Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!barmar From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: vi-like Message-ID: <37287@think.UUCP> Date: 9 Mar 89 18:05:08 GMT References: <12406@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <958@starfish.Convergent.COM> <2386@iscuva.ISCS.COM> <415@corpane.UUCP> Sender: news@think.UUCP Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA Lines: 45 I'm not a big vi fan, but I think I at least understand some of its command mnemonics... In article <415@corpane.UUCP> sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes: >$ = end of file This is a vestige of vi's history. vi is descended from ed (which itself is descended from a line editor on CTSS in the early 60's), and $ has been used in all these editors to mean the end of something. In address expressions it means the last line of the buffer, and in regular expressions it means the end of a line. In the line editors, just typing $ will be taken as a line address, so it will select the last line of the buffer. In vi, $ is the same as :$. >A = insert begining at end of line !?!?! "insert at end" == "Append", perhaps? I'm surprised you didn't mention the motion commands h, j, k, and l, which I heard were chosen because the vi developer used an ADM3A terminal, which had arrows on the front of these indicating the control operation (control-H (BackSpace) goes to the left, control-J (LineFeed) goes down, etc.) they performed. >Personally I like EDT (yes I grew up on DEC). It's easy to use, the keypad >is designed to do most of the editing commands, like del-word, del-line, go >to end of line, go to beginning of line, cut, paste, etc. It's only easy if your keypad has keytops that have the appropriate legends. If not, EDT is much harder than vi or Emacs, which at least have SOME mnemonic commands. >I like the keypad approach rather than the single letter commands in some >editors, because you don't have to leave insert mode in order to do editing. You don't have to leave insert mode in Emacs-style editors, either, yet it uses mostly single-character commands (unless you count control- as two characters). And it isn't dependent on having a special keypad. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar