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Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:45:49 +0200
From: Ruben de Groot <mail25@bzerk.org>
To: "John L. Templer" <green_tiger@comcast.net>
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Subject: Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
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On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:36:31AM -0400, John L. Templer typed:
> 
> ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such,
> at least since BSD 4.2.  Way back then there were three main editors,
> ex, vi, and ed.  If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi.  But
> if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you
> used ex.  And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies.
> 
> ed is an interactive program because the user "interacts" with it.  You
> give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it
> does more stuff, etc.  Interactive does not mean screen based.

ed can be used very well non-interactively.
e.g. a script made by diff -e can be piped to it.

Ruben