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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

I barely use any Vim, but I'm more confused about there being some hidden complexity in exiting Vim that I'm not aware of.

Isn't it just...

[Esc] :wq

...or...

[Esc] :q!

...depending if you want to save the current document or not?

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Imagine you don't know that. Now try to exit vim.

Add in the bonus confusion that you may not have even been trying to run vim, and in fact may not know what it is (hey, everyone's a beginner some time), but have landed there due to a default $EDITOR value.

[EDIT] also, a typical mid-level computer user's tendency to slap "ESC" when panicked. Ha!

Which OS/Linux distribution set default $EDITOR to vim? Personally I've never seen one, and I don't think vim is a sane default value for $EDITOR.

Don't know about $EDITOR, but if you issue a git commit in Windows, and forget to specify -m, then you end up in vim.

I dunno if it's actually vim or some variation on it, but it is the default on, for example, Arch Linux, although I believe most other distros dropped me into it as well (e.g. git commit / rebase -i).

If there is such a thing as user hostile in the world of CLI tools, then dropping the user unannounced into vi with some open buffer most definitely counts as user hostile.

In Jessie, visudo lands you in nano, unless you explicitly set the $EDITOR.

What are your thoughts on $VISUAL?

> you may not have even been trying to run vi

git rebase -i

For example

Ok, so anyone with any terminal experience but no vim experience would press <ctrl>-c.

Then, the program tells them "Type :quit<Enter> to exit Vim"

And if the user is capable of reading, they shouldn't have any problem.

If they don't know about ctrl-c, they shouldn't be using a terminal editor.

E37: No write since last change (add ! to override)

Try actually following those instructions. They don't work. There is a step missing, and you may get warnings even if you know to hit escape first.

You don't have to hit escape, ctrl-c puts you in normal mode.

If vim opens and that's the first thing you try, then it'll work, yeah.

But if you've typed anything, this won't quite work. <ctrl> c will take you out of insert mode, but won't offer any prompt. <ctrl> c again will bring up the quit prompt, but that's not intuitive the way doing it the first time is. And if you type the wrong thing after the first <ctrl> c, you'll break back into insert mode and have to take another run at it.

I remember getting stuck in vim because git bash uses it as a default editor. It happened when I forgot to enter a commit message, which meant that I started typing a commit message and thereby lost the useful prompt when I went to quit.

edit: per another thread, this gets far worse if you don't realize the ':' is active and not a prompt to "type: quit". That error sets off a maze that will never show you the prompt again to find your mistake.

In that case I'd just close the terminal window if I was running the terminal from a GUI session. Does that count?

I think mostly it's people not being familiar with escape key. If you think about it, pretty rare you use Escape in anything other than a game..

On the Mac, the escape key has been used forever in dialogs as a surrogate for the Cancel button or for dismissing dialogs where the results are non-destructive.

Correct. But as the article mentions, it might be confusing for developers who predominantly use IDEs and text editors that are not modal in nature.

Never forget ZZ. Or, my preferred method, suspend the process for later use.

You can also <Esc>-ZZ to save the file and exit. Very convenient to remember if you use Vim a lot.

No, it really is that easy.

If you try to <ctrl>-c, the program even tells you to use :q

It's just become a meme at this point.

But why would i be pressing <ctrl>-c in the first place if i don't know any Vim commands?

Edit: ah quit foreground process, ignore me

<ctrl>-c is not a vim command. It's a universal terminal command.

<ctrl>-c is how you kill the foreground process in bash, zsh, sh, windows command line, etc...

If you don't know about <ctrl>-c you shouldn't be attempting to use a terminal based editor to begin with. Vim can't be blamed for people not knowing how to use a terminal.

Because it is the standard command to kill (i.e. send SIGINT) running programs in a terminal? E.g. ping, top, etc. all quit using Ctrl-C.

> If you try to <ctrl>-c, the program even tells you to use :q

And then you do and it helpfully adds ":q" to the buffer.

You're still in vim.

If you hit ctrl-c then you are no longer in insert mode (ctrl-c acts like esc for some reason), so no, it won't add anything to the buffer and ":q" will get you out.

I don't blame people for being confused though.. I remember getting stuck in vim all the time back in the day because of a default $EDITOR value.

or :q or ZZ or qa(!) or wqa(!)

I love vim and I've used all of those at some point. I'd never pretend there's no learning curve, just that the learning curve is worth it.

ZZ also works as save and quit.

It baffles me that it isn't just ^C like every other unix program.

Every other unix program is not an interactive editor, they don't care if stdout is a teleprinter, a physical terminal or a terminal emulator.

If you press ^C, it tells you how to quit. As to why it doesn't just exit, a lot of beginners would probably expect ^C in a text editor to copy text.

or even:

[Esc] :x

to save and exit.

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