Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!mcvax!mhres!jv From: jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Ksh cursor keys (Was: who uses which shells) Message-ID: <1899@mhres.mh.nl> Date: 2 Jun 88 09:04:18 GMT References: <284@marob.MASA.COM> Organization: Multihouse NV, the Netherlands Lines: 22 From article <284@marob.MASA.COM>, by daveh@marob.MASA.COM (Dave Hammond): > In article <1887@mhres.mh.nl> jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes: >>But WHY does ksh not allow cursor (=arrow) keys to be used? > > Ksh does not make use of any terminal-independent characteristics, such as > cursor-keys. External editors are emulated using only newlines, returns > and spaces to modify the edit line. This is oversimplification. About 50 vi and emacs editing commands are emulated. > Making use of cursor-keys also requires > parsing multiple character sequences which would add some overhead. Sequences like ESC-d (delete-word), ESC-f (forward-word) etc. are handled, as are ESC-* (filename generation) and ESC-= (file list). Adding some overhead to break the misnotion that Unix is user-unfriendly pays. -- Johan Vromans | jv@mh.nl via European backbone Multihouse N.V., Gouda, the Netherlands | uucp: ..{uunet!}mcvax!mh.nl!jv "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"