On Fri November 11 2005 1:10 pm, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
The particular bit of execrable human engineering in vi that bugs me the most is the mode dependence. Vi is extraordinarily vulnerable to mistyping; a couple of wrong keystrokes in insert mode and you're in command mode where the text you're typing can just about wipe out your file. as with ANY file/folder/drive, backups are important. every now and then, ef you are editing a LARGE file, it is always good to do a :w
It's too bad that vi still occupies a prominent place in Linux; as I remember it's the editor you need to use to modify the sudoers file (or maybe it's some other system file). Even the DOS editors are better, and they can operate from a command line also -- vi has colon commands ":" just like ED, and I use them often. There are no better DOS editors than VI, but we all have our opinions, and you are welcome to yours. That's exactly why there are so many editors out
then keep going. Or if you totally screw it up, a :e to start over with the existing file. VI only does what it is told. Since I fat finger things alot, I learned these lessons years ago:) there to use. I personally don't like EMACS, but that's because I already learned VI. -- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800 X-Request-PGP: http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-pcartwright/key.asc