Richard R. Klemmer has been using OS/2 since 1995. He currently works as a programmer for the Department of Agriculture. In his spare time he works for WebTrek L.L.C, an Internet consulting company.

VIM for OS/2

Getting VIM

The VIM home site is located at http://www.vim.org. There are a list of download sites there where you can get the OS/2 binaries for VIM. You will need two files, the runtime and the binaries. The latest version is 5.7, so the files should be named vim57rt.zip for the runtime and vim57os2.zip for the binaries. Unzip these files in the root directory of the drive you wan to install VIM on and they will create a directory structure similar to this: x:\vim\vim57, where "x" is the drive letter in which you installed VIM.

If you want to run VIM from anywhere on your system, you need to add the directory to your path statement. The readme file also states that you can put the executable, vim.exe, anywhere on your system, but if you do you need to set the VIM environment variable in your config.sys file like this "SET VIM=x:\vim\vim57." Even though I didn't move the executable from the distribution location, I found that I needed to set the VIM environment variable for VIM to work properly.

VIM is a highly configurable application. Configuration is done with the vimrc file. There is an example distributed with the OS/2 port named vimrc_example.vim. You will need to copy this to a file name .vimrc, make sure to include the preceding period in the name of the file. If you are running this off of a FAT system, you can name the file _vimrc, with the underscore replacing the period. The configuration options are too numerous to go into hear. Your best bet is to read through the documentation and see what is possible, then experiment and find the options that you like and add them, or remove them from your .vimrc file.

One problem I ran into was how VIM dealt with terminal types. If you do not have anything set for your systems TERM environment variable, then VIM will default to os2ansi for a term type. This is okay, but if you DO have SET TERM={something} in your config.sys, then you may run into some issues depending on what terminal type you are using. I have SET TERM=ANSI in my config.sys and when VIM starts up, the background is a strange green color that makes reading the test very difficult. I fixed this by adding "set term=os2ansi" to my .vimrc file.

Using VIM

If you've never used vi or VIM before, then it may take a little getting used to. VIM has various modes in which it operates. The two that you will use most often are Normal or Command mode and Insert mode. VIM starts up in normal mode, which allows you to execute various commands, such as deleting or copying text, searching the file and saving/exiting the file. Insert mode lets you type in text. There are various ways to enter Insert mode from Normal mode. The basic ways to enter Insert mode are by typing "i" to start inserting text at the current cursor location, "I" to start insert at the beginning of the current line, "a" to start inserting after the current cursor location, "A" to start at the end of the current line, "o" to insert a line below the current line and "O" to insert a line above the current line. To return to Normal mode, hit the Escape (ESC) button.

When in Normal mode, you issue some of the commands by typing a colon, and then a command. For example, to exit VIM type ":q". When you type the colon, the cursor will be position at the bottom of the window.

Other useful commands to use while in Normal mode are listed below:

:w Save (write) the file.
:wq Save then quit
:q! Quit without saving changes. (:q will not work if you've modified the file)
CTRL-F Scroll forward in the file approximately one screen length
CTRL-B Scroll backward in the file one screen length
CTRL-D Scroll forward approximately one-half screen length.
CTRL-U Scroll backward in the file one screen length
/ {text} Search for next occurrence of {text} in file.
? {text} Search backward for previous occurrence of {text} in file.
w Move forward one word
x Delete current text at cursor
X Delete text before cursor (similar to backspace in another editor)
dd Delete current line (and place into buffer)
yy Copy (yank) current line into buffer.
p Place (paste) contents of buffer into file.

With the last commands, starting with "w", you can type a number before the command to execute that command a particular number of times. For example, typing "2w" will move forward two words. Typing "2dd" will delete two lines. You can also combine some commands, such as "w" and "d". Typing "dw" will delete one word, "2dw" will delete two words, and so forth.

There is a tutorial file that comes with the distribution, located in a sub-directory call "tutor." There should be a file named "tutor." Copy this to another name, since the tutorial will have you editing this file, and then load it into VIM by typing "vim tutor" at the command prompt. This should give you some practice using the basic commands in VIM.

VIM improvements

The list of benefits of using VIM over Vi fills up a great deal of space on www.vim.org. First and foremost, since the Vi source is copyrighted, as far as I know there isn't a version for OS/2. I'll quickly go into a couple of the other benefits.

Syntax highlighting

Maybe it's because I spent years looking at green text on IBM mainframes, or maybe it's just because I get excited by programs that look like Christmas decorations, but I have a tough time living without syntax highlighting. VIM provides this for just about any programming language you can thing of, including REXX, C/C++, Java, PERL and PHP. It also provides syntax highlighting for HTML files. The example vimrc file will enable syntax highlighting for any TERM that will support colors, which includes os2ansi. You can also enable and disable syntax highlighting from within the file by typing ":syntax on" to enable and ":syntax off" to disable. Below is a screenshot of VIM editing a php script.

Multiple window support

VIM allows you to split the window to have two separate views within vim. You do this by issuing the ":split" or just ":sp" command. If you have a file loaded into VIM when you do this, the file will be opened in both windows. This is good if you want to look at different sections of a large file. To move between screens type "CTRL-Ww." That is, press the control and the W key at the same time, then press the W again. You can also open a different file in the second window issue the command ":e {filename}." This is also the normal way to load a file into VIM. You can load a file when you issue the split command by typing ":sp {filename}." You can increase the size of the current split window by typing "N CTRL-W +" where "N" is the number of lines you wish to increase the window. If you leave a number off it will just increase the size by one line.

Why use VIM?

That's a good question. There are a number of good shareware editors out there for OS/2. I've purchased frequently use a couple of them myself. And, of course, there is the Enhanced Editor, or EPM, that comes with OS/2. This is extremely powerful and configurable. However, if you need to switch between Unix systems and OS/2, it's always nice to be able to use the same tools on both systems. It also gives you experience with tools that are prevalent on Unix systems, in case you may be working on one in the future. Also, if you ever have to telnet into your OS/2 system, you won't be able to use any of the Presentation Manager programs, such as EPM, so you will need at text mode program to edit any files. You can use TEDIT which comes with OS/2, but I think you'll find that this pales in comparison to what you can to with VIM.

Is that all?

Unfortunately, I can't even come close to scratching the surface of what you can do with VIM. The best way to learn is to get a copy of it and start playing.

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