On Mar 20, 2018, at 5:04 PM, Ralph Corderoy <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Steffen, > >>> mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL >>> and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of >>> the default values. Kurt Shoens, [email protected], is down >>> as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of >>> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo. >> >> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start. I know of no >> known released file which acted otherwise. > > But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after > BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but > no `~v'. > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
<nitpick> This is a doc. bug! ~v is mentioned in mail7.nr in the same fc8c50acc0 "commit". This has April 19, 1979 date. The same as the 2bsd date on TUHS unix-archives. See my previous message. ~v was already in! > By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both. > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E > > So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e' > was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along. > I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one > and `VISEDITOR' for the other; also suggestive that one came first > rather than both together. This is in mail7.nr but looking at the sources, it is 'VISUAL' so I suspect this is another doc. bug (both bugs are also in doc/Mail/mail{3,7}.nr in the 2bsd dist. on TUHS). </nitpick> :-) -- nmh-workers https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
