Usual lurk mode -> off<div><br></div><div>On many *nix systems, using something like "ls -li" (the "i" displays the inode number in the filesystem) will show you that "vi" and "ed" are actually the same binary program -- just hard-linked together. The name used to invoke it (argv[0]) determines whether it goes into "vi" mode or "ed" mode.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I heard a rumor once -- that Bill Joy had a whole bunch of vi improvements in the hopper, but lost those due to a disk crash with no backup.</div><div><br></div><div><div>Additional "Data Nugget":</div>
<div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi</a></div><div><div><br></div><div>Usual lurk mode -> on<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Daniel Taylor <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:random@argle.org">random@argle.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">For those who do not know.<br>
<br>
Before there was vi there were ed (the line editor) and sed (the stream<br>
editor).<br>
<br>
In the days of paper terminals ed was the ultimate interactive text<br>
editor, you could (in theory) write your thesis using it. I'm sure<br>
someone did, because college students are That Way (that, and you could<br>
save a backup copy and pay someone with a nice typewriter and decent<br>
typing speed to make it pretty for you if you had more money than most<br>
college students).<br>
<br>
sed was (and perhaps still is) the ultimate non-interactive text editor.<br>
You feed it a script (on the command line or in a file), and a stream or<br>
file of text and it outputs the text as modified by the script. There<br>
are those who would swear by awk or even perl for this menial task, but<br>
sed does many things gracefully and efficiently with much less of a load<br>
on your poor beleaguered CPU and memory.<br>
<br>
And finally, in the fullness of time and the wide deployment of glass<br>
tty's to computer labs, we gained access to vi. My first response to it<br>
was "cool! It runs just like ed but I get to see 23 lines at a time!<br>
Ooooooh!", then as I used it I discovered that it had it's own command<br>
set that gave capabilities that just didn't make sense in ed or sed.<br>
<br>
ed lives on, though to my knowledge nobody uses it outside of vi colon mode.<br>
<br>
sed is in moderately wide use in batch processing applications still,<br>
especially for minor data format conversions or weird command line scripts.<br>
<br>
vi (especially as vim) is a living project, competitive with any other<br>
editor, and nearly an IDE in it's own right when invoked as gvim.<br>
<br>
Why did I go to all this trouble?<br>
<br>
Since ed and sed still live in vi as part of colon mode, learning their<br>
command set can greatly enhance what you can do with vi, as well as<br>
giving you tools to use in XTreme Sysadmin! situations.<br>
<br>
That, and I was just really in the mood to write this morning...<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Dan<br>
<br>
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</font></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>