not used at all.
vis supports an interactive variant of the
structural regular expression based command language introduced by
sam(1).
vis currently defers regular expression matching to
the underlying C library. It uses what POSIX refers to as “Extended
Regular Expressions” as described in
regex(7). The anchors
^ and
$ match the
beginning / end of the range they are applied to. Additionally
\n
and
\t
may be used to refer
to newlines and tabs, respectively. The
. atom
matches any character except newline. The empty regular expression stands for
the last complete expression encountered.
An address identifies a substring (or range) in a file. In the following
“character
n” means the null
string after the
n-th character in the file,
with 1 the first character in the file. “Line
n” means the
n-th match, starting at the beginning of the
file, of the regular expression “
.*\n?
”.
All windows always have at least one current substring which is the default
address. In sam this is referred to as
dot. In
vis multiple “dots” (or selections)
can exist at the same time.
-
#n
- The empty string after character
n; #0 is the
beginning of the file.
- n
- Line n.
-
/regexp/
-
-
?regexp?
- The substring that matches the regular expression, found by
looking towards the end (/) or beginning
(?) of the file. The search does not wrap
around when hitting the end (start) of the file.
- 0
- The string before the first full line. This is not
necessarily the null string; see + and
- below.
- $
- The null string at the end of the file.
- .
- Dot, the current range.
-
'm
- The mark m in the
file.
In the following,
a1 and
a2 are addresses.
-
a1+a2
- The address a2 evaluated
starting at the end of a1.
-
a1-a2
- The address a2 evaluated
looking the reverse direction starting at the beginning of
a1.
-
a1,a2
- The substring from the beginning of
a1 to the end of
a2. If
a1 is missing,
0 is substituted. If
a2 is missing,
$ is substituted.
-
a1;a2
- Like
a1,a2
but with a2 evaluated at the end of, and
range set to, a1.
The operators
+ and
-
are high precedence, while
, and
; are low precedence.
In both
+ and
- forms,
if
a2 is a line or character address with a
missing number, the number defaults to 1. If
a1 is missing,
.
is substituted. If both
a1 and
a2 are present and distinguishable,
+ may be elided.
a2 may be a regular expression; if it is
delimited by
?
characters, the effect of the
+ or
- is reversed.
The
% sign is an alias for
, and hence
0,$. It
is an error for a compound address to represent a malformed substring.
In the following, text demarcated by slashes represents text delimited by any
printable ASCII character except alphanumerics. Any number of trailing
delimiters may be elided, with multiple elisions then representing null
strings, but the first delimiter must always be present. In any delimited
text, newline may not appear literally;
\n
and
\t
may be typed for newline and tab;
\/
quotes the delimiter, here
/
. An ampersand
&
and
\
n, where
n is a digit (1–9) are replaced by the
corresponding register. Backslash is otherwise interpreted literally.
Most commands may be prefixed with an address to indicate their range of
operation. If a command takes an address and none is supplied, a default
address is used. In normal mode this equates to the character the selection is
currently over. If only one selection exists
x
and
y default to the whole file
0,$. In normal mode the write commands
w and
wq always
apply to the whole file. Commands are executed once for every selection. In
visual mode the commands are applied to every selection as if an implicit
x command, matching the existing selections, was
present.
In the description, “range” is used to represent whatever address
is supplied.
Many commands create new selections as a side effect when issued from a visual
mode. If so, it is always to the “result” of the change: the new
text for an insertion, the empty string for a deletion, the command output of
a filter etc. If after a successful command execution no selections remain,
the editor will switch to normal mode, otherwise it remains in visual mode.
This allows
interactive refinements of ranges.
-
a[count]/text/
- Insert the text
count times into the file after the
range.
May also be written as
-
c
or i
- Same as a, but
c replaces the text, while
i inserts before
the range.
- d
- Delete the text in range.
- p
- Create a new selection for the range.
-
e[!]
[file name]
- Replace the file by the contents of the named external
file. If no file name is given, reload file from disk.
-
r
file name
- Replace the text in the range by the contents of the named
external file.
-
w[!]
[file name]
- Write the range (default 0,$)
to the named external file.
-
wq[!]
[file name]
- Same as w, but close file
afterwards.
If the file name argument is absent from any of these, the current file name is
used.
e always sets the file name,
w will do so if the file has no name. Forcing the
e command with
!
will discard any unsaved changes. Forcing
w will
overwrite the file on disk even if it has been externally modified since
loading it. Write commands with a non-default addresses and no file name are
destructive and need always to be forced.
-
<
shell command
- Replace the range by the standard output of the shell
command.
-
>
shell command
- Sends the range to the standard input of the shell
command.
-
|
shell command
- Send the range to the standard input, and replace it by the
standard output, of the shell command.
-
!
shell command
- Run interactive shell command, redirect keyboard input to
it.
-
cd
directory
- Change working directory. If no directory is specified,
$HOME
is used.
In any of
<,
>,
|, or
!, if the
shell command is omitted, the last shell command (of any type) is substituted.
Unless the file being edited is unnamed, all these external commands can refer
to its absolute path and file name through the
vis_filepath
and
vis_filename
environment variables.
-
x/regexp/
[command]
- For each match of the regular expression in the range, run
the command with range set to the match. If the regular expression and its
slashes are omitted, /.*\n/ is assumed.
Null string matches potentially occur before every character of the range
and at the end of the range.
The
"1–"9
and "& registers are updated with
the (sub) expression matches of the pattern.
-
y/regexp/
[command]
- Like x, but run the command
for each substring that lies before, between, or after the matches that
would be generated by x. There is no default
behavior. Null substrings potentially occur before every character in the
range.
-
X/regexp/
command
- For each file whose file name matches the regular
expression, make that the current file and run the command. If the
expression is omitted, the command is run in every file.
-
Y/regexp/
command
- Same as X, but for files that
do not match the regular expression, and the expression is required.
-
g[count][/regexp/]
command
-
-
v[count][/regexp/]
command
- If the count range
contains (g) or does not contain
(v) a match for the expression, run command
on the range.
The count specifier has the following
format, where n and
m are integers denoting the ranges.
-
n,m
- The closed interval from
n to
m. If
n is missing,
1 is substituted. If
m is missing,
∞ is substituted. Negative values
are interpreted relative to the last range.
-
%n
- Matches every n-th
range.
These may be nested arbitrarily deeply. An empty command in an
x or
y defaults to
p.
X,
Y,
g and
v do not have defaults.
Commands may be grouped by enclosing them in curly braces. Semantically, the
opening brace is like a command: it takes an (optional) address and runs each
sub-command on the range. Commands within the braces are executed
sequentially, but changes made by one command are not visible to other
commands.
When a command makes a number of changes to a file, as in
x/re/
c/text/,
the addresses of all changes are computed based on the initial state. If the
changes are non-overlapping, they are applied in the specified order.
Conflicting changes are rejected.
Braces may be nested arbitrarily.
In the following sections angle brackets are used to denote special keys. The
prefixes
C-,
S-, and
M- are used to refer to the ⟨Ctrl⟩,
⟨Shift⟩ and ⟨Alt⟩ modifiers, respectively.
All active key bindings can be listed at runtime using the
:help command.
Operators perform a certain operation on a text range indicated by either a
motion, a text object or an existing selection.
When used in normal mode, the following operators wait for a motion, putting vis
into operator pending mode.
- c
- change, delete range and enter insert mode
- d
- delete, cut range to register
- <
- shift-left, decrease indent
- >
- shift-right, increase indent
- y
- yank, copy range to register
When used in normal mode, the following actions take effect immediately.
- =
- format, filter range through
fmt(1)
- gu
- make lowercase
- gU
- make uppercase
- g~
- swap case
- J
- join lines, insert spaces in between
- gJ
- join lines remove any delimiting white spaces
- p
- put register content after cursor
- P
- put register content before cursor
Motions take an initial file position and transform it to a destination file
position, thereby defining a range.
- 0
- start of line
- b
- previous start of a word
- B
- previous start of a WORD
- $
- end of line
- e
- next end of a word
- E
- next end of a WORD
-
F⟨char⟩
- to next occurrence of
⟨char⟩ to the left
-
f⟨char⟩
- to next occurrence of
⟨char⟩ to the right
- ^
- first non-blank of line
- g0
- begin of display line
- g$
- end of display line
- ge
- previous end of a word
- gE
- previous end of a WORD
- gg
- begin of file
- G
- goto line or end of file
- gj
- display line down
- gk
- display line up
- gh
- codepoint left
- gl
- codepoint right
- gH
- byte left
- gL
- byte right
- g_
- last non-blank of line
- gm
- middle of display line
- g|
- goto column
- h
- char left
- H
- goto top/home line of window
- j
- line down
- k
- line up
- l
- char right
- L
- goto bottom/last line of window
- %
- match bracket, quote or backtick
- }
- next paragraph
- )
- next sentence
- N
- repeat last search backwards
- n
- repeat last search forward
- [{
- previous start of block
- ]}
- next start of block
- [(
- previous start of parentheses pair
- ])
- next start of parentheses pair
- {
- previous paragraph
- (
- previous sentence
- ;
- repeat last to/till movement
- ,
- repeat last to/till movement but in opposite direction
- #
- search word under selection backwards
- *
- search word under selection forwards
-
T⟨char⟩
- till before next occurrence of
⟨char⟩ to the left
-
t⟨char⟩
- till before next occurrence of
⟨char⟩ to the right
-
?pattern
- to next match of pattern
in backward direction
-
/pattern
- to next match of pattern
in forward direction
- w
- next start of a word
- W
- next start of a WORD
Text objects take an initial file position and transform it to a range where the
former does not necessarily have to be contained in the latter. All of the
following text objects are implemented in an inner variant (prefixed with
i) where the surrounding white space or
delimiting characters are not part of the resulting range and a normal variant
(prefixed with
a) where they are.
- w
- word
- W
- WORD
- s
- sentence
- p
- paragraph
- [,
], (, ), {, }, <, >, ", ', `
- block enclosed by these symbols
Further available text objects include:
- gn
- matches the last used search term in forward direction
- gN
- matches the last used search term in backward
direction
- al
- current line
- il
- current line without leading and trailing white spaces
vis supports multiple selections with immediate
visual feedback. There always exists one primary selection located within the
current view port. Additional selections can be created as needed. If more
than one selection exists, the primary one is styled differently.
To manipulate selections use in normal mode:
- ⟨C-k⟩
- create count new selections on the lines above
- ⟨C-M-k⟩
- create count new selections on the lines above the first
selection
- ⟨C-j⟩
- create count new selections on the lines below
- ⟨C-M-j⟩
- create count new selections on the lines below the last
selection
- ⟨C-p⟩
- remove primary selection
- ⟨C-n⟩
- select word the selection is currently over, switch to
visual mode
- ⟨C-u⟩
- make the count previous selection primary
- ⟨C-d⟩
- make the count next selection primary
- ⟨C-c⟩
- remove the count selection column
- ⟨C-l⟩
- remove all but the count selection column
- ⟨Tab⟩
- try to align all selections on the same column
- ⟨Escape⟩
- dispose all but the primary selection
The visual modes were enhanced to recognize:
- I
- create a selection at the start of every selected line
- A
- create a selection at the end of every selected line
- ⟨Tab⟩
- left align selections by inserting spaces
- ⟨S-Tab⟩
- right align selections by inserting spaces
- ⟨C-a⟩
- create new selections everywhere matching current word or
selection
- ⟨C-n⟩
- create new selection and select next word matching current
selection
- ⟨C-x⟩
- clear (skip) current selection, but select next matching
word
- ⟨C-p⟩
- remove primary selection
- ⟨C-u⟩
-
- ⟨C-k⟩
- make the count previous selection primary
- ⟨C-d⟩
-
- ⟨C-j⟩
- make the count next selection primary
- ⟨C-c⟩
- remove the count selection column
- ⟨C-l⟩
- remove all but the count selection column
- +
- rotate selections rightwards count times
- -
- rotate selections leftwards count times
- _
- trim selections, remove leading and trailing white
space
- o
- flip selection direction, swap cursor and anchor
- ⟨Escape⟩
- clear all selections, switch to normal mode
In insert and replace mode:
- ⟨S-Tab⟩
- align all selections by inserting spaces
Selections can be manipulated using set operations. The first operand is the
currently active selections while the second can be specified as a mark.
- |
- set union
- &
- set intersection
- \
- set minus
- ~
- set complement
Any unique prefix can be used to abbreviate a command.
A file must be opened in at least one window. If the last window displaying a
certain file is closed all unsaved changes are discarded. Windows are equally
sized and can be displayed in either horizontal or vertical fashion. The
⟨
C-w⟩
h,
⟨
C-w⟩
j,
⟨
C-w⟩
k and
⟨
C-w⟩
l key mappings can be used to switch between
windows.
- :new
- open an empty window, arrange horizontally
- :vnew
- open an empty window, arrange vertically
-
:open[!]
[file name]
- open a new window, displaying file name if given
-
:split
[file name]
- split window horizontally
-
:vsplit
[file name]
- split window vertically
-
:q[!]
[exit code]
- close currently focused window
-
:qall[!]
[exit code]
- close all windows, terminate editor with exit code
(defaults to 0)
Commands taking a file name will invoke the
vis-open(1) utility, if given a file pattern or
directory.
vis supports global as well as window local run
time key mappings which are always evaluated recursively.
-
:map[!]
mode lhs
rhs
- add a global key mapping
-
:map-window[!]
mode lhs
rhs
- add a window local key mapping
-
:unmap
mode
lhs
- remove a global key mapping
-
:unmap-window
mode
lhs
- remove a window local key mapping
In the above
mode refers to one of
‘
normal
’,
‘
insert
’,
‘
replace
’,
‘
visual
’,
‘
visual-line
’ or
‘
operator-pending
’;
lhs refers to the key to map and
rhs is a key action or alias. An existing
mapping may be overridden by forcing the map command by specifying
!.
Because key mappings are always recursive, doing something like:
:map! normal j 2j
will not work because it would enter an endless loop. Instead,
vis uses pseudo keys referred to as key actions
which can be used to invoke a set of available editor functions.
:help lists all currently active key bindings as
well as all available symbolic keys.
In order to facilitate usage of non-latin keyboard layouts,
vis allows one to map locale specific keys to
their latin equivalents by means of the
:langmap
locale-keys
latin-keys
command. As an example, the following maps the movement keys in Russian layout:
:langmap ролд
hjkl
If the key sequences have not the same length, the remainder of the longer
sequence will be discarded.
The defined mappings take effect in all non-input modes, i.e. everywhere except
in insert and replace mode.
-
:earlier
[count]
- revert to older text state
-
:later
[count]
- revert to newer text state
If count is suffixed by either of
d (days),
h (hours),
m
(minutes) or
s (seconds) it is interpreted as an
offset from the current system time and the closest available text state is
restored.
There are a small number of options that may be set (or unset) to change the
editor's behavior using the
:set command. This
section describes the options, their abbreviations and their default values.
Boolean options can be toggled by appending
! to
the option name.
In each entry below, the first part of the tag line is the full name of the
option, followed by any equivalent abbreviations. The part in square brackets
is the default value of the option.
-
shell
[“/bin/sh”]
- User shell to use for external commands, overrides
SHELL
and shell field of password
database /etc/passwd
-
escdelay
[50]
- Milliseconds to wait before deciding whether an escape
sequence should be treated as an
⟨Escape⟩ key.
-
tabwidth,
tw
[8]
- Display width of a tab and number of spaces to use if
expandtab is enabled.
-
autoindent,
ai
[off]
- Automatically indent new lines by copying white space from
previous line.
-
expandtab,
et
[off]
- Whether ⟨Tab⟩
should be expanded to tabwidth spaces.
-
number,
nu
[off]
- Display absolute line numbers.
-
relativenumbers,
rnu
[off]
- Display relative line numbers.
-
cursorline,
cul
[off]
- Highlight line primary cursor resides on.
-
colorcolumn,
cc
[0]
- Highlight a fixed column.
-
horizon
[32768]
- How many bytes back the lexer will look to synchronize
parsing.
-
redrawtime
[1.0]
- Maximum time (in seconds) to wait for syntax highlighting
before aborting it.
-
theme
[“default-16” or
“default-256”]
- Color theme to use, name without file extension. Loaded
from a themes/ sub directory of the paths
listed in the FILES
section.
-
syntax
[off]
- Syntax highlighting lexer to use, name without file
extension.
-
show-tabs
[off]
- Whether to display replacement symbol instead of tabs.
-
show-newlines
[off]
- Whether to display replacement symbol instead of
newlines.
-
show-spaces
[off]
- Whether to display replacement symbol instead of blank
cells.
-
show-eof
[on]
- Whether to display replacement symbol for lines after the
end of the file.
-
savemethod
[auto]
- How the current file should be saved,
atomic which uses
rename(2) to atomically replace the file,
inplace which truncates the file and then
rewrites it or auto which tries the
former before falling back to the latter. The rename method fails for
symlinks, hardlinks, in case of insufficient directory permissions or when
either the file owner, group, POSIX ACL or SELinux labels can not be
restored.
-
loadmethod
[auto]
- How existing files should be loaded,
read which copies the file content to an
independent in-memory buffer, mmap which
memory maps the file from disk and uses OS capabilities as caching layer
or auto which tries the former for files
smaller than 8Mb and the latter for lager ones. WARNING: modifying a
memory mapped file in-place will cause data loss.
-
layout
[“v” or “h”]
- Whether to use vertical or horizontal layout.
-
ignorecase,
ic
[off]
- Whether to ignore case when searching.
The command and search prompt as opened by
:,
/, or
? is
implemented as a single line height window, displaying a regular file whose
editing starts in insert mode.
⟨
Escape⟩ switches to normal mode, a
second ⟨
Escape⟩ cancels the prompt.
⟨
Up⟩ enlarges the window, giving
access to the command history.
⟨
C-v⟩
⟨
Enter⟩ inserts a literal new line
thus enabling multiline commands.
⟨
Enter⟩ executes the visual
selection if present, or else everything in the region spawned by the
selection position and the delimiting prompt symbols at the start of adjacent
lines.
vis uses Lua for configuration and scripting
purposes. During startup
visrc.lua (see the
FILES section) is sourced which can
be used to set personal configuration options. As an example the following
will enable the display of line numbers:
vis:command('set number')
VIS_PATH
- The default path to use to load Lua support files.
HOME
- The home directory used for the
cd command if no argument is given.
TERM
- The terminal type to use to initialize the curses
interface, defaults to xterm if unset.
SHELL
- The command shell to use for I/O related commands like
!, >,
< and |.
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
- The configuration directory to use, defaults to
$HOME/.config if unset.
SIGSTOP
- Suspend editor.
SIGCONT
- Resume editor.
SIGBUS
- An mmap(2) ed file got
truncated, unsaved file contents will be lost.
SIGHUP
-
SIGTERM
- Restore initial terminal state. Unsaved file contents will
be lost.
SIGINT
- When an interrupt occurs while an external command is being
run it is terminated.
SIGWINCH
- The screen is resized.
Upon startup
vis will source the first
visrc.lua configuration file found from these
locations. All actively used paths can be listed at runtime using the
:help command.
- $VIS_PATH
- The location of the vis
binary (on systems where /proc/self/exe is
available).
-
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vis where
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
refers to
$HOME/.config if unset.
-
/etc/vis for a system-wide
configuration provided by administrator.
-
/usr/local/share/vis or
/usr/share/vis depending on the build
configuration.
When creating a new visrc.lua be sure to copy
the structure from here.
The
vis utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
Use
vis as an interactive filter.
$ { echo Pick your number; seq 1 10; } | vis -
> choice
Use the
vis-open(1) based file browser to list all
C language source files:
:e *.c
Spawn background process and pipe range to its standard input:
:> { plumber <&3 3<&- & }
3<&0 1>&- 2>&-
sam(1),
vi(1),
vis-clipboard(1),
vis-complete(1),
vis-digraph(1),
vis-menu(1),
vis-open(1)
A
Tutorial for the Sam Command Language by
Rob
Pike
The
Text Editor sam by
Rob Pike
Plan 9 manual
page for sam(1)
Structural
Regular Expressions by
Rob Pike
vi
- screen-oriented (visual) display editor IEEE
Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”)
vis does not strive to be
IEEE Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”)
compatible, but shares obvious similarities with the
vi utility.
vis is written by
Marc
André Tanner ⟨mat at brain-dump.org⟩
On some systems there already exists a
vis binary,
thus causing a name conflict.