Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!manhat!mancol!marob!daveh
From: daveh@marob.MASA.COM (Dave Hammond)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ksh cursor keys (Was: who uses which shells)
Message-ID: <284@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 1 Jun 88 00:06:53 GMT
References: <1887@mhres.mh.nl>
Reply-To: daveh@marob.UUCP (Dave Hammond)
Organization: 18th Street Construction Co NY NY
Lines: 17

In article <1887@mhres.mh.nl> jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes:
>
>Okay fellows, ksh is wonderfull. One of its most powerfull features is
>command line editing. You can use your familiar editor-style to edit them.
>
>But WHY does ksh not allow cursor (=arrow) keys to be used? Vi does. Emacs
>does. Even VMS does it.

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. Making use of cursor-keys also requires
parsing multiple character sequences which would add some overhead.


Dave Hammond
UUCP:   ...!marob!daveh
--------------------------------