15 May
2018
15 May
'18
6:54 p.m.
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:11:48AM -0400, Ron Natalie wrote:
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled through it
in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
/bin/ed's commands are mostly the same as the line editing tools that
Dec's PDP-8's 4k disk monitor system, PDP-15 backround/foreground
monitor, and the RT-11's editor. I learned it on my own, from the
manuals only --- and when you are using an teletype, you have a *huge*
amount of incentive to learn all of the tricks you can.
So my choice of editors largely follows Ron; I never really learned
VI, so it's Emacs or ed. And if you're on a ghastly slow
internet-on-an-airplane connection, being able to use ed is a really
useful skill --- it just gives you flashbacks to using a teletype as
an interface.
- Ted