How can I check what version of the VI editor I have?

Question

How can I check what version of the vi editor I have? What's the best way to upgrade it or install vim on Solaris?

Solution 1

According to http://www.vim.org/download.php, Sun Solaris Vim is included in the Companion Software: http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/.

vi has had the :ve[rsion] command going back at least as far as 1979, so it should work on any Solaris release.

Solution 2

The command to show the version is

:version

which can be abbreviated to

:ve

Solution 3

You should try to find the vi version with the package manager:

pkginfo | grep -i vi 

or:

pkginfo '*vi*'

Solution 4

You can simply open the editor by typing

vi

This will open the default page that shows the version number.

View more solutions

Comments

[Paolo]

Please someone explaining what's wrong with this answer. Thanks.

[Keith Thompson]

On Solaris 9, vi --version prints vi: illegal option -- -. vim recognizes the --version option; other vi implementations, including nvi, do not.

[MetaEd]

Also this answer does not address the other part of the question: upgrading or installing Vim on Solaris.

[bahamat]

And for Solaris 11, pkg list vim

[user3224237]

:ve did exist in the very first vi version already, released on January 1st, 1978. See github.com/n-t-roff/ex-1.1 for the source code the original documentation.

[user3425106]

This might work for vim but does not work for Joy's vi.