cse15l-lab-reports

LAB REPORT: VIM

In this lab report, we will be going over vim commands and their uses, demonstrated by performing one lab task from Week 6.

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PART 1: CHANGING THE NAME OF THE start PARAMETER AND ITS USES TO base

• Vim Keystroke Sequence:

  • vim DocSearchServer.java <Enter>
  • /start <Enter>
  • cgn base <Esc>
  • n . n .
  • :wq <Enter>

1) When starting up DocSearchServer.java in vim, the cursor will be directly at the top left of the file, highlighting the very first character:

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:
  • vim DocSearchServer.java <Enter>

2) We then type /start <Enter> in order for the cursor to jump to the first occurrence of the word “start,” as demonstrated in this screenshot:

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:
  • /start <Enter>

3) Now, we should type cgn base first, which will make vim go into Insert mode, delete the highlighted word (“start”) and will let us replace it with something else. In this case, we will type “base,” and we press the <Esc> key to return to normal mode, as shown below:

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:
  • Typing cgn

  

  • Typing base

  

  • OUTPUT:

  

4) Following this, we can press n to find the next instance of the word “start,” and right after we can press . to do the exact same thing that we just did in the previous step, which is deleting the word and replacing it with “base”–this . command will do the very last thing that we have done.

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:

  • Pressing n once

    

  • Pressing . once

    

5) Now, we just keep repeating the above step until we cover every instance of the word “start”

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:

  • Pressing n once

    

  • Pressing . once

    

  • Note: if we press n again to look for more instances of “start,” we will see the following message:

  

6) After all of this, we are done! Now we just need to save the file and exit vim. To do so, we press : w (to save) q (to quit)

• TRACING KEYSTROKES:

  • : w q

    

PART 2: SCP TEST (LOCAL VS. REMOTE), QUESTIONS

⮞ TESTS

LOCAL EDIT, SCP TO REMOTE

• This test took me around 1:30 min to do, at most. I ran into a couple typos while typing out what directory I wanted the file to be scp‘d into. Editing the file locally was also increased how long the total test took since I was not able to rely on vim for edits and special commands (which is what I did above).

REMOTE EDIT WITH VIM

• This test was much faster to compute than the last test, taking me around 40.15 seconds in total. Something that lowered this time was the fact that I had already used an ssh key, which saved time by not having to type out the password.

⮞ QUESTIONS

1) Which of these two styles would you prefer using if you had to work on a program that you were running remotely, and why?

• If I were working on a remotely ran program, I would prefer using vim, as I would be saving a lot of time by not having to scp the file back and forth (in a similar style to the first test computed above). Additionally, vim offers many useful commands to make changes to a file or program, which promotes its efficiency.
  • To summarize, I would choose vim for working on projects remotely due to its capability to save a lot of time and effort.

2) What about the project or task might factor into your decision one way or another? (If nothing would affect your decision, say so and why!)

• What would affect my decision about which method to use would definitely be the size of the file (in terms of code) and/or how many files are within the project that I have to edit and debug thoroughly. In this case, I would prefer using some other editing software that I am extremely familiar and comfortable with, such as VS Code, since I would have a lot of flexibility.
  • For example, I might want to highlight code to edit with my cursor, however if I’m using vim I would probably forget that I cannot use my cursor there but rather certain keys on the keyboard to move around. I feel like this would just make me waste more time since I am not completely familiarized with vim enough to thoroughly edit a project.
    • Perhaps in the future when I have more experience with vim I might choose to use it over any other software for its efficiency (as mentioned above). :)