Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 03:12:53 -0400 From: Jim Conner <jconner@enterit.com> To: David Leimbach <dleimbac@earthlink.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: vi Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20010613031233.02512c20@mail.enterit.com> In-Reply-To: <20010609094110.A477@mutt.home.net> References: <JEENJJEOICOIFPANEHOOKEAGCBAA.jason@jason-n3xt.org> <JEENJJEOICOIFPANEHOOKEAGCBAA.jason@jason-n3xt.org>
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At 09:41 AM 6/9/2001 -0500, David Leimbach wrote: >It seems no one has actually answered your question yet. :) > >In the early days of unix there was the "ed" editor. It is a line editor >somewhat like edlin for DOS [guess where the DOS people got the idea from?]. > >You could only see one line at a time with ed but it had some really powerful >features. Most of the cool sed commands we have today came straight from ed. > >sed means "stream editor" this means that instead of editing a file you can >edit stuff from standard input through a pipe. > >For example: >"cat file | sed 's/Hello/Goodbye/g'" Can also do: sed 's/Hello/Goodbye/g' filename >Cat sends a file to standard output. The pipe "|" makes the standard output >of the command to the left of it the standard input of the command to the >right >of it. > >Sed then takes the standard input and does a substitution of all occurances >of "Hello" with "Goodbye" ['s/Hello/Goodbye/'] > >All of this could be done at the ed command line while editing a file too. > >"ed filename" and the sed command can be issued here as well. > >"ex is a derivative editor of ed with some enhancements. VI stands for >Visual Interface and actually is a visual interface to the ex editor. > >Here is the family tree: > > ed > ex sed > vi > vim elvis [other vi like editors] >So you see vi has a long family bloodline to the original UNIX line editing >program.. Its basically tradition and the fact that the elders pass the >knowledge of vi down to the youthful newbie UNIX users that keeps vi going as >the standard UNIX editor. Its also really really lightweight in comparison >to emacs which is huge and considered bloated... [I personally like emacs >and many a religious war has been fought over the vi emacs argument.... >If you read slashdot I am you sure you have seen the banner add for thinkgeek >with the two guys screeming their preferred editor name at each other...] > >Anyway that about says it all.. Understand? Its tradition! Learn vi you >will be a better person! :) > >On Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 12:37:21AM -0500, Jason Halbert wrote: > > Hi All: > > > > Why is vi the default choice of editor for UNIX and how did it become > > the default? I find it cumbersome. > > > > I'm just curious of it's advantages over joe or pico or any of the > > others. > > > > ---- > > Jason > > jason@jason-n3xt.org > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message - Jim - NOTJames - jconner@enterit.com - ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - | Today's errors, in contrast: | - | Windows - "Invalid page fault in module kernel32.dll at 0032:A16F2935" | - | UNIX - "segmentation fault - core dumped" | - | Humans - "OOPS, I've fallen and I can't get up" | - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- - (To view this properly use a non-proportional font in your MUA) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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