Learning the vi and Vim Editors

Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native, is a professional programmer and technical author. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, when he was introduced to a PDP-11 running a version of Sixth Edition Unix. His experience also includes multiple commercial Unix systems, from Sun, IBM, HP and DEC. He has been working with GNU/Linux systems since 1996. Arnold has also been a heavy awk user since 1987, when he became involved with gawk, the GNU project’s version of awk. As a member of the POSIX 1003.2 balloting group, he helped shape the POSIX standard for awk. He is currently the maintainer of gawk and its documentation. He is author and/or coauthor of the bestselling titles: Unix In A Nutshell, Effective awk Programming, sed & awk, Classic Shell Scripting, and several pocket references.

Elbert Hannah specializes in integrating technologies. His first job found him writing a full-screen editor in assembler (Intel 8086) in 1983. He implemented many vi-like features like motion-by-object (word, paragraph, etc.). Elbert discovered Unix working for the phone company and built a career integrating disparate systems. He wrote an e-mail platform for IBM’s mainframe ISPF environment by linking ISPF panels to IBM JCL jobs linked to an AT&T connected RJE reader. Today, Elbert works in the Finance industry, again, integrating technologies. Underlying all of his accomplishments was the reliance on the power and agility of the vi text-editing framework.