7 Jul
2020
7 Jul
'20
11:42 p.m.
On Jul 7, 2020, at 3:47 PM, Rob Pike
<robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The thing about ed that is missed by johnny-come-latelys who mock it for its lowness is
that it was so much higher than most, if not all the commercially available text editors
of its time. The gold standard was perhaps Son of Stopgap, whose very name tells you the
state of things.
I remember spending a couple of days baking inside a radio telescope control cabin
implementing a miniature version of ed in forth just so I work more effectively on the
task to come.
As the person who kicked off this last round of editor wars by saying I wanted “s” on my
v7 system to make it into a daily driver: sure, ed’s not terrible. I can, and have, used
it, although in most places where I *would* use it, I also have sed available, and using
sed and then comparing the output and the input is just as fast for me and carries less
risk of hosing my input file.
As line editors go it’s just fine and indeed rather easier than TECO or EDLIN, which are
the other two I’ve used from time to time. Oh. And CMS EDIT which it is about on a par
with.
But I still find it much less pleasant to use than a moderately-OK screen editor, which
“s” certainly is. Largely that’s because I don’t think before I type anymore, and I hit
keys fast and sometimes inaccurately, because the last 35 years have taught me that I can
always go back and fix it up.
Now that I have working editing-for-the-sloppy and a way that I can reliably transfer
files to and from v7, really all I need to do is mess with the terminal driver so that ^?
isn’t immediately-cancel-line, because that too is a finger habit too hard for me to
break.
Adam