Editor war

Editor war is the common name for the rivalry between users of the Emacs and Vi (Vim) text editors. The rivalry has become a lasting part of hacker culture and the free software community.

Many flame wars have been fought between groups insisting that their editor of choice is the paragon of editing perfection, and insulting the others. Related battles have been fought over operating systems, programming languages, version control systems, and even source code indent style.

Differences between Emacs and vi

The most important differences between Emacs and vi are presented in the following table:

Benefits of Emacs