On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:49:32 -0500, Tim Chase <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> There's always "ed"...
>
> -more ubiquitous in its presence
> -consistent in its behavior
> -powerful
> -tools like "diff" interoperate with it
> -it can be used on a slow TTY
> -can be used on with a one-line display
> -smaller executable size
> -easier to remember: "*ed*itor", not "*vi*sual editor"
> -no time or machine cycles wasted on screen refreshes
> -historically significant
>
> so many other bountiful blessings to using ed. ;)
>
> Granted, I haven't come across an "ed users mailing list", let
> alone one as helpful as this list.
>
> Hmmm...I wonder how hard it would be to add syntax highlighting
> to ed... ;)
The wonderful thing about ed is that it encourages you to learn about
the power of regular expressions really, _really_ quickly, mainly
because there's no other way to make changes within a line.
In the late 1980s I used the Georgia Tech screen editor, which was a
sort of visual ed. You entered commands just like ed, but the top
of the screen was used to display twenty or so lines of your buffer
around the area you were editing. Each displayed line had a capital
letter associated with it and you could use this letter as a line
address instead of the line's number. An example of its display taken
from the manual:
A |
B |#include <stdio.h>
C |
D *| register int i;
E |
. -> | for (i = 1; i <= 12; i++)
G | putc ('\n', stderr);
$ |
cmd> |_
11:39 myfile ...............................
You can still get it, if you want to remember the good old days:
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Editors/se-1.3/
--
Matthew Winn
