Overview

Unix is an operating system that is core to a lot of work that computer programmers end up doing and Vi(m) is a text-editing program that you will likely find yourself suddenly thrust into (because Git uses it, another tool you’ll learn in this class). Today’s class is focused on getting familiar with these two tools so that you can use them this term.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

  • Recognize basic commands in a UNIX system
  • Recognize basic Vi(m) commands (text insertion, deletion, quitting)

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

  • Navigate around a UNIX system
  • Use a Vi(m) editor

Readings

To achieve the basic learning objectives, you should work through the following, ideally on your own machine, but you can also complete these in Olin 301/304/308:

  • UNIX Tutorial for Beginners. Get through as much of Tutorials 1-4 and 6 as you can. Tutorial 5 is optional.
  • One of the following vi / vim tutorials (you don’t need to make it through all of any of these, you should just make sure that you know how to do basic text insertion and deletion in Vim, and quit out of it!):

Checks

Write down answers to the following and bring them to class:

  • What are the commands for inserting text, deleting text and quitting out of Vi?
  • What commands in Unix do you think are most important (write them down!)?