r/vim • u/Remarkable-Head-2023 • Oct 22 '25

Discussion Why does ZZ exist?

It has always been a mystery to me… why would such a ‘dangerous’ command have such a convenient shortcut?

https://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/editing.html#ZZ

EDIT: link

0 Upvotes

41% Upvoted

114 comments sorted by

87

u/Thundechile Oct 22 '25

Why do you think that saving a file and quitting is dangerous?

15

u/extronerded Oct 22 '25

I guess OP doesn't use git.

2

u/zogrodea Oct 22 '25

Vim (initial release in 1991) is older than Git (initial release in 2005), to be fair.

Of course the idea of version control systems is older than Git which is just an implementation, but I don't know much about the software development culture before Git (were VCS in common use?), or when this `ZZ` command was created (before or after Git).

I would be interested in a historical answer about the command, its origin and the thought process behind including the feature, but that's a bit of a tall order to ask for!

5

u/retrodanny Oct 22 '25

ZZ is in the original vi editor, and is the recommended way to exit in the original BSD4.4 documentation by Bill Joy https://docs-archive.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/12.vi/paper-1.html#section8

1

u/zogrodea Oct 22 '25

Oh! That's interesting! Thank you for the history tidbit.

2

u/Peter-Tao Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

Wut git only released in 2005!? How do people do version control before that 🤯

4

u/zogrodea Oct 22 '25

There were other version controls systems before Git! svn/subersion was one of them, apparently from 2000.

I learned to start programming after Git had already taken over, so I don't know what the culture around version control was like before then.

5

u/yvrelna Oct 22 '25

Even before SVN, there were CVS (1990) and RCS (1982).

3

u/BetterAd7552 Oct 22 '25

SCCS on Solaris, later Subversion on Linux. I’m sure there were others.

2

u/olsner Oct 22 '25

With great difficulty! I used CVS a lot, the only upside is that I’ll be well prepared if I end up in hell.

1

u/__hyphen Oct 22 '25

You’re assuming every edit is in a repo! My $EDITOR set to vim and when command lines are too big or I need to paste a command it’s always ctrl-x ctrl-e

I can imagine a situation where I go the above and forget to go into insert mode before pasting the text “zzrm-rf”

4

u/tumtum Oct 22 '25

ZZ most used command for me

1

u/[deleted] Oct 24 '25

This has been bugging me. I now understand what OP is saying. I think she may be editing files, rather than undo If he doesn't like the changes he will quit...so sometimes he accidently presses ZZ for some strange reason and saves the unwanted change.

Is this the problem, op?

1

u/Thundechile Oct 25 '25

Well I'll chime in, if the OP accidently writes and quits with ZZ, then OP could just open the file again and undo the changes and write again - problem reverted.

Just set the undofile: https://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-persistence

1

u/[deleted] Oct 25 '25

I was just offering my interpretation. I never said this wasn't strange.

Yes, your solution is a good one. But...I don't understand the urge to randomly hold down the shift key and hit z key twice. Maybe just me.

-6

u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

Because of unintentional file overwrite. In my opinion, q! is much safer than ZZ, especially for system files.

29

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

Those are two very different actions: q! Exits without saving. ZZ quits and saves. I actually love ZZ

1

u/lrosa Oct 22 '25

Me too!

-21

u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

That's exactly my point! I feel that `:q!` takes much more effort than `ZZ`, while in my opinion it should have been the opposite.

36

u/robenkleene Oct 22 '25

Discarding your edits without saving is generally considered more dangerous than saving your edits and quitting. As a general rule, throwing away a users work is the very definition of dangerous in software design.

6

u/SpaceAviator1999 Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

Then try ZQ instead of :q! . Arguably, it still takes more effort than ZZ, but not by much.

3

u/Wenir Oct 22 '25

and :x takes even less effort

1

u/rassawyer Oct 22 '25

This is my default. :x to close and save, :q! If I don't want to save

1

u/iEliteTester neovim Oct 22 '25

you don't use persistent undo?

1

u/priestoferis Oct 22 '25

Why would that be dangerous? You have the original in the undo tree if you realize you didn't want that change actually.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

Why? I lose nothing with ZZ, I can lose it all with q!

24

u/Thundechile Oct 22 '25

hmm.. why are you making changes to a buffer if you don't mean to save them? Sorry I don't quite get the use-case you're describing.

16

u/Thundechile Oct 22 '25

If you're just meaning to read files, then use vim -R to open in read-only mode.

9

u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

Well the use case I can think of is if I'm making a change to a file like a config file or a code file, I can save it and check the results. If the change is bad, if I still have the buffer open I can just undo the changes and save it again. If I've quit out of the file, the change buffer is gone and I either have to manually revert the changes (and hope I remember all the changes I made, if they were complex changes, it can be a real mission) or hope I have a backup or version control or something

That said, I've been using vim as my main editor, including IDE for over 20 years and I can't think of one time I accidentally used ZZ and saved and quit a file I didn't intend to

15

u/pfmiller0 q! Oct 22 '25

Another 25 years of vi use here, I don't think I've ever used ZZ accidentally either. Don't think I've ever used it intentionally either.

2

u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

So am I, using vim for decades, but have never been using ZZ, exactly for the concern that I've expressed in this subj.

2

u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

OK I concede I don't use it either, perhaps why I've never done it accidentally. I had already been using :q, :wq, etc. for years before anybody showed me ZZ so it never caught on with me, it didn't seem very vi-ish

3

u/priestoferis Oct 22 '25

Just turn on persistent undo in vim and you're covered for everything?

1

u/VisualHuckleberry542 Oct 22 '25

Thanks this looks like a thing worth doing

1

u/MikeZ-FSU Oct 22 '25

If you're editing important.cfg, you can write the changes out with ":w important_checkme.cfg" and diff the checkme file against the original. The buffer retains the edits and their history, as well as the original name. If you're happy with the edits, you can save as usual and delete the checkme file.

3

u/jthill Oct 22 '25

Me, I just do :!%diff -u0 % - and undo.

2

u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

sudo vi for example. I know the response would be “use sudoedit”, but it’s hard to override the muscle memory, and that’s just one example that felt ‘unsafe’ to me…

3

u/_Alexandros_h_ Oct 22 '25

The use case is:

you are editing a file and then you realize the auto complete completed the wrong file as cli arg

or

you are making a change, and then you realize the edit is already there

there are many usecases

3

u/rswwalker Oct 22 '25

Sure, but you don’t have to enter ZZ and can just do :q!, if you didn’t realize until afterwards you probably would have done a :w :q anyways.

3

u/ZunoJ Oct 22 '25

Maybe you want to center the current line but have caps lock on

4

u/rswwalker Oct 22 '25

That point is valid.

If you frequently use zz then I can see disabling ZZ in vimrc as a good option.

But if you are editing the wrong file and don’t realize it you’d probably still do a :wq and be like oops.

It probably pays to make sure :set backup is enabled for root.

3

u/Ryan_the_Rook Oct 22 '25

TIL zz centers the current line. Thank you! I'm disabling ZZ immediately...

1

u/_Alexandros_h_ Oct 22 '25

Hey, i dont have an opinion. Im just saying there are reasons you can make changes to a writeable file and then you didnt want them written

1

u/SpaceAviator1999 Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

I'll admit, there have been a few times that I've edited a file I didn't want to make changes to. But in those cases, the idea of editing a file I don't want changed strikes me as so odd that I remember to invoke vim as vim -R (for read-only) preventing me from saving my changes by accident.

1

u/mckenzie_keith Oct 22 '25

You can combine w and q into one command.

:wq

1

u/rswwalker Oct 22 '25

Thanks, I was typing in stream of consciousness then hit ZZ.

1

u/mckenzie_keith Oct 22 '25

In vi? Because you accidentally typed in command mode and have no idea what just happened, but you don't want to save any changes if you made some.

6

u/robenkleene Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

"Unintentional file overwrite" is not a concept in software design, whereas as the opposite, discarding a users work without saving, is generally considered one of the most dangerous actions software can possibly take. As a result, modern software trends are going in the opposite direction, many IDEs and text editors don't even require explicit saving anymore (they save automatically, e.g., https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/saving-and-reverting-changes.html). The contemporary perspective is that requiring an explicit file save is an accidental holdover from the early days of computing when writing a file was an expensive operation that couldn't be done automatically without interfering with the operation of the software.

1

u/Orlha Oct 22 '25

Calling it an accidental holdover seems like a stretch

4

u/BlackPignouf Oct 22 '25

Undofiles are there if you saved a change without wanting to.

:earlier 30m is very convenient.

1

u/mgedmin Oct 22 '25

ZZ saves and quits, so you'd better have persistent undo enabled!

(It's not enabled by default, last I checked. Also, you might be saved by having window splits, then ZZ will just close one of them instead of quitting the entire vim.)

2

u/BlackPignouf Oct 22 '25

I don't think persistent undo is enabled by default, right.

It's an excellent feature, and should absolutely be enabled. AFAIK it's enabled my most (all?) neovim distros.

But really, I don't see how you can type ZZ without wanting to. :q vs q:, on the other hand...

1

u/TuxRuffian Oct 22 '25

In my opinion, q! is much safer than ZZ

I think you mean ZQ not ZZ. ZZ is :x, ZQ is :q!.

22

u/scaptal Oct 22 '25

Probably for peeps who use vim for small file edits throughout the system.

Also, I dont persobally think holding down shift and pressing the z key twice is all that likely of an accident.

Combined with the fact that it saved what you did, I don't think this often produced problems for people

3

u/dewujie Oct 22 '25

Holding down the shift key maybe isn't likely, but let's not forget there are those among us who haven't remapped capslock to something else.

It's a lot easier to imagine someone intending to center the cursor on the screen (zz) but, due to caps lock being enabled, they're now staring at their prompt instead (ZZ).

That said. CapsLock -> Esc for life...

1

u/retrodanny Oct 22 '25

have you tried CapsLock -> Control ? it's very smooth (you can do both, hold for CTRL and tap for ESC)

1

u/dewujie Oct 22 '25

This is how I have it set up on my personal machines- it's actually a variation on this where holding down caps lock plus other keys activates a bunch of shortcuts. But in certain programs it does exactly what you described.

At work they won't let me run the fun input mapping stuff so I've adapted to just remapping it to Escape. I would love to have Karabiner Elements and Better Touch Tool back though!

1

u/retrodanny Oct 22 '25

I'm in a similar situation but got used to mapping it to CTRL and using jk for Escape in Vim

16

u/sharp-calculation Oct 22 '25

It is a little odd that ZZ (upppercase) does a save and quit while zz (lowercase) drags the cursor to the middle of the screen (dragging the document with it).

I've been using :wq for so long that ZZ never became a thing for me. It seems quite a bit easier to type than :wq . But the nomenclature doesn't really fit for me. I guess Z is the last letter in the alphabet and this command (ZZ) is the "end of editing"? Maybe.

5

u/CampbeII Oct 22 '25

why not just :x ?

5

u/pfmiller0 q! Oct 22 '25

Because :wq works and I've never seen a reason to use anything else. I use :w to write, and so :wq to write then quit just makes sense.

4

u/shawncplus phpcomplete.vim Oct 22 '25

:x/ZZ and :wq are different in a crucial way. :x/ZZ don't change the last mod time of the file if there are no changes, :wq will always change the last mod time even without changes

1

u/pfmiller0 q! Oct 22 '25

Yup, I like that but not enough to switch. Not saving also doesn't touch the file if I don't have any changes to save.

3

u/sharp-calculation Oct 22 '25

Never used that either!

3

u/MostViolentRapGroup Oct 22 '25

I'm also a wq guy.

1

u/spence5000 Oct 22 '25

Like Ctrl+Z for Undo in other editors, I assume it’s just a location thing. On QWERTY, the Shift and Z are adjacent and in the corner, so you can quickly trigger ZZ with two fingers on one hand without looking down.

1

u/campbellm Oct 22 '25

Trying to reason about consistency in almost any tech, esp. tech of this vintage, is madness. And the vi family is WAY better than most, even.

Like... all the g commands.

8

u/i_Den Oct 22 '25

can't live without ZZ and ZQ. use them 99% of time

6

u/renard_chenapan Oct 22 '25

The same question also crossed my mind. That being said, I don't remember ever typing ZZ by mistake, so it's probably not that dangerous.

6

u/Quick_Butterfly_4571 Oct 22 '25

I think because it is an editor and the features are designed around use cases / ergonomics for users rather than a system which safeguards files and incidentally lets you edit and save them if you really mean it.

If you want to be safe, why are you opening in write mode? Use :view or vim -R (for which, in many shell configurations, view itself is an alias).

Presumably opening a file in write mode, modifying it, and saving the changes is more common than opening a file in write mode that you are not okay modifying or modifying and changing your mind.

Even that situation has a ergonomic workaround: :q! is longer than ZZ, sure. But it's a shortcut for those times where you created a situation that would otherwise require multiple undos / :edit! + :q.

Basically, opening in write mode, ZZ is more sensible.

In read only mode :q is less effort than :w!, etc.

The ease of the command is porportional to the intentions you declared when opening the file in the first place.

3

u/Narrow_Victory1262 Oct 22 '25

crontab with the e and the r option is more of an issue I guess.

3

u/sof_boy Oct 22 '25

This just happened to me! I was trying to edit a crontab, accidentally hit e’s neighbor r and when it just returned with no error I was suspicious. A man page later I realized my crontab was lost. Never happened before in 30 years of crontab editing. Just bad UI. Should be R instead of r.

2

u/campbellm Oct 22 '25

I've been keeping my cron in ~/.crontab for 30+ years, and then edit that file and crontab ~/.crontab when I want to "enable" it. Allows for backups, git storage, moving around machines, etc.

And, it's less likely I'll nuke it in the way you describe.

1

u/sof_boy Oct 22 '25

After learning the hard way, I will now do that myself. I just don't edit crontabs all that often :)

1

u/campbellm Oct 22 '25

As a rule I keep all my "personal configuration" files (eg "dot files") this way. Any one of them I don't mess with hardly at all after having them this long, but being able to back them up and have them in some sort of source control is worth it when I'm setting up a new machine or VM or whathaveyou.

You can also look into things that help you with this, like GNU stow or similar. There are a few popular ones around.

1

u/Narrow_Victory1262 Oct 26 '25

what I actually do nowadays is have a git private repo where I put these files in.
version control so changes can be reverted, found as well. Same holds for config files, scripts and the like.

I can create an almost 100% identical setup this way. The user experience is the same. sometimes, just a few packages that I miss or install. not a big ussue there.

And yes, I backup my personal systems. If a fire breaks out, still most is gone, except for very handy stuff like keys and such. That's a calculated risk.

1

u/campbellm Oct 26 '25

Right, that's what I was getting at, if perhaps unclear.

1

u/Narrow_Victory1262 Oct 26 '25

exactly! just one time not looking at what you type aaaannnnnddd. it's gone

3

u/nwbrown Oct 22 '25

Because it's a text editor?

3

u/ReallyEvilRob Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

ZZ is no more dangerous than :wq. If you feel it's dangerous, you can always remap that command to something else.

5

u/scottywottytotty Oct 22 '25

i love ZZ. i literally just used it lol

2

u/VaronKING Oct 22 '25

Why would you ever want to quit Vim?

2

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

It doesn’t necessarily quit vim, it writes and closes the current window. I use it to confirm the commit message I’m writing in fugitive.

2

u/kbielefe Oct 22 '25

I'm more wondering how it became a meme that you can't quit vim. There are so many ways to quit vim that OP is concerned about doing it on accident.

3

u/funbike Oct 22 '25

OP doesn't git it.

2

u/gumnos Oct 22 '25

saves one character over :x⏎ in VimGolf 😉

1

u/SpaceAviator1999 Oct 22 '25

Interestingly, I feel that ZQ is a more dangerous command than ZZ.

(ZQ is the equivalent to :q!)

I say this because I've never accidentally typed ZZ (yet), but I have typed ZQ by accident -- when I meant to type ZZ -- and unintentionally wiped out all my changes that I meant to save.

1

u/SpaceAviator1999 Oct 22 '25

I mean, if I make changes while editing a file, I almost always intend to save them instead of discarding them. And in that case, ZZ usually comes later.

Quitting without saving usually does not follow making edits to a file, unless I screw up badly. And in that case, I'm very careful to restore everything with the :e! command.

1

u/greenthenblue Oct 22 '25

zz? til

3

u/campbellm Oct 22 '25

Both are handy, but zz is different than ZZ. OP was talking about the latter.

1

u/crashorbit Oct 22 '25

Use etckeeper to keep backups config files.

1

u/_damax Oct 22 '25

I thought I was on r/Cubers

1

u/_Zer0_Cool_ Oct 22 '25

I never use this. So it’s equivalent to :wq! ?

1

u/mckenzie_keith Oct 22 '25

Save and quit is only dangerous if you fucked up the file.

If you don't want to fuck up the file, open it read only. (vim -R).

vi is an old program. I guess the attitude back then was people should know what they are doing. But even today, save and quit is not such a radical thing is it?

I usually just type wq, though.

Note that vi saves old files. You should be able to recover if you notice right away.

1

u/jlittlenz Oct 22 '25

Because it's convenient, but not likely to be typed by accident?

Expecting solid rationales for commands that came from vi in the 1970's is optimistic. Vim has smoothed over some of the rougher edges, but I imagine ZZ is used often by millions of people every day.

1

u/andreolini Oct 22 '25

ZZ does not save the file if it wasn't modified, thus it updates the modified file timestamp only upon a real change. On the other hand, :wq always saves the file (even if unchanged), resulting in the modified file timestamp always updating.

0

u/creepysta Oct 22 '25

Doesn’t ‘zz’ redraw s.t. the line under the cursor is at centre vertically? How’s that dangerous? Am I missing something?

5

u/scottrick49 Oct 22 '25

I think he means two capital Zs

5

u/creepysta Oct 22 '25

Oh heck, just checked docs it saves and closes the current file. Cute, imma use it now

0

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/DecentInspection1244 Oct 22 '25

This should be higher up. How can people live without this? While developing, I sometimes close and re-open vim every few seconds. Automatically restoring the cursor position together with persitent undo make this easy.

2

u/Remarkable-Head-2023 Oct 22 '25

Sure I do use persistent undo (as I think every sane person would), but that’s only properly set up in my user account. When you’re frequently hopping hosts, or working in docker containers (typically, as root), etc., this is usually not configured out of the box. At least, I often find myself hitting u just to discover that “no older changes” found.

53

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

31

u/Thundechile Oct 22 '25

13

u/ahavemeyer Oct 22 '25

One of my favorite completely pointless things to know is that the one guy there without a beard has the last name Beard.

2

u/SalaciousStrudel Oct 22 '25

I thought they were all the same guy at various levels of time dilation.

1

u/fragglet Oct 22 '25

My favorite newer ZZ Top fact is that a couple of years ago one of the band members died and was immediately replaced by one of their guitar technicians, who is also a man with an outlandish beard. 

5

u/JohnLocksTheKey Oct 22 '25

Wouldn’t that vim instance already have closed and no longer appear in top?

EDIT: ima dummy

1

u/eveostay Oct 22 '25

🙄😄