{"id":6747,"date":"2017-11-15T17:37:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T22:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=6747"},"modified":"2017-11-15T17:42:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T22:42:02","slug":"more-on-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=6747","title":{"rendered":"More on ed<\/code>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote in amazement that there was someone who (still) liked using the ed<\/code> editor. If you’re coming in late, ed<\/code> is a line editor that was used extensively by the early Unix developers. That made a lot of sense when the input device was a teletype but, in my opinion, makes no sense at all in today’s world. I say “in my opinion” because, as I pointed out in that last post, at least one person disagrees. <\/p>\n

Either serendipitously or as a case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon<\/a>, a thread<\/a> on that very subject recently appeared on the Unix Heritage Society mailing list. In it many people wax nostalgic for ed<\/code> and even the more horrible TECO editor. A surprisingly large number of them report still using it as an everyday tool. Ed<\/code> has lived on mostly as an editor of last resort for fixing Unix systems that can’t mount the normal file systems that contain things like vi<\/code> or emacs<\/code>. Some folks, though, refuse to give it up. <\/p>\n

I have a hard enough time trying to understand why anyone would prefer editors other than Vim or Emacs so a preference for ed<\/code> makes no sense at all to me. But as they used to say back when ed<\/code> was the<\/i> Unix editor, “Different strokes for different folks.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote in amazement that there was someone who (still) liked using the ed editor. If you’re coming in late, ed is a line editor that was used extensively by the early Unix developers. That made a lot … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-6747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6749,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747\/revisions\/6749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}