[J]
Sometimes while editing a file you will end up with a series of short lines that are difficult to scan. When you want to merge two lines into one, position the cursor anywhere on the first line, and press
J
to join the two lines.
Suppose your file practice reads:
W ith a screen editor you can scroll the page, move the cursor |
Keystrokes | Results |
---|---|
J
|
W ith a screen editor you can scroll the page, move the cursor |
|
|
.
|
W ith a screen editor you can scroll the page, move the cursor |
Repeat the last command ( |
Using a numeric argument with
J
joins that number of consecutive lines. In the example above, you could have joined three lines by using the command
3J
.
When you type commands, text jumps around on the screen and nothing works the way it's supposed to.
Make sure you're not typing the
J
command when you mean
j
. You may have hit the
[CAPS LOCK]
key without noticing it.
vi
is case-sensitive. That is, uppercase commands (
I
,
A
,
J
, etc.) are different from lowercase commands (
i
,
a
,
j
), so all your commands are being interpreted not as lowercase but as uppercase commands.
Press the
[CAPS LOCK]
key again to return to lowercase, then type either
U
to restore the last line changed or
u
to undo the last command. You'll probably also have to do some additional editing to fully restore the garbled part of your file.