Customer Reviews
Read three times and give to a next vi beginner - By: Kerola Sami, 23 Jun 2007 
Pocket guides should be in pocket. Since I am not willing to carry ten pocket guides this one is somewhere out of reach when I need the guide. I think I should use copying machine to make pocket page of most essential page of the book, but for that there's quick reference cards at internet. The book is best for checking what can be done with vi, something like introduction to editor features. Ones you remember the features this book transforms to reference material that is hardly ever used.
This book is incredible in every aspect - By: , 22 Feb 2006 
Unix has many levels to master & there is no one book that could possibly cover alll of them.
I have quite formidable experience with different books on UNIX & related subjects & this one would be in the list of my favorites. It is very well written, very articulate; it goes into many subjects with great attention to details & so on.
As for now there are three major methods had been available: real course, book & knowledgeable friends. I have discovered another one & it is "UNIX Essentials" DVD that I found on Amazon.com & it is well worth mentioning; but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com
The DVD isn't complete as I said there is no way to cover everything in UNIX but, it covers 90% of what one has to know to start work with UNIX independently. It is very nice compilation for someone who likes to learn UNIX but it has to be supplemented by a book like this one. Take both, work trough them for two weeks & there are few people around who could possibly recognize that you are novice. It provides VERY nice training altogether.
Sensible pocket guide for beginners - By: Peter Fenelon, 12 Nov 2002 Contains enough information to turn an absolute beginner into an intermediate-to-advanced vi user - but it's not until your fingers start to "think" in vi that you reallly start to appreciate it.
Robbins collects alll the relevant facts, presents them crisply & provides enough information to see the novice or occasional user safely onto the learning curve.
I'm not quite as sure about the material on vi clones - vim for example comes with a lot of very good documentation itself - but this probably belongs on the shelf of any lab where non-experts might need to use vi or one of its relatives.
Cheap, too - difficult to fault at the price.
