From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: cowan@mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2015 09:44:16 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PWB contributions
In-Reply-To: <201511091358.tA9Dw35f010741@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201511090139.tA91dCvK006536@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
 <627C631F-2B0E-45FC-97DB-7A8FE4DBB3B8@ccc.com>
 <201511091358.tA9Dw35f010741@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <20151109144416.GA13422@mercury.ccil.org>

Doug McIlroy scripsit:

> And to set a world benchmark for software bloat. For a good time try
>         less --help | wc

I disagree entirely: it's a matter of how you see less.  For me it is
roughly comparable to ed (and indeed the primary documentation is about
the same size).  Both have the function of letting you inspect, in ways
not predictable in advance, the contents of a file.  Ed also allows
you to modify the file, whereas less has a more convenient interface
for dealing with pipeline output, and has single-keystroke convenience
commands, notably space.

(IWBNI ed had a switch to make it read stdin into the buffer and then
read commands from /dev/tty.  Obviously a wrapper script could achieve
this easily.)

Disclaimer:  I actually use ex, not ed: I'm willing to trade off a
litttle less standardosity for a little more convenience.  That also
of a minimal subset of vi commands when dealing with code that contains
highly repetitive strings, notably Lisp parentheses.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
"Repeat this until 'update-mounts -v' shows no updates.
You may well have to log in to particular machines, hunt down
people who still have processes running, and kill them."