How to exit vim

[Rob]

This question comes up a LOT with users experimenting with different editors.

To exit vim, hit ESC to get out of insert mode, then type the following, including the colon

Quit, saving changes:

:wq<ENTER>

Quit, NOT saving changes:

:q!<ENTER>

 

[JasKinasis]

Additionally, if you have multiple files open in different buffers/tabs:
To save all files and quit you can use:

:xa<ENTER>

or

:wqa<ENTER>

The differences between the two options are:
:xa - will only save buffers/files that have changes in them before quitting. So if a file does not have any changes, it will simply be closed.
:wqa - will save all buffers before quitting, regardless of whether there were any changes.


To close all files/buffers/tabs without saving:

:qa!<ENTER>

or

:xa!<ENTER>

Both of these commands are equivalent.