[NBLUG/talk] VIM Question

Barry Stump barry.stump at gmail.com
Wed Sep 19 12:52:37 PDT 2007


Those symbolic links are part of the Debian alternatives system.  It
allows the system to guess the best choice for things like
/usr/bin/editor when you have multiple editors installed.  /usr/bin/vi
is one of them.

sudo update-alternatives --list vi

shows all candidates and

sudo update-alternatives --config vi

lets you select the alternative you desire from a list and

sudo update-alternatives --auto vi

lets the system pick the best choice.  Look at the man page for
update-alternatives for more details.

-Barry

On 9/19/07, matt <matt at cfxnetworks.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 September 2007 11:32:19 Steve Johnson wrote:
> > I use vim, and it seems that ubuntu feisty defaults to old school vi
> > behavior, how can I force vi to always act like vim?  I tried "alias
> > vi=vim" and it did not do the trick.  Is there a global settings file
> > where I can set this?
> >
> > funny, on the 6.x versions of ubuntu, I could have sworn the vi
> > defaulted to vim behavior, I wonder why they changed it.
> >
> > -Steve
>
> Yeah, I hate that. Which is why I made /usr/bin/vi a symbolic link
> to /usr/bin/vim, and violà.
>
> PS: If you notice, though, /usr/bin/vi* is a whole mess of symbolic links
> going to /etc/alternatives, and back to /usr/bin... I'm not sure what's going
> on. FYI, the actual binary is /usr/bin/vim.basic, so any form of linkage to
> that should work.
>
> --
> Salud,
> Matt
> matt at cfxnetworks.com
>
> Your Fortune:
> Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
>                 -- Candice Bergen
>
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