On Thursday 20 February 2003 09:05 am, Peter Flass wrote: > Paul Raulerson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Vi is very much simpler than ISPF, once you memorize about 12 often used > > commands, and another > > 10 that are used often but don't need to be memorized. > > Simpler, but extremely annoying. The whole "insert" thing just blows my > mind. I prefer the ISPF editor to xedit, but both are miles ahead of > vi, which should have long ago been scrapped.
With respect, I disagree. I have used ISPF, XEDIT, and vi for a number of years. I come from the distributed systems side originally, but had no trouble learning XEDIT. By the same token, I didn't find vi to be all that hard to learn, either, although it was by no means my first editor experience (my very first editor was the clunky old line editor on a Radio Shack TRS-80). And vi works on rather antiquated terminals, especially if you drop back into line mode. Just as XEDIT and its predecessors can do. So vi and its primitive ancestors have a place in UNIX-land, as the common denominator. Both vi and XEDIT have their strengths and weaknesses. XEDIT, to a person who is used to byte-stream files rather than "records", can seem awfully clunky, like something out of the dark ages of punch cards. vi, to someone who is used to records rather than byte streams, can seem terribly cryptic. XEDIT is "inefficient" because some of the commands to do global things are long to type; vi is "obscure" because its global change commands are extremely terse. Six of one, half dozen of the other. I like them both, for different reasons. I'm glad I can get REXX and XEDIT on Linux. But I also wish I could get a "real" vi running under CMS. More choice of tools == good thing. ISPF and XEDIT are only miles ahead of vi if you accept the premise that all editors are trying to travel in the same direction. Scott -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott D. Courtney, Senior Engineer Sine Nomine Associates [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sinenomine.net/
