What is a buffer in VIM?

Question

When VIM refers to editing a file as a "buffer" ... what exactly does this mean? Whenever I edit a file in a shell or in an application, it refers to a copy of the file as a buffer. I was curious what exactly this meant, but could find nothing on it. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

From : help windows-intro related icktoofay in comment:

A buffer is text in the file’s memory ... [which] is loaded into memory for editing. The original file remains unchanged until you write a buffer to the file.

That is, the buffer represents the actual loaded / operational data.

Answer 2

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