why-vi.rocks/index.md

# Why vi Rocks

A collection of commands, command sequences in [vi(1)](https://man.openbsd.org/vi.1)/[ex(1)](https://man.openbsd.org/ex.1) or with 3rd party unitilities.<br />
These all work with at least [nvi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvi) 1.79 and 2.1.3 (unicode).

Helpful documents:<br />
- [Roman Zolotarev: Edit text with vi(1)](https://rgz.ee/vi.html)<br />
- [Jeff W: vi help](http://www.jeffw.com/vi/vi_help.txt)<br />
- [Maarten Litmaath: vi reference](http://www.ungerhu.com/jxh/vi.html)<br />
- [alphanrrrd: extremely concise cheatsheet](http://www.alphanrrrd.org/vi.html)<br />
- [ViEmu: Graphical vi cheatsheet](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html)

#### Yank / delete an arbitrary number of lines

	1) mark the first line: mk
	2) move to last line
	3a) yank: y'k
	3b) delete: d'k
	4) move to new line
	5) paste with P or p

#### Apply regex to an arbitrary number of lines

	1) mark the first line: mk
	2) mark the last line: ml
	:'k,'ls/regex/power/g

#### Add # to block of text

	:'k,'ls/.*/#&/

#### Remove trailing whitespace of block of text

	:'k,'ls/\ *$//

#### Write file as root

	:w !doas tee %

#### Diff the file on disk with the file in the buffer

	:w !diff -u % -

#### Make a backup of the file on disk

	:!cp % %.bak

#### Sort all lines

	:%!sort

#### Sort paragraph

	!}sort

#### Uniq all lines

	:%!uniq

#### Uniq paragraph

	!}uniq

#### Join all lines

	:%j

#### Select a column (3rd) from formated text seperated by ':' 

	:%!awk -F':' '{print $3}'