Guys,
file1 is 10pages long in vi.
How to select the complete contents of the life.
Regards
what is your intended operation ?
why do you want to select all the 10 pages ?
In colon-mode ("ESC", ":") enter "1,$ <your command>" to execute your command on every line between line 1 and the last line (line $). This comes as close to "selecting" a range of text in vi as is possible. In vi you "select" nothing, but use a prefix for every command to tell it which part of the file it has to work on.
I hope this helps.
bakunin