Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!lvc
From: lvc@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ksh cursor keys (Was: who uses which shells)
Summary: terminfo makes ksh too big
Message-ID: <14547@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 28 May 88 18:06:31 GMT
References: <1887@mhres.mh.nl>
Organization: Ohio State Computer & Info Science
Lines: 19

In article <1887@mhres.mh.nl>, jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes:
> But WHY does ksh not allow cursor (=arrow) keys to be used? Vi does. Emacs
> does. Even VMS does it.
> Johan Vromans                              | jv@mh.nl via European backbone

I think there are at least two reasons for this, one - ksh is a big
program and adding in the terminfo/termcap functions to implement the
arrow keys would make it too big for some machines (even with only
one of the command line editors compiled in), two - Korn wanted to
make ksh independent of terminfo/termcap to reduce portability and
debugging problems.

I know of one person that changed ksh to implement this capability,
so it is possible.  Why is this such a desirable feature?  Just curious.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems and Ohio State University
Domain: lvc@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Path: ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!lvc (weird but right)