True differences of Vi vs VIM?

[dragos240]

What is the difference between Vi, and ViM? What's the difference? I mean, I have never tried it. But what could be that different? Are there still the same commands like:
:wq
:q
:q!
dd
dw
2dw
etc?

[Namtabmai]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)#Features_and_improvements_over_v i

The basic commands like you mentioned are all the same, it's the snazzy stuff that new. Syntax highlighting etc.

Oh and things I never new, Vim ( not Vi ) was initial made for the Amiga then ported back to unix. Amazing.

[koenn]

I had the pleasure of using vi a couple of times on an old SCO unix, and i remember certain keys (Del, Backspace, ...) behaved quite different from what I was used to in linux vim.

[hellmet]

VIM is the saner twin. I just can't seem to handle VI

[koenn]

Yeah, vi can be rather unforgiving. I remember having to bail out ( :q! ) and start over because i couldn't edit myself out of the mess I got in.

[DigitalDuality]

where as I like vim a lot more for personal use, i find it's a lot better to learn vi (don't touch those page up, page down, home, end, del, or arrow keys!), especially if you are a system's person. You never know what box you'll come across that's solaris, or hp-ux, an old bsd box or something that doesn't have vim, nano, etc.

Almost every *nix install out there has vi (except gentoo). So i find it useless to learn.

The most apparent difference is the use of the keys i just mentioned. Vim is far more extendable and can be tricked out look look pretty sweet too. You might be able to with vi also, but i've never seen it done.