Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2018 15:39:50 -0700
From: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Message-ID: <20180318224005.C8D91156E510@mail.bitblocks.com>
| Bill Joy wrote vi in 1976 while at UCB.
I know, but it wasn't on the 1BSD tape (ex was I think), the vi
command in ex (and the vi command) were on the 2BSD tape
(about 78 I think.) Mail was on the 1BSD tape I believe
(that is, I thnk I remember...)
| I believe MH came later.
The Rand distribution, with MH and e, was at a similar time
to the 1BSD tape, arund 76-77. Which was first I have no
idea, but development on them would have been happening
more or less in parallel.
| From what I recollect, more people used Mail
| than MH and I believe the $EDITOR/$VISUAL convention for
| calling an editor was well established.
EDITOR and VISUAL are environment variables - therefore did
not exist before 7th edition (or 32V) - that is, about 79. All of
MH, e, ex, vi, and Mail existed long before those could possibly
have been in use. Exactly when EDITOR first appeared I am
not sure (it was not one of the env vars used by anthing in the
7th edition - the editor there was just ed - no need to be able to
specify an alternative.) VISUAL as an alternative to EDITOR
came much later.
kre
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