In vi you have made changes you do not want. Which command leaves the editor and discards them?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 103. GNU and Unix commands medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct :w!
Wrong. :w! forces a write even to a read-only file. It saves the changes and does not exit.
Not correct :q
Wrong when the buffer is modified. Plain :q refuses to quit and warns that there are unsaved changes.
Not correct :wq
Wrong — that is the opposite. :wq writes the buffer to the file and then quits, making the unwanted changes permanent.
Correct :q!
Correct. The exclamation mark forces the action, so vi quits and throws away the unsaved buffer.
Why
The four commands to keep straight are :w (write), :q (quit, refused if modified), :q! (quit discarding changes) and :wq (write then quit). In vim :x and ZZ also write and quit, but they write only if the buffer was actually modified. Searching is separate again: /pattern searches forward, ?pattern backward, and n repeats the last search.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 103.8
- What it says
- Save and exit files in vi.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 103 and space the ones you get wrong.
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