Hi Bob, > On reason you had ed on early machines and Vi on later can be seen by > examining the code size of even modern builds.
Right, given the small amount of RAM on early machines, ed fitted where bigger programs couldn't. IIRC vi or its predecessor caused performance problems on some machines when it became popular due to the higher serial-port output for maintaining the whole screen on each user's ADM 3A or whatever, despite curses' optimisations; lots of interrupts. > One problem with the Editor for Mortals that caught many. Consider > the difference between the action of the command "em file" and "rm > file" yet they are just one key position apart. Reminds me of http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html I noticed when skimming the CP/M ED manual this morning that it has ‘O’ and ‘Q’ commands that look like they're ex(1)'s ‘e!’ and ‘q!’, i.e. return to original file, and quit, both with no confirmation required. Given the entered line is a mix of commands and text for them to use, getting out of sync so text is misinterpreted as commands could easily throw an ‘O’ in there. Or mistype it for an ‘0’. The appendix says version 1.4 insists of ‘O’ and ‘Q’ being entered on lines of their own; slightly better. That CP/M manual also has a list of control characters, page 20 of 26. Ctrl-L and Ctrl-Z I understand. Ctrl-C is ‘system reboot’. Seems a bit severe. At least the Break key was out on a corner on the BBC Micro, Sun's keyboards, etc. -- Cheers, Ralph. -- Next meeting: BEC, Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2019-08-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
