prompter: How to exit vim?

assistant: To exit Vim, you can use the following commands:

    :q - exit Vim if there have been no changes to the file.
    :q! - exit Vim and discard any changes you made to the file.
    :wq - save changes to the file and exit Vim.
    :x or :wq! - save changes to the file and exit Vim, even if the file is read-only.

It's important to note that you need to press Esc before typing any of these commands if you were in insert mode, to return to normal mode.

prompter: That didn't work, what else can I try?

assistant: The most likely cause is user error. Try hitting Esc before typing one of the exit commands listed above (e.g. ":wq"). Be sure to type the colon, as it is a necessary part of the exit command.

In the rare event that vim is frozen or unresponsive, it may be necessary to forcefully kill it. Assuming you are on a Linux system, this can typically be accomplished by executing the command "pkill vim" in another console window. This can be made even more forceful by adding the "-9" command line flag (e.g. "pkill -9 vim"). Note that killing vim will cause you to loose any unsaved work, and is relatively inconvenient to do, so it should be used as a last resort.

assistant: If none of the above work, you may need to forcefully quit Vim. To do this you can try typing :qa! and pressing enter. This will force quit all open tabs in Vim.

If that doesn't work, you can try using the key combination Esc + Shift + :, then typing q! and hitting enter. This should also force quit Vim.

assistant: If those commands didn't work there may be another problem:

- make sure that you still have an internet connection if you are using SSH to connect to a remote machine
- Is the machine still running?
- Make sure your keyboard is still working on other programs than the console
- Double check if you pressed the Escape key before typing one of the commands

If all of these don't help, consider rebooting your machine and/or the remote machine (if you tried using vim on a remote computer)

assistant: I’m not sure why that wouldn’t work. Are you running a nonstandard copy of Vim or use an unusual terminal? Make sure that you press the escape key (labelled Esc on most keyboards) and then type one of the commands. You don’t need to click anything, you just need to press Esc followed by the keys that make up one of the commands.
If you (possibly accidentally) made any changes to the text file, you need to not use the :q command, as it will fail if the file has been modified. If the buffer you’re working with is not a named file (for example if you opened vim by just typing the command “vim”), you also can’t use the :wq command. I recommend using the :q! command, as that works all of the time.
Also, after typing these commands, you need to press enter to issue them.

I hope this helps!

assistant: If the commands above aren't working, it's possible that you have more than one instance of Vim open, in which case some of the commands will only affect the current instance. You can try running the command :wqa to save and quit all open instances of Vim. You can also try closing Vim from your operating system's task manager.

assistant: If nothing else works you can start a new window close the old and hope no one found out about your huge failure.

prompter: What does ":q!" Actually mean? Do I just type that into the keyboard directly? Does that : represent holding the escape button or impress and release the escape button once and then press the three keys, job is to `:q!` exactly like that?

assistant: To exit Vim, first press the Escape key on your keyboard, to return to normal mode, then simply type ":q" and press enter, doing so will quit Vim.

assistant: To exit without saving, enter `:q!` and then hit the enter key. If you want to save and exit, enter `:x` and then hit the enter key.

Note: This only works if you're in COMMAND mode. If you're in INSERT mode, you need to first hit the escape key to get into COMMAND mode first.

assistant: You can exit vim with the following keystrokes:

":q!" To exit without saving changes
":wq" To exit after saving changes (or ":x")

prompter: I just typed ":wq" but now this text is inside my file. How do I use this command correctly?