Vim (text editor)

Vim (; short for vi improved) is a free and open-source . Vim provides both a terminal screen user interface as well as a graphical user interface (called gvim).

Vim's documentation describes it as an improved form of the older vi text editor (though it is built from a distinct codebase). In release information, the author originally implied that Vim was an abbreviation for "Vi IMitation", but later, the expansion was changed to "Vi IMproved" because, as described by the author, the functionality had increased beyond that of a clone of vi. Some sources indicate the change happened with v2.0, but conflicting information (including from author) suggests the change happened as early as v2.0 and as late as v3.0.

Since its original release for the Amiga, Vim has been ported to many environments including AtariMiNT, BeOS, MS-DOS, Windows starting from Windows NT 3.1, OS/2, OS/390, MorphOS, OpenVMS, QNX, RISC OS, Linux, BSD, and Classic Mac OS. Vim is also shipped with ApplemacOS. Independent ports of Vim are available for Android and iOS.

Vim has been and continues to be popular for software development. In 2018, it was voted the most popular editor amongst Linux Journal readers. In 2015, the Stack Overflow developer survey found it to be the third most popular text editor, and, in 2019, the fifth most popular development environment.