Chapter 8 Basic Abbreviations, Keyboard Mapping, and Initialization Files enable you to automate repetitive tasks abbreviation: enables you to type in part of a word and let Vim type the rest remap the keyboard: redefine a key to be a whole set of commands save them to an initialization file that will automatically be read the next tiem you start Vim Abbreviations :abbreviate ad advertisement ??????But how to remove one abbreviation?????? about <space>: it is really very amazing! Usually Vim ignores spaces between the abbreviation and the expansion, to avoid that problem, you can use <space> istead! Example: :abbreviate #b /*************************************** (40 chars, designed so that the right side is aligned to a tab stop) :abbreviate #e <space>**************************************/ Mapping suppose you need to surround certain words with curly braces Example: change a word 'amount' into '{amount}' :map <F5> i{<Esc>ea}<Esc> 1. there is an implicit <Enter> 2. you can either press F5 key or by entering the characters < F 5 > 3. you must enter <Esc> as characters, or type CTRL-V followed by the <Esc> key (the CTRL-V tells Vim literally instead of acting on it.) Listing Your Mappings :map Saving Your Settings :mkvimrc file: writes all your settings to a file :source fiel: read file During startup, Vim editor looks for an initialization file. If it is found, it is automatically executed. (Only the first file found is read.) UNIX $HOME/.vimrc $HOME/_vimrc $HOME/.exrc $HOME/_exrc One way to find out which initialization files are read is to use the :version command :version .exrc is used by the old Vi editor :mkexrc: writes the mappings to the .exrc file
