From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: doug@cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:38:54 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] Unix taste
Message-ID: <201408021538.s72Fcs7o021169@coolidge.cs.dartmouth.edu>

> So Doug, ed?  Or what?

Yes, ed for small things. It loads instantly and works in the
current window without disturbing it. And it has been ingrained
in my fingers since Multics days.

But for heavy duty work, I use sam, in Windows as well as Linux.
Sam marries ed to screen editing much more cleanly than vi.
It has recursive global commands and infinite undo. Like qed
(whence came ed's syntax) and Larry's xvi it can work on
several files (or even several areas in one file) at once.


I would guess that a vi adept would miss having arrow keys
as well as the mouse, but probably not much else. Sam offers
one answer for my question about examples of taste reigning
in featurism during the course of Unix evolution.

Doug