Using keyboard shortcuts

vi provides the following powerful mechanisms for speeding up your work:

Running other commands

Suspend vi temporarily while you run another command, such as a shell. This avoids having to save your file, quit vi, run the command, and then restart vi.

Using a filter

Send a section of your document through a filter program, and have the output from the filter inserted into your document in place of the original text.

Abbreviations

Define a short abbreviation for a long series of characters in text-entry mode.

Named buffer execution

Make vi execute the commands stored in a named buffer as though you had entered them.

Keystroke remapping

Link a sequence of commands to a key; when this is pressed, vi carries out the commands.