How do I exit the Vim editor

Question

I m stuck and cannot escape  It says    type  quit lt Enter gt  to quit VIM    But when I type that it simply appears in the object body

User · Answer

Pictures are worth a thousand Unix commands and options:

I draw this to my students each semester and they seem to grasp vi afterwards.

vi is a finite state machine with only three states.

Upon starting, vi goes into COMMAND mode, where you can type short, few character commands, blindly. You know what you are doing; this isn't for amateurs.

When you want to actually edit text, you should go to INSERT mode with some one-character command:

i: go to INSERT in the place of the cursor
I: go to INSERT mode at the beginning of the line
a: append after the cursor
A: append at the end of line
o: open a new line below the current line
O: open a new line in the place of the current line

Now, answering the question: exiting.

You can exit vi from EX mode:

q: if you haven't made any modifications, or saved them beforehand
q!: ignores any modifications and quit
wq: save and quit
x: this is equal to wq

w and x accept a file name parameter. If you started vi with a filename, you need not give it here again.

At last, the most important: how can you reach EX mode?

EX mode is for long commands that you can see typing at the bottom line of the screen. From COMMAND mode, you push colon, :, and a colon will appear at the bottom line, where you can type the above commands.

From INSERT mode, you need to push ESC, i.e. the Escape button, going to COMMAND mode, and then : to go to EX mode.

If you are unsure, push ESC and that will bring you to command mode.

So, the robust method is ESC-:-x-Enter which saves your file and quits.

User · Answer

Before you enter a command  hit the Esc key  After you enter it  hit the Return to confirm   Esc finishes the current command and switches Vim to normal mode    Now if you press    the   will appear at the bottom of the screen  This confirms that you re actually typing a command and not editing the file    Most commands have abbreviations  with optional part enclosed in brackets  c ommand    Commands marked with     are Vim-only  not implemented in Vi    Safe-quit  fails if there are unsaved changes      q uit   Quit the current window  Quit Vim if this is the last        window   This fails when changes have been made in current buffer   qa ll    Quit all windows and Vim  unless there are some buffers which have been changed    Prompt-quit  prompts if there are unsaved changes     conf irm  q uit   Quit  but give prompt when there are some buffers which have been changed   conf irm  xa ll   Write all changed buffers and exit Vim  Bring up a prompt when some buffers cannot be written    Write  save  changes and quit     wq Write the current file  even if it was not changed  and quit   Writing fails when the file is read-only or the buffer does not have a name   wqa ll   for all windows   wq  The same  but writes even read-only files   wqa ll    for all windows   x it   ZZ with details   Write the file only if it was changed and quit   xa ll   for all windows    Discard changes and quit     q uit   ZQ  Quit without writing  also when visible buffers have changes   Does not exit when there are changed hidden buffers    qa ll      quita ll      Quit Vim  all changes to the buffers  including hidden  are lost    Press Return to confirm the command   This answer doesn t reference all Vim write and quit commands and arguments  Indeed  they are referenced in the Vim documentation    Vim has extensive built-in help  type Esc helpReturn to open it    This answer was inspired by the other one  originally authored by  dirvine and edited by other SO users  I ve included more information from Vim reference  SO comments and some other sources  Differences for Vi and Vim are reflected too

User · Answer

After hitting ESC  or cmd   C on my computer  you must hit   for the command prompt to appear  Then  you may enter quit   You may find that the machine will not allow you to quit because your information hasn t been saved  If you d like to quit anyway  enter   directly after the quit  i e   quit

User · Answer

This is for the worst-case scenario of exiting Vim if you just want out  have no idea what you ve done and you don t care what will happen to the files you opened   Ctrl-cEnterEnterviEnterCtrl- Ctrl-n qa Enter  This should get you out most of the time   Some interesting cases where you need something like this    iCtrl-ovg  you enter insert mode  then visual mode and then operator pending mode  QappendEnter iCtrl-ogQCtrl-r Ctrl-k  thanks to porges for this case   set insertmode  this is a case when Ctrl- Ctrl-n returns you to normal mode      Edit  This answer was corrected due to cases above  It used to be   EscEscEsc qa Enter  However  that doesn t work if you have entered Ex mode  In that case you would need to do   viEnter qa Enter  So a complete command for  I don t want to know what I ve done and I don t want to save anything  I just want out now   would be  viEnterEscEscEsc qa Enter

User · Answer

If you want to quit without saving in Vim and have Vim return a non-zero exit code  you can use  cq   I use this all the time because I can t be bothered to pinky shift for    I often pipe things to Vim which don t need to be saved in a file  We also have an odd SVN wrapper at work which must be exited with a non-zero value in order to abort a checkin

User · Answer

The q command with a number closes the given split in that position   q lt split position gt  or   lt split position gt q will close the split in that position  Let s say your Vim window layout is as follows  -------------------------------------------------                                                   -------------------------------------------------                                                                                                          Split 1         Split 2          Split 3                                                       -------------------------------------------------  If you run the q1 command  it will close the first split  q2 will close the second split and vice versa  The order of split position in the quit command does not matter   2q or  q2 will close the second split  If the split position you pass to the command is greater than the number of current splits  it will simply close the last split  For example  if you run the q100 on the above window setup where there are only three splits  it will close the last split  Split 3   The question has been asked here

User · Answer

In case you need to exit Vim in easy mode  while using -y option  you can enter normal Vim mode by hitting Ctrl   L and then any of the normal exiting options will work

User · Answer

Once you have made your choice of the exit command  press enter to finally quit Vim and close the editor  but not the terminal   Do note that when you press shift           the editor will have the next keystrokes displayed at the bottom left of the terminal  Now if you want to simply quit  write exit or wq  save and exit

User · Answer

I got Vim by installing a Git client on Windows   q wouldn t exit Vim for me   exit did however

User · Answer

Hit the Esc key to enter  Normal mode   Then you can type   to enter  Command-line mode   A colon     will appear at the bottom of the screen and you can type in one of the following commands  To execute a command  press the Enter key     q  to quit  short for  quit   q  to quit without saving  short for  quit    wq to write and quit  wq  to write and quit even if file has only read permission  if file does not have write permission  force write   x  to write and quit  similar to  wq  but only write if there are changes   exit to write and exit  same as  x   qa to quit all  short for  quitall   cq to quit without saving and make Vim return non-zero error  i e  exit with error    You can also exit Vim directly from  Normal mode  by typing ZZ to save and quit  same as  x  or ZQ to just quit  same as  q     Note that case is important here  ZZ and zz do not mean the same thing    Vim has extensive help - that you can access with the  help command - where you can find answers to all your questions and a tutorial for beginners

User · Answer

Vim has three modes of operation  Input mode  Command mode  amp  Ex mode   Input mode - everything that you type  all keystrokes are echoed on the screen   Command mode or Escape mode - everything that you type in this mode is interpreted as a command   Ex mode - this is another editor  ex  It is a line editor  It works per line or based on a range of lines  In this mode  a   appears at the bottom of the screen  This is the ex editor   In order to exit Vim  you can exit while you are in either the ex mode or in the command mode  You cannot exit Vim when you are in input mode   Exiting from ex mode   You need to be sure that you are in the Command mode  To do that  simply press the Esc key  Go to the ex mode by pressing the   key Use any of the following combinations in ex mode to exit    q - quit  q  - quit without saving  wq - save  amp  quit or write  amp  quit  wq  - same as wq  but force write in case file permissions are readonly  x - write  amp  quit  qa - quit all  useful when multiple files are opened like  vim abc txt xyz txt   Exiting from command mode   Press the escape key  You probably have done this already if you are in command mode  Press capital ZZ  shift zz  - save  amp  exit Press capital ZQ  shift zq  - exit without saving

[vim] How do I exit the Vim editor?

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