ken wrote:
GNU's lame attempts at humour aside, that actually makes sense. MH
is a line oriented tool, so defaulting to a line oriented editor is
consistent with that. If the chain Editor: -> $VISUAL -> $EDITOR comes
up empty, ed is a perfectly reasonable default.
Ok, this means I get to ask a question of greybeards that I've always
wondered about.
What is the deal with VISUAL and EDITOR? I always set EDITOR; I've never
set VISUAL. I've never understood what the difference is. I'm fine with
making the hierarchy Editor: -> $VISUAL -> $EDITOR (and I think a default
of 'vi' is fine), but I've always wondered why there are two environment
variables.
not all terminals were capable of doing the cursor addressing needed
for any given screen-oriented editor. so the user was given the ability
to configure two editors -- likely "ed" and "vi", though some folks may
have used emacs or "se" :-). some programs had separate commands for
invoking the two. (for instance, see ~e and ~v in the mailx man page.)
paul
=---------------------
paul fox, pgf(_at_)foxharp(_dot_)boston(_dot_)ma(_dot_)us (arlington, ma,
where it's 45.0 degrees)
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