There were no "traditional arrow keys" on the terminal that vi was developed on, but arrows were printed on the hjkl keys; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arr

There were no "traditional arrow keys" on the terminal that vi was developed on, but arrows were printed on the hjkl keys; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys#HJKL_keys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys#HJKL_keys.