Hi Steffen,
mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
the default values. Kurt Shoens,
kurt(_at_)ucbvax(_dot_)Berkeley(_dot_)EDU, is down
as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start. I know of no
known released file which acted otherwise.
But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
no `~v'.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
and `VISEDITOR' for the other; also suggestive that one came first
rather than both together.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
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