Hm. I admire your courage, and hope you do this for educational purposes only. You maybe want to register your effort with the Perl Power Tools project, they don't have the vi command in stock yet.

As a feedback on your program, on my machine (linux) it produces a lot of garbage like this (running inside an ssh terminal):

> perl vip.pl
--> v_screen::new
--> v_screen::init
                  --> v_window::new
                                   --> v_window::init
                                                     --> v_file::new
--> v_screen::execute
~                    --> v_window::command
~                                         --> v_file::command
~                                                            --> v_win
+dow::draw
~                                                                     
+         -
-> v_window::position
~                    --> v_file::position
~                                        --> v_file::topline
~                                                           --> v_wind
+ow::exl_to
p
~--> v_window::_win_size
~                       --> v_file::get_lines
~                                            Use of uninitialized valu
+e at vip.p
l line 475.
~          Use of uninitialized value at vip.pl line 475.
~                                                        


[ ... snip ... ]


      Use of uninitialized value at vip.pl line 2791.
                                                     SIGINT handler "i
+gnore" not
 defined.
         SIGINT handler "ignore" not defined.
                                             SIGINT handler "ignore" n
+ot defined
.
 SIGINT handler "ignore" not defined.
                                     Quit
[download]

Maybe you can give more detailed instructions on how to build, run, test it, etc, for those interested.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com