Key facts
- Developer
- Bill Joy
- Initial release
- 1976 ; 50 years ago ( 1976 )
- Written in
- C
- Operating system
- Unix , Unix-like
- Platform
- Cross-platform
- Type
- Text editor
- License
- BSD-4-Clause or CDDL
- Website
- ex-vi .sourceforge .net
- Repository
- ex-vi .cvs .sourceforge .net /ex-vi /ex-vi /
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
vi (pronounced as two letters, /ˌviːˈaɪ/ ) is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is standardized by the Single Unix Specification and POSIX.
vi is actually a mode of the earlier ex editor. Originally, ex lacked a full-screen editing capability, but in 1976, Bill Joy enhanced it to support a visual mode. The program was updated to start in visual mode when launched with the command vi instead of the legacy mode when launched via the ex command. In this way, ex and vi are the same program, not two programs. Joy's ex 1.1 was released as part of the first Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix release in March 1978. It was not until version 2.0 of ex, released as part of Second BSD in May 1979 that the editor was installed under the name "vi" which took a user straight into ex's visual mode.