UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

While using vi or vim on different boxes, I experience different behaviors when I'm inserting (i) or writing on a new line (o). On the Linux box, I can insert and delete with my backspacekey while in the insert mode. It acts a little more like pico,nedit, etc. On the SunOS box, it's a headache because when I want to go upor down to edit something else, I have to press i or o again. It jumps out of insert mode when I hit any of the direction keys. This is annoying to me. Is there any way to make it behave more like the Linux box's vi/vim?

I don't think so. Vim (vi improved) has many enhancements that aren't available in VI.

Assuming you don't have VIM on your Solaris server, you can get it from here download : vim online

(Solaris Operating System - Freeware).

We've got vim, but it acts a little different from the vim on the Linux boxes. Any idea how to get the same behavior?

Define "acts different". If you mean the backspace behavior, enter this in your .vimrc or in vim's command line:

Code:

set nocompatible
set bs=2

The first disables the vi compatibility mode, the second allows backspacing over everything (for more info look at the :help for those settings)