All commands in vi prepended by : are called colon
commands and are processed by ex.
In general ex commands take the following format:
:line_address command[!]
parameters count flags
Like vi also ex operation is mode dependent according to the following status
table.
| ex EDITING MODES | |
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Command | entered after : (colon) |
| Text Input | append, insert or change text |
terminated by <dot><ret> |
|
| Open | enter text using the open command |
| Visual | switch to vi |
| Text Instertion | active within open and vi |