Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!ns!ddb
From: ddb@ns.ns.com (David Dyer-Bennet)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: vi vs emacs in a student enviro
Message-ID: <423@ns.ns.com>
Date: 12 Jul 88 21:54:10 GMT
References: <370@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <47800011@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <1045@ficc.UUCP>
Organization: Network Systems Corp. Mpls MN
Lines: 28

In article <1045@ficc.UUCP>, peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
> ...and the overloading of
> non-printable characters is a royal pain [in emacs]... 
  Depends what you edit.  I insert non-printing characters other than space
and return often enough to remember how to quote, and use it several times
a month.

> ...but the regular expression capabilities almost
> makes up for it. [in vi]
  VI regular expressions are essentially identical to Gnu emacs or Epsilon
regular expressions, near as I can tell.

> The ^U convention for counts in Emacs is nice, but it'd be cleaner
> to cons up counts out of ALT-0 through ALT-9. 
  The Emacs I've used do this.  Also Alt--, don't forget negative args.

> Search commands should
> be (as in VI) actually part of the range-specifier (search with alt-/).
  I find it easier to define a range by actually going to the limits
of it, so I can be sure they're where I thought they were.  Then having
defined a region, it's easy to apply a command to a range.  I don't like
the way VI does it, it's too dangerous.  Besides, most searches are for things
I want to look at, not things I want to do something too.

-- 
	-- David Dyer-Bennet
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