Eat My Business

I have just learnt something!

I’ve been reading technical books for years. Many contain examples of things that you need to type into the Linux command line. Until now, I’ve always been stuck when a book or tutorial says “and change the contents of this file to xyz”. I would avoid amending text files in Linux as much as possible because I had no idea how to do it from within SSH. When I really had to alter a file, I found myself hamfistedly using copy and move commands to move files into my ftp area of my linux machine. Downloaded them, altered them with my favourite text editor (Programmers File Editor), then uploaded it again and hacked away at the command line until I had managed to move the file back to replace the original.

Well, that’s a thing of the past, now!

From now on I’ll type:

#vim filename

(Where ‘filename’ is the name of the file I need to edit.)

• See more about vim here
• Vim Cheat Sheet of commands

Tip: Type the following to go through a tutorial on how to use vim from the Linux SSH command prompt

# vimtutor

Also I have found two bits of software that would make the whole thing even easier:

SftpDrive and WebDrive (I haven’t tried them out yet.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 10:10 am and is filed under Open Source, SSH, Linux Commands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.