This page is here to help you get started with a text user interface editor for use within a terminal (also lightly covered in CSE 391). While you can make just about anything work, we still encourage you to try one of these to avoid unnecessary transferring of files or delays from sending graphics data over the network.
This page covers setup and tips for the two most popular options: vim () and Emacs ().
vim
or vim <filename>
on the
command line and press [Enter].
This will open a welcome screen or the specified file,
respectively, for viewing and modification.:q
to exit
(or :q!
to exit and discard changes).vimtutor
can be run from the command line and
gives a brief introduction to vim terminology and the
general gist of how it works.
This describes how to move around, select, copy, paste, and other
basic functions of vim.
However, vimtutor
is quite dry.
.vimrc
Commands placed in the file ~/.vimrc
will be run when
vim starts up.
The CSE 351 starter vimrc file can be automatically placed in the
correct location for you using the following command:
curl -Lo ~/.vimrc https://cs.uw.edu/351/editors/vimrc.txt
This should serve as a good starting point for you to customize vim yourself and does the following for you:
‘ron’
.
Instructions for changing this are in the .vimrc
file.
F9
to run make (you can also
just do :make
).
Then, you can run :copen
to see the output alongside
your code.
vim will even take you to the lines that have compiler
problems.
If you're curious how it works, the file has comments that describe
what each command does; just open the file with
vim ~/.vimrc
.
emacs
or emacs <filename>
on
the command line and press [Enter].
This will open a welcome screen or the specified file,
respectively, for viewing and modification.Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c
to exit.Ctrl-h, t
from within Emacs.
This will open up a text file with instructions to follow that
covers the basics of movement and editing.
As this is just plain text, it can feel dry and is a lot to read.
.emacs
Commands placed in the file ~/.emacs
will be run when
Emacs starts up.
The default settings should do a decent job as-is, so we won't be
providing a starter configuration file.
If you do feel like customizing a bit, you can find some examples
.