[TUHS] upwards from ed (was: End of an era: the last ATC)

[Douglas McIlroy]

Once when I saw the Lisp machine EMACS help list scroll by, replete
with a "call elevator" command, I innocently asked how many commands
there were. I expected a prompt answer akin to help|wc. It actually
took two experts several minutes to come up with a way to count those
lines.

Doug

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 1:07 AM Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I often think about the old ad from Symbolics touting EMACS's "over 400 easy to use commands."
>
> -ro
>
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 12:27 PM Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I always recoiled from vi's plethora of commands. Then came sam, and I
>> haven't looked back since. It handles multiple windows with barely
>> more commands than ed, real regular expressions, good mouse support,
>> and great global editing capability. It can even run by script without
>> a screen.
>>
>> Doug