How to save file under different name in vi

Question

I am frequently editting a file in vi and I want to save it under a different name than the name that I opened it under.

I have tried saving like this: :w >> new_file_name but I ALWAYS get E212: Can't open file for writing.

What is the correct way around this?

Possible duplicate of [How to save as a new file and keep working on the original one in Vim?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4980168/how-to-save-as-a-new-file-and-keep-working-on-the-original-one-in-vim) — doelleri, Jun 08 '17 at 20:05

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 08 '17 at 20:07

26

:w filename

Will save to filename

answered Jun 08 '17 at 20:07

Yedidia

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '18 at 12:07

9

Enter :w filename in vi command mode, like @Yedidia said...

I think you are confusing writing terminal output to a file.

Which would be following command in order to create or overwrite text.txt:

 action > text.txt

and in order to append the output of an command to text.txt would be:

action >> text.txt

edited May 23 '18 at 12:07

Sedat Kilinc

answered Jun 08 '17 at 20:14

vaughnjg

2 Answers2