Navigation Commands

• Navigation is a little different than you might expect. When vi was first written, arrow keys were not readily available, so letters were used to move the cursor. Since most people are right-handed, the standard typing position for the right hand was chosen. Imagine this is your keyboard:

  H

  J

  K

  L

  Your index finger goes on the H, the middle finger on the J, the ring finger on the K, and the pinkie on the L. h goes left, j goes down, k goes up, and l goes to the right (the table below does list them).

  Notice that on a keyboard, the letters are shown as capitals. The commands are lower case. It is very important to remember that vi is case sensitive. For instance, an example above lists J for join. This is a different command than j, which moves the cursor down a line.

  You can also use the enter key to move down, the space bar to move right, the back-space to move left, and - to move up.

  What is the difference between these two sets of commands? Specifically, how do j and k differ from enter and -? Try them and see.

• vi also gives you many different ways of scrolling through the text, using control letters. Control letters are traditionally shown in all caps, but do not use the shift key - the letters should be typed in lower-case. CTRL-B means to hold the Ctrl key and the letter b at the same time.

  You can press CTRL-B to scroll back half a page, press CTRL-U to scroll up a page, press CTRL-D to scroll down half a page, and press CTRL-F to scroll forward a page. CTRL-E will scroll down a single line.

  Note that the scrolling commands are not meant to move the cursor. vi will keep the cursor on the current visible test, but it may not be where you might expect it. Scrolling is meant to affect the text that you can see within your vi window.

• Table of Navigation Commands

  Command	Description
  h	moves the cursor to the left.
  j	moves the cursor down.
  k	moves the cursor up.
  l	moves the cursor to the right.
  Enter	moves the cursor down.
  -	moves the cursor up.
  space	moves the cursor to the right.
  back-space	moves the cursor to the left.
  w	moves the cursor to the next word.
  b	moves the cursor back to the previous.
  e	moves the cursor to the end of the current word.
  G	goes to the last line in the file.
  1G	goes to the first line in the file. You can use any line number, not just a 1.
  $	goes to the end of the current line.
  fe	finds the next e on the current line. You can specify any letter, not just an e.
  Fe	finds the previous e on the current line. You can specify any letter, not just an e.
  /any string	finds the specified text after the cursor and moves the cursor there. Will go forward to different lines. You must press Enter to have the search execute.
  ?any string	finds the specified text before the cursor and moves the cursor there. Will go backwards to different lines. You must press Enter to have the search execute.
  %	moves the cursor to the matching parenthesis or open/close curly brace. This is very useful for programming, especially C and C++ because these languages use { and }.
  CTRL-B	scrolls back half a page of text.
  CTRL-U	scrolls up a page of text.
  CTRL-D	scrolls down half a page of text.
  CTRL-F	scrolls forward a page of text.
  CTRL-E	scrolls down by a single line.

• The arrow keys will work, but they do not follow the classic rules of vi. Many people find them to be confusing to use, especially while learning vi, so you may want to avoid them for now. The big difference is that arrows do not just move the cursor when in command mode, they also work in edit mode (and you have to remember that you are still in edit mode). So, if you use the arrows to navigate, and are in edit mode, you will have to press escape before using vi commands.