Making Your vi Environment Permanent

To avoid setting options or defining abbreviations or macros each time you enter vi, place all options and definitions you normally use into an .exrc file in your home directory. This file is read automatically each time you enter vi and its contents make your customized vi environment permanent.

To create or change the .exrc file, follow these steps:

After creating the .exrc file, you can access it whenever you want to change your vi environment. Any of the editor options discussed in the previous section can be placed in this file.

An Example of Changing Your .exrc File

In “Using Options to Change Your vi Environment”, you saw examples of some of the options that change the overall behavior of vi. You can also make vi recognize short forms of commonly used expressions by using ab to define an abbreviation.

If you include the following options and abbreviations in your .exrc file:

set wm=8 set showmode ab eeg Electrical Engineering . . .

Then you have changed your vi environment so that each time you enter vi, you can expect the following:

• The right margin automatically contains eight spaces (changing the default from zero), and a carriage return will occur after approximately 72 spaces.

• The lower right part of the screen will show "INPUT MODE" when you are in any of the text insert modes.

• Whenever you enter eeg, this abbreviation will automatically expand into the words Electrical Engineering.

For more information on this versatile editor, see The Ultimate Guide to the vi and ex Text Editors.