Suggestions to a command line editor

[Mark Terribile]

> On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 10:50:47AM -0400 or
> thereabouts, Gerard Samuel wrote:
>> Well I've been using FreeBSD for the past maybe 4
>> years now. I've been using "ee" (don't laugh) to
>> do all my editing on the command line.
>> Im looking to grow out of "ee" into something else.
>> Naturally, something that can open/edit files.
>> And if possible, I've heard of editors with color
>> syntax highlighting, search/replace, and other
>> voodoo, that "ee" isn't capable of.
>> In general, I edit FreeBSD system files, php/html
>> and related files.

If you can do without the language-specific syntax
stuff and the color, try the vi route.  Or  nvi ,
which on my box has source code in  /usr/src/contrib .

vi/vim and nvi are full-screen editors which also
have a command line mode.  Unlike  emacs  they are
moded (commands in command mode, input text in
input mode), they have a search-and-replace capability
that can do magic (and even some voodoo -- frighten
your family and friends) and they have some very
programmer-friendly features, like the ability to
match parens, curly braces and (in nvi) angle
brackets with one keystroke.  They can shift whole
blocks of text by tabwidth, intelligently use tabs
(and set the tabwidths to your preference) and use
full regex searches.  They have a very regular input
language, they keep your fingers on the keyboard
(no sending your hand to Kennedy Airport to catch a
flight to the mouse) and nvi can edit multiple files
at once.  You can pull text into named buffers, drop
it where you like, etc.

If you like moded and you are doing program text,
they can be _very_ fast to use, especially if you
can really type -- or can fake it.

On the other hand, if you want to program your editor
into an entire IDE, look at EMACS.  I don't know how
to do it, but I have it on reliable sources that it
can be done; EMACS is said to be a Lisp operating
system disguised as an editor.

                                  Mark Terribile

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