On 2009-12-23, Peng Yu wrote: > On Dec 23, 6:34 pm, Christophe-Marie Duquesne <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On 12/23/2009 12:23 AM, Peng Yu wrote: > > > > > I'm wondering if there is a tool that can roughly estimate how many > > > keystrokes (in vim) are needed to modify a file to another. > > > > Well, with diff and wc, depending on what you call "roughly" and > > depending on the text editor, you may obtain a satisfying result... > > > > What about > > > > diff <file1> <file2> | wc --chars > > This is too rough. > > I want a tool that can at least take consideration of copy and paste > (e.g. 'yy' and 'p'). Or better, given a set of commonly used vim > editing commands, to find the optimal number of keystrokes that are > needed to achieve the final result. Essentially, I want to evaluate > how much time it is need to edit a given file by a human being.
That would be a _huge_ task with little utility. For one thing, if you have a good estimate of what the final file would look like for comparison, you wouldn't need to edit the first file--you'd be better off starting with your estimate of the final file. Secondly, a program's determination of the "optimal" editing tasks is likely to be different from a person's choice. Thirdly, the time I spend editing a file is not spent typing--it's spent thinking about the meaning of the changes that I'm making. I think the number of keystrokes needed to edit a file is a pretty meaningless metric, unless you're comparing editors. You'd be better off measuring how long it actually takes a person of a similar skill set to make similar types of changes to a similarly-sized file. Regards, Gary -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
