vi
    adj 1: denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units
           [syn: six, 6, vi, half dozen, half-dozen]
    n 1: the cardinal number that is the sum of five and one [syn:
         six, 6, VI, sixer, sise, Captain Hicks, half a
         dozen, sextet, sestet, sextuplet, hexad]
    2: more than 130 southeastern Virgin Islands; a dependent
       territory of the United States [syn: United States Virgin
       Islands, American Virgin Islands, VI]

	

	VI
       Virtual Interface (Compaq, Intel, MS, Infiniband)

	

	VI
       VIsual editor (Unix)

	

	vi
 /V?I/, not, /vi:/, never, /siks/, n.

    [from ?Visual Interface?] A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for
    an early BSD release; an interview describing how it came to be is
    available. Became the de facto standard Unix editor and a nearly undisputed
    hacker favorite outside of MIT until the rise of EMACS after about 1984.
    Tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while
    expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup on older
    versions provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (years ago,
    a correspondent reported that he has often heard the editor's name
    pronounced /vi:l/; there is now a vi clone named vile). Nevertheless vi
    (and variants such as vim and elvis) is still widely used (about half the
    respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even EMACS fans often
    resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it
    starts up faster than the bulkier versions of EMACS). See holy wars.

	

	vi

   1.  Visual Interface.

   2.  The country code for the U. S. Virgin
   Islands.

   [Jargon File]

   (1999-01-27)