Rating: 
Summary: As one would expect from O'Reilly...
Review: ...this text is quite excellent. As emacs is not available everywhere, I feel that it might be in one's best interest to learn a little about the vi editor. Under 200 pages, it is much easier to digest than most other texts, yet this book covers just about everything! It has proven to be such an excellent tutorial that I do not really use the comprehensive appendices in the back of the book. The reading/learning process went very quickly, leaving me with plenty of time to take a look at all those regular expressions...
Rating: 
Summary: Helps you discover the full power of VI.
Review: Although it is a little wordy, this book serves as an excellent resource for anyone wanting a FAST editor - expecially programmers. The power and speed of VI can be hidden behind its obscure user interface, but once you understand it you will never want to use another editor. The detachable quick reference card included in the back of the book is really nice to have. The coverage of VIs features is pretty thorough, even VI experts will be able to learn a thing or two from this well written book.
Rating:
Summary: Quite good -- if only there were more examples...
Review: First, I unequivocally recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the vi editor used on UNIX and Linux systems. The book is well laid out and well written.There are, however, two things I think would make this good book even better: (1) step-by-step examples of some of the more complex vi techniques and (2) some on-line example files available from the O'Reilly Web site. On-line example files are employed to advantage by other O'Reilly books (O'Reilly's "sed & awk" comes immediately to mind). Providing some hands-on example files to work with would definitely help anyone using this book to learn the vi editor. Having said that, this book in its current form will teach you more than enough to use vi effectively. For those who are just starting to use vi to do real work, I'd also recommend acquiring the companion "vi Editor Pocket Reference."
Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant book from the O'Reilly crew.
Review: For most people on the planet VI makes about as much sense as brain surgery, possible less! This wonderful reference book allows the beginner to jump in and start using the powerful VI editor. This book has made the process of understanding and learning VI simple with its concise and clear writing. The chapters are arrange so that you get the basic commands early and only get the more advanced commands as you move further into the book. Each chapter ends with a review of the material presented and this makes for a great reference of the commands. All in all this is a must have book for anyone that uses the VI editor.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive Guide to Mastering vi
Review: I began using vi because I was forced to. Where I work, there are many different flavors of UNIX and the only common editor that is on them is vi. So I began using vi referring to the commands listed in the UNIX in a Nutshell book. I was lost. I never understood why anyone would use this editor. This book starts at the very beginning. It assumes no prior knowledge of vi or any other editor yet the beginning is very concise so you don't feel like you're wasting time which is a nice balance. You can quickly move through the chapters and you notice that not only can you work with vi, its actually very nice to never have to use the mouse or press some complicated key sequence to get what you need done. After the first few chapters, you can probably perform 90% of the tasks you need to perform. If you make it past Chapter 7, you are a vi guru. Now, I use vi whenever I can. I even have a bash shell for Windows that has vi and that is basically what I use for most editing. I would recommend this book to anyone, mainly of course those who work in the UNIX environment, that has to do text editing. Its a quick way to learn what you need to to get your work done and get vi working for you instead of the other way around.
Rating:
Summary: In depth coverage of vi and other editors
Review: I bought this book hoping to find new tricks and solutions to common tasks in vi. I started with UNIX only three months ago and I have to admit that a book like this one is very important to anyone serious about the UNIX system. If you want to rely only on the X-Window system, you can forget about learning vi, but then you would be thinking in the PC-DOS user way.
Rating:
Summary: A Vi Lover's Dream
Review: I first got "introduced" to vi in the late 1980s and I've never wavered in my support of this sometimes-maligned text editor. However, it wasn't until I read this book, that I realized how powerful an editor it was and how many fun things you can do with it! Besides describing in much detail vi's various commands, there are also chapters on vi's companion, ex. ex has a large number of its own commands that can be used in conjunction with vi while working on text files. There are also chapters on various vi clones (vim, nvm, elvis, and vile - certainly interesting names on their own) and their features. The last part of the book features reference information on vi (commands, online resources, and a troubleshooting section) and ex. If you love vi and aren't ashamed to admit it like myself, this book is a great place to learn more.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me to grok vi
Review: I had made a couple of attempts to learn vi before, and I just didn't get it. This book made it fairly easy, and introduced me to the power and speed of vi. It lets you get started quickly, with an extremely clean, organized presentation. After a short time using vi I'm convinced that emacs is much more difficult to use properly than vi, and that windows-like editors may be simple to use but they are crippled compared to the functionality of vi. If you use a text editor more than once or twice a week do yourself a favor and learn vi. If you use different unix / linux systems you are almost compelled to learn vi since it is the only editor that's always available. This book also covers vi variants, such as the superb vim.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent...the VI Bible
Review: I have used this book at my workplace for some time, and it is an excellent book. A must for any serious VI users. Now I am actually buying it so that I can quickly grab it for reference, instead of running down the hall to grab your friends copy.
Rating:
Summary: Best VI book yet
Review: I knew little about VI before reading this book, but I now i feel very comfortable using it. I like the layout and the fact that it has references and summaries all over the book. This is a book you will most likely use again and again. My only complaint were the chapters on advanced editing which were hard to understand if you are not versed in regular expressions (hence the 4 stars). Still, I learned much from this book, and hope you will too. VIVA Oreilly!
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