[COFF] TECO variants (was Re: Perl (was Re: forth on early unix))

[Joseph Holsten via COFF]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, at 08:46, Lars Brinkhoff via COFF wrote:
> Dan Cross wrote:
>> Ori Kuttner wrote.
>>> FORTH is a Write Only Language, you write it and can't even read it
>>> yourself :-) I used to like FORTH, did some PostScript and now I just
>>> hate it.
>>
>> I thought that was Perl? (*jumps for the exit*)
>
> Y'all got nothing on TECO.


I’ve been collecting notes about text editors prior to 1985 (Gnu Emacs release), and I know TECO was in use on all sorts of systems, but there’s so much more about the MIT systems than elsewhere.

Did you get use TECO much? I’ve wondered how unusual extensions like Control-R were on other systems. Were different implementations as different as some authors make it sound? Or were they roughly as similar as the QED implementations?

Also, do you buy the modern argument that TECO vs emacs proved the command language and the extension language should be entirely different?

--
Joseph Holsten
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