What is the difference between the insert and command modes of the vi editor?

[Indrajit Bhagat]

What is the difference between the insert and command modes of the vi editor?

[Mridul Shrivastava]

When you are in insert mode (after pressing i).. you can enter any text in the file..however if you press Escap (ESC) twice then you could execute commands (like dd, x etc) with in the file and moreover can be used for searching any text within file so on...

You can refer the following doc for more details:
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90164/ch04.html

[Sunny Jaisinghani]

hi,

in the insert mode u actually edit your file contents by typing in the text

in the command mode you can do some operations on the contents of the file such as searching a string, copying, pasting etc. u can also set various functions.

[Peter Godron]

Hi,
please see:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.answers/msg/807f548026f00ae2?
"2.2 - What is the difference between Command mode & Insert mode?"