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Integrated Development Environment
 (
IDE
). In the example we 
just used, we were able to find and replace all occurrences of a string with another 
string. This was also an example of the types of tasks we carry out in command 
mode, which allows us to manipulate text and enter more advanced commands. 
With this admittedly contrived example, you can immediately see the value of 
having multiple modes in 
vim
.

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Chapter 5
[
 127 
]
I've been using 
vim
 for about 8 years or so, because I can never seem to figure out 
how to exit it. Okay, to be fair, that joke is getting to be a bit old now. If you've 
already been using Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution for a while, that joke 
probably made you cringe a little. If that was the first time you've seen it, then I'm 
glad I was the one that introduced you to it—for some reason, 
vim
 has a reputation 
of being difficult to exit. But that's not really true at all, it's actually quite easy. In 
command mode, you simply enter 
:q
 to exit the editor:
:q
If you've made changes, the 
:q
 command won't let you exit, but you can force exit 
if you add an exclamation mark, so the command becomes 
:q!
. If you'd also like to 
save changes while exiting, add 
w
, so the command inside 
vim
 would become:
:wq
Essentially, we're exiting the editor (
q
) and writing the file at the same time (
w
). In 
command mode, commands start with a colon (
:
) and then the actual command. 
There are so many commands available that it's impossible to talk about them all 
in one chapter. What I'll do, then, is mention some that I consider to be the most 
important.
First, it's actually possible to run a shell command without leaving 
vim
 by using the 
following command:
:!
The exclamation mark allows you to run a command, and then you type the actual 
command. For example:
:! ls -l /var/log
The previous example will show you the contents of the 
/var/log directory
, and 
then you can press 
Enter
 to return back to 
vim
. The 
:sp
 command is short for 
split
:
:sp /path/to/file

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Managing Files and Directories