VIM, which stands for
Vi IMproved, is a free multi-platform
text editor. VIM's multi-mode full screen editing paradigm is a conceptual outgrowth of the original vi editor implementation that, since the early 1980s, has been distributed as an essential part of every
operating system that is derived from
Unix. Since its inception in the early 1990s VIM has grown to accommodate an extensive array of features, both original and derived from other free and commercial text editors. This success is an outgrowth of the development process which has been driven by the public publication of the VIM source code combined with the constant interaction between users, developers, and the original creator of VIM,
Bram Moolenaar.
Some of the main features of VIM and improvements of VIM over vi:
- VIM is 99% Vi compatible
- portability
- multi level undo/redo
- multiple modified buffers
- Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode
- split windows -- both horizontal and vertical
- syntax highlighting[?] for hundreds of file types, even Wikipedia format
- trans-session history of commands/searches/registers/positions ...
- command-line editing and extensive completion
- IDE-like build/review/edit features
- session state preservation
- configurable status line[?]
- insert-mode completion
- multi-mode text folding[?]
- extended scripting[?] and expressions
- scripted plugins including remote file editing
- visual mode selection with char/line/block ranges
- comprehensive integrated help system with hypertext via ctags[?]