[ILUG] VIM Command

[Phil Bradley]

Conor Mac Aoidh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is my first time sending an ilug email. I am pretty much a complete
> newbe to linux. I just had a question as to using the VIM command. I am
> trying to use this to create a new file in a new directory. It keeps
> returning the error "E212: Can't open file for writing" and after googleing
> the error it turns out that I do not have enough privilages to do what I
> want to do. I am logged in as root. Does anyone know how I can get the
> privileges that I need? Or can anyone recommend another method of achieving
> what I want do do - as i'm not sure if VIM should even be used for this
> purpose!
> 
> Thanks
> 

Hi Conor,

Others have pointed out that the issue is likely related to permissions 
so the answer lies outside of vim. One simple way to test this is to use 
the "touch" command. The touch command takes a filename as an argument, 
and attempts to create an empty file of that name. If it fails, then you 
have a permission issue. If not, you have a vim issue.

In general, something like

$ touch /home/fred/somefile.txt

will succeed if you have write access to /home/fred (and if /home/fred 
actually exists). Of course, like most Unix commands, it won't tell you 
that it succeeded, it will complain if it fails though.

Thomas suggested that you might be using sudo. If this is the case, then 
use sudo with the touch command also, which would look like:

$ sudo touch /home/fred/somefile.txt


Finally, I personally consider vim to be easy to *use*, just hard to 
learn:) You might find this short summary useful while you're still 
getting used to it:

http://fiachra.ucd.ie/~philb/VI_Summary.pdf

  -Phil