How to Perform Undo and Redo Operations in Vim and Vi
Vim and Vi are one of the most popular text editors among Linux and Mac users.
We use the u, :u or :undo commands to undo changes in Vim. Similarly, we use the CTRL+R or :redo command to redo the changes.
Undo Changes in Vim/Vi
Vim observes all changes that we have made to a particular file. The undo command can revert one or more changes. The latest changes will be undone first and then then the previous changes. To undo changes in Vim, we use the u, :u or :undo commands.
Steps to Undo Changes in Vim/Vi:
-
We must make sure that we are in normal mode to execute the commands in
Vim. If we are not in the normal mode, we can press the Esc key to switch to the normal mode. -
To undo the latest change, use the
ucommand. -
To undo multiple changes at once, we use
ucommands with numbers also.nucommand will undo the latestnchanges.
We must be cautious with the case of u. If we accidentally hit U, it will undo all the latest changes on one line. If we hit U, we can use u to revert the changes.
If we edit a file in the insert mode, all the changes made during the session are treated as a single entry in the undo tree.
If we delete two lines after switching to the insert mode and then use the u command after switching back to the normal mode, both lines will be restored.
Redo Changes in Vim/Vi
The redo action is the opposite of the undo action. To redo the undone changes in a file, we use the CTRL+R or :redo command.
Steps to Redo Changes in Vim/Vi:
-
We must make sure that we are in normal mode to execute the commands in
Vim. If we are not in the normal mode, we can press the Esc key to switch to the normal mode. -
To redo the changes, we use the CTRL+R(simultaneously press Ctrl and r key) or
:redocommand after entering tonormalmode. -
To redo multiple changes at once, we use numbers with the CTRL+R command.
3 Ctrl-R(Press3and then simultaneously press Ctrl and r key), and then the command will redo the latest 3 changes.
We can use undo and redo commands in a cycle to undo changes and then redo undone changes.
Suraj Joshi is a backend software engineer at Matrice.ai.
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