Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!joyce!sri-unix!quintus!ok From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: vi vs emacs in a student enviro Message-ID: <167@quintus.UUCP> Date: 14 Jul 88 21:30:36 GMT References: <16475@brl-adm.ARPA> Sender: news@quintus.UUCP Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc. Lines: 23 In article <16475@brl-adm.ARPA> PAAAAAR%CALSTATE.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu writes: >Some people have mentioned the necessity of learning about 'ed'. I concur > (1) it handles larger files on our system than the other editors > (2) it is a neat tool for daemonic processes to use to alter files > (3) it is an online introduction to regular expressions (sed,grep,awk..) Re point (3): isn't it wonderful how many UNIX tools use regular expressions: sh, csh, ed, sed, grep, egrep, awk, vi, ..., and it isn't _so_ helpful that no two of them have the _same_ regular expression syntax. Re point (1): eh? What system is that? On far too many UNIX systems I have been forced to use 'ex' instead of 'ed' because the version of 'ed' provided was still configured for PDP-11s. I had formed the perhaps erroneous impression that a lot of vendors didn't take ed seriously any more. (I'm talking about e.g. a machine with 8M of real memory where ed was configured with an sbrk limit of 64k.) I'm even used to VIle/EXecrable giving up on files that aren't all that big. Beware of VIle/EXecrable with long lines: it has a nasty habit of truncating the data as well as the display. Emacsen are generally a better bet. Re point (2): ed is really meant to be interactive (the V.3 version will even _prompt_ if you ask it nicely); for scripts and daemons you're probably better off with sed (which is close enough to ed to get you really confused when it's different).