Thanks for the reply. I guess we have a difference of opinion on the concept of modal editing, which is fine. I find it a plus that I'm not having to move my

Thanks for the reply. I guess we have a difference of opinion on the concept of modal editing, which is fine. I find it a plus that I'm not having to move my mouse hand off the base row all the time, and find that vi offers elegant solutions to many oft-recurring tasks people normally accomplish with a mouse (copying a row or two, highlighting text inside brackets / inverted commas, editing a variable name up to a specific point, etc). While I agree that the incantations required are relatively complex, they do become second nature (e.g. I'm an on-and-off user of perhaps 2 years, and I'm comfortable with the basics). This of course comes at the cost of having to switch modes often (and specifically, exit current mode using ESC, which is irritating), but this normally only involves 1 key. I guess a complete cost-benefit analysis would be highly subjective, in my personal experience the trade-off is worthwhile. In short, I'm not aware of anything that comes close to the terseness of vi(m) for basic editing.