Question

18

Which application does the vi command open?

rated 0 times [ 18] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2398 / 2 Years ago, wed, march 2, 2022, 6:35:24

When you type vi in the terminal, the following output is shown

~                             VIM - Vi IMproved                                

~                                                                             

~                               version 7.3.547                                 

~                           by Bram Moolenaar et al.                            

~           Modified by [email protected]             

~                 Vim is open source and freely distributable                   

~                                                                               

~                        Help poor children in Uganda!

So according to this, vi must be launching VIm.

But when you type vim it gives

aditya@aditya-desktop:~$ vim

The program 'vim' can be found in the following packages:

 * vim

 * vim-gnome

 * vim-tiny

 * vim-athena

 * vim-gtk

 * vim-nox

Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

This shows that vim is not installed.

Notably man vi and man vim launch the same man pages.

So what does the vi command actually launch?

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

feeous

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 102

Total Questions: 122

Total Answers: 119

Location: Netherlands

Member since Thu, Jul 1, 2021

3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago tigehanc · Accepted Answer

It is vim-tiny: "Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version".

I did this on 13.10:

user@ubuntu:~$ which vi

/usr/bin/vi

user@ubuntu:~$ which vim

user@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/vi

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 ago 13  2013 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi

user@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 dic 20 04:39 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny

user@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache search vim.tiny

vim-common - Vi IMproved - Common files

vim-tiny - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version

user@ubuntu:~$ dpkg --get-selections | grep vim

vim-common                  install

vim-tiny                    install

As you can see, vim is not installed (empty output), vi is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/vi (see alternatives mechanism), which is a symlink to /usr/bin/vim.tiny, which belongs to package vim-tiny.