[dayglored]

> vi sucks, in my view. I much prefer ed. The vi command was derived from Version 6 ed, whereas some nice little improvements that were made in Version 7 ed never made it to vi.

Oh, we agree that vi sucks. I prefer modeless screen editing.

But I'm confused. The ed I know (/bin/ed) is strictly a line editor -- you even have to request a prompt 'P'. I use it when I have to edit /etc/fstab from a single-user shell when a crashed system refuses to boot with fsck hung on a failed drive. But it's only marginally better than writing with a sharp pointy stick and a pile of poo, for anything more complicated than a 10-line config file.

Are we talking about the same ed?

[ThePythonicCow]

Are we talking about the same ed?

Yup. You're talking to one of the last people on earth for whom that ancient line editor is their preferred tool. There are some things you can do with it that no other editor can do as well, even after 30 years.