LOL! I didn't mean to start an editor war. In fact I keep THE editor
available on all my
Unix and Linux systems, most especially Linux. Editing HLASM is much
nicer in THE than
in vi, and the same for COBOL.
But like someone else pointed out, I use vi to edit the makefiles to
build both THE and Regina (Rexx).
The real point is that THE, or Emacs, and similar editors hide a lot
of the underlying UNIX from you.
vi is far simpler, and forces you to focus on and learn a few Unix /
Linux basic concepts.
So in learning an editor, you get a functional introduction to Unix.
I used to teach "vi At GunPoint" classes, 20 minutes of lecture/demo,
10 mins of questions, and 30 minutes of lab.
People would come out of it with confidence that vi was not the
mysterious magical thing they were afraid if, but instead
was an editor they were sure they could master.
Especially regular expressions; once you learn how to find and search/
replace in vi, you basically know how regex works everywhere.
For example, vi find/search/replace gives you the basics of
programming AWK, which is a very powerful document/text processing
system. You also have the basis for understanding things like using
substitution in shell scripts to, for example, create files that have
the date and time embedded in their name.
Lots and lots of peanuts... :)
The real point is that Linux is flat out FUN for most mainframers,
once they get over the initial frustration of it just being different.
It is similar to z/VM in that each user has their own safe "machine"
to operate in, and the system is pretty safe from unprivileged users.
And just like VM, it is fast and inexpensive. And Unix has been around
in one form or another for about 40 years, so there are a lot of
people out there who can - and are willing to - help you with just
about anything.
Once caveat - compared to the z/VM world, there are a couple of orders
of magnitude more options available with Unix/Linux. Seriously. And
there are also a lot of people out there that are - eh - zealots - in
regard to their favorite <plug in your own name> language/program/
editor/methodology/gui of the day. Mainframers generally have no
trouble recognizing those people and
ignoring them when appropriate. :)
-Paul
On Aug 15, 2008, at 9:52 AM, Adam Thornton wrote:
On Aug 15, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Rich Greenberg wrote:
On: Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 10:03:14PM -0500,Adam Thornton Wrote:
} On Aug 14, 2008, at 9:34 PM, Paul Raulerson wrote:
}
} >(1) Learn vi.
}
} Heretic.
Adam may call me a heretic also but I agree with Paul. While there
are
many other editors available on *ix and you can easily start a holy
war
over which is the best, vi is the editor that you can be sure is
there.
Want to install EMACS (aka Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping) or
THE or
any others on a newly installed *ix? Use vi to tailor the makefile
and
config files first.
Coming in as a consultant and the system doesn't have SuperEditorX
which
you are used to, and you don't have the time to learn SuperEditorY,
it will almost certainly have vi.
Rich is, I hate to say, right.
Very few systems will not have vi preinstalled.
Emacs is hardly ever already-just-there (yay OS X!).
So you SHOULD learn enough vi to get by.
Fortunately, that's pretty much: hjkl, 0 and $, escape, /, dd, x, i,
a, w, q, and !
Adam
