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Re: vi editor in ``fc´´ builtin
From: |
Seth David Schoen |
Subject: |
Re: vi editor in ``fc´´ builtin |
Date: |
Tue, 30 Jun 2020 22:54:08 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.9.4 (2018-02-28) |
Jamenson Ferreira Espindula de Almeida Melo writes:
> Conglatulations for the excellent software!
>
> Why is ``vi´´ the ``fc´´ builtin's default editor?
I suppose it's an upgrade from ed, which is specified for this
purpose in the POSIX standard
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/fc.html
There is a famous joke about how ed is the traditional standard
Unix text editor
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
However, by the time of BSD Unix, where vi was first invented, users
were starting to lose their knowledge of ed. For many users of BSD
and BSD-inspired systems, vi was viewed as a semiofficial successor
to ed (via the intermediate stage of ex).
I have no connection to this decision, but I think a likely explanation
would be "the other most plausible 'official' choice is ed, which fewer
users know". An OS developer can easily override this default by
providing a value for EDITOR reflecting an OS-recommended default editor.
Since vi is in the POSIX specification and nano isn't, vi also
represents a more portable fallback default, since many more systems
are required to have it for standards conformance!
--
Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> | Qué empresa fácil no pensar
http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | en un tigre, reflexioné.
8F08B027A5DB06ECF993B4660FD4F0CD2B11D2F9 | -- Borges, "El Zahir"
- vi editor in ``fc´´ builtin, Jamenson Ferreira Espindula de Almeida Melo, 2020/07/01
- Re: vi editor in ``fc´´ builtin,
Seth David Schoen <=