The question of moving vi to /bin

[John L. Templer]

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Ruben de Groot wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:36:31AM -0400, John L. Templer typed:
>> ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such,
>> at least since BSD 4.2.  Way back then there were three main editors,
>> ex, vi, and ed.  If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi.  But
>> if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you
>> used ex.  And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies.
>>
>> ed is an interactive program because the user "interacts" with it.  You
>> give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it
>> does more stuff, etc.  Interactive does not mean screen based.
> 
> ed can be used very well non-interactively.
> e.g. a script made by diff -e can be piped to it.
> 
> Ruben
> 
> 

Yes, that's true.  Perhaps I misspoke myself.  ed can be used both in
interactive mode and in a script, which is what I called "command line
mode".  However it's not correct to say that ed is not an interactive
program, as it definitely can be used interactively.
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