Tag Archives: tips

Tips on Using VI Editor (cont’d)

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Changing multiple characters to uppercase

In visual mode, with the characters to change selected, press U (uppercase) to change them to uppercase. Press u (lowercase) to change them to lowercase.

In command mode, the same effect can be achieved on a single character by placing the cursor on the letter and press the tilde sign (~).

Jumping from line to line

You can jump from line to line by marking them first. To mark a line, press the key ‘m’ followed by a letter e.g. ma

This will mark the line your cursor is at in the buffer ‘a’.

Then when you are at any other position in the file, press the aprostrophe key (‘) followed by the same letter e.g. ‘a

This will bring the cursor (and the screen) to the line that you marked.

Shortcut Movement Keys

Aside from the arrow keys and the letters h, j, k, and l, there are other movement keys.

w – move to the beginning of the next word

W – move to the beginning of the next word following a space

b – move to the beginning of the previous word

B – move to the beginning of the previous word preceding a space

e – move to the end of the next word

E – move to the end of the next word following a space

( – move to the start of the previous sentene

) – move to the start of the next sentence

- – move to the start of the line that is above the current position of the cursor

+ – move to the start of the line that is below the current position of the cursor

% – find the matching bracket/brace of the one the cursor is positioned at

Tips on Using VI Editor

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This is a one of many mini-posts that I will do on using the VI editor. I’ve recently bumped into some pages that contains valuable information on how to use VI. The problem with it is its too wordy and that makes it hard to look for information when you need it.

So this post and the following ones will use tags relevant to the subject to help the search for relevant information quicker.

D – delete the characters of the line after the cursor position

C – delete the characters of the line after the cursor position and change to insert mode

R – change to insert & overwrite mode; it’s like pressing the Ins key on the keyboard; whereas ‘r’ replaces a single character, ‘R’ replaces every character that you type over

s – behaves like ‘x’ but switches to insert mode

S – deletes the whole line and change to insert mode

Customisation for Vim Editor

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When doing some simple programming, I like to use the Vim editor instead of using a full-blown IDE. It’s a good editor but I want to use it more efficiently. Some of the things I customise for myself are:

  • auto indentation – this is a must for programmers
  • tab size – to indent I use the tab key but different applications represent the tab character with different number of spaces; I like mine to be 4
  • I like my colours to be different

These settings are saved in a file named .vimrc in each user’s home directory. Simply save the vi commands in this file to have your customisation. But remember to remove the semicolons. Below is my .vimrc contents to achieve my customisation.

set tabstop=4

set autoindent

colorscheme wombat

wombat is a colour scheme file which I saved in the directory /usr/share/vim/vim71/colors/.

P.S. While searching for some help on setting the file types in Vim, I found this page in wikibooks.org that describes the tips a programmer would use. It’s unbelievably useful. Do check it out if you use vi editor!

Another page with some useful tips is http://tips.webdesign10.com/general/vim

Converting PS files to PDF

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In openSUSE 10.3, there is no readily available solution (that I know of) that lets a user print to PDF. The closest thing there is to that is a PostScript (PS) file. Fortunately there is a easy way to convert PS files to PDF. There is a command called ps2pdf which does exactly that. Its usage is very straightforward as well:

ps2pdf document.ps document.pdf

How much simpler can that get?

Installing Fonts in Linux

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Installing fonts has been somewhat of a neglect in Linux. Although I haven’t checked, it seems that recent distributions of SUSE Linux has made it GUI-friendly.

Nevertheless, being a console guy, I believe it’s better to know a more reliable way to make things work that is more ‘portable’ (i.e. work in other distributions as well).

So for fonts, the most straightforward way I know is to copy the font into your personal directory’s hidden font folder e.g. /home/coder/.fonts

After having done that, the next step is to then make the font available to your applications. This can be done with the command:

fc-cache -fv

That’s all there is to it!

Backing the Firefox List of Hosts Exemption for Cookies

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Ever since I’ve started listening to the Security Now podcast, I’ve grown a lot more security- and privacy- conscious (which is a good thing). From the podcast, I’ve learnt that one of the easiest thing you can do to protect yourself on the Internet is to disable cookies by default, and allow only those from domains that you trust to be stored on your computer.

Being a Firefox user, I disabled cookies by default and set up an exception list to allow only hosts that I trust. Over time, this list has grown quite a bit. For whatever reason if I lose this list (either through an upgrade or a different computer), it can be quite inconvenient to redo the list again. Fortunately, I’ve found a way to back up the list.

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