From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Sep 10 06:07:38 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id GAA20761 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Thu, 10 Sep 1998 06:07:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from obie.softweyr.com ([204.68.178.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA20753 for ; Thu, 10 Sep 1998 06:07:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from softweyr.com (wes@zaphod.softweyr.com [204.68.178.35]) by obie.softweyr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA07524; Thu, 10 Sep 1998 07:20:24 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Message-ID: <35F7CF17.E0C82BCA@softweyr.com> Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 07:07:35 -0600 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr llc X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" CC: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ed References: <9698.905291210@time.cdrom.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > Ugh. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a favorite, but I still use > > it for quick editing tasks where you need to change one string to > > another, and in shell scripts. > > Actually, I wasn't really joking, and though it's certainly true that > I use ed pretty rarely (usually when I'm in a situation where my > terminal settings or current emulator are too braindead for vi), I > still really like it for its concise-yet-powerful approach to editing. > > The problem most people have with ed(1) is that they don't have enough > context to compare it to OTHER line editors, something which I > unfortunately have in spades. Yeah, me too. Those who think ed is bad should try, for instance, that horrid editor that came with CP/M, or "sos" on TOPS-10. Or, as an example of something other FreeBSD'ers MAY have seen, edlin. Remember that barfluous little botch? > Those who started with vi and then perhaps went on to emacs just have > no perspective on what something like ed(1) represents. :-) It was and is probably the best line editor ever written. Driving home last night I recalled a recent use of ed, one that is too common in my life. About every 14 months lately I change jobs, usually because my employer has been bought by someone and the whole management structure and tempo changes. Since I'm usually the "Alpha Geek" at work, I usually get the ugly job of changing the company name in all the comment headers, startup prompts, etc. for file in `find . \( -name '*.[ch] -o -name Makefile \) -print` do ed $file <