The easiest way of opening a file to edit in vi is to give that filename on the command line when invoking the editor. If you edit (or open) a file which has less than 24 lines of information in it (such as a new, or empty file), vi indicates the empty lines to you by putting a tilde ``'' character in the first column of each blank line. The ex command ``r'' (read) can also be used to read a file into the edit buffer.