Which application does the vi command open?

When you type vi in the terminal, the following output is shown

~ VIM - Vi IMproved
~
~ version 7.3.547
~ by Bram Moolenaar et al.
~ Modified by
~ Vim is open source and freely distributable
~
~ Help poor children in Uganda! 

So according to this, vi must be launching VIm.
But when you type vim it gives

aditya@aditya-desktop:~$ vim
The program 'vim' can be found in the following packages: * vim * vim-gnome * vim-tiny * vim-athena * vim-gtk * vim-nox
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

This shows that vim is not installed.
Notably man vi and man vim launch the same man pages.

So what does the vi command actually launch?

3 Answers

It is vim-tiny: "Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version".

I did this on 13.10:

user@ubuntu:~$ which vi
/usr/bin/vi
user@ubuntu:~$ which vim
user@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 ago 13 2013 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi
user@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 dic 20 04:39 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny
user@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache search vim.tiny
vim-common - Vi IMproved - Common files
vim-tiny - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version
user@ubuntu:~$ dpkg --get-selections | grep vim
vim-common install
vim-tiny install

As you can see, vim is not installed (empty output), vi is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/vi (see alternatives mechanism), which is a symlink to /usr/bin/vim.tiny, which belongs to package vim-tiny.

3

If you do type vi:

➜ ~ type vi
vi is /usr/bin/vi

You will know where's the binary, now if you do:

➜ ~ ls -l /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 20 jun 22 2013 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi

It's provided by the alternative vi, which can be known by:

➜ ~ update-alternatives --display vi
vi - auto mode link currently points to /usr/bin/vim.basic
/usr/bin/vim.basic - priority 30 slave vi.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/vim.1.gz slave vi.fr.1.gz: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/vim.1.gz slave vi.it.1.gz: /usr/share/man/it/man1/vim.1.gz slave vi.ja.1.gz: /usr/share/man/ja/man1/vim.1.gz slave vi.pl.1.gz: /usr/share/man/pl/man1/vim.1.gz slave vi.ru.1.gz: /usr/share/man/ru/man1/vim.1.gz
Current 'best' version is '/usr/bin/vim.basic'.

So, in my case, vi is a symbolic link to the alternative vi which is provided by vim.basic.

You can change which package provided vi if you do sudo update-alternatives --config vi

It's similar to @ignis answer, but i reduced the steps.It only works, if the file is a symbolic link to another.You can get the original file path easily, if it has thousands of symlinks in it's path.

_{symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->symlnk-->.................-->original file}

$ which vi
/usr/bin/vi
$ ls -l $(which vi)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Feb 22 20:14 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi # So /usr/bin/vi is an symlink to /etc/alternatives/vi
$ dpkg -S $(readlink -f $(which vi))
vim-tiny: /usr/bin/vim.tiny

So vi belongs to the package vim-tiny.

readlink -f gives you the canonical path of the file(Original file path).

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy