From crossd at gmail.com Wed Feb 12 11:21:12 2025 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:21:12 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... Message-ID: File under "What a Drag it is Getting Old".... My kids have now reached the age where they have started to mock me. Not only must I contend with the fact that I'm not cool anymore (if, indeed, I ever really was) but I also realize that I have no idea what the slang they're using means. None whatsoever; it's all unintelligible gibberish to me. They clearly revel in my ignorance. But I have found a way to get even: I have started spelling out commands verbally, punctuated with random words, and acting like this has more general meaning (and like, you're just not hip with the rizz if you don't understand). For example, "Yo, tar x v; on cat. Sig Pipe, amirite?" I'll throw one of these out, and they stare at me with faux comprehension while I silently, inwardly gloat. Just thought I'd share. - Dan C. From norman at oclsc.org Wed Feb 12 12:09:16 2025 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 21:09:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... Message-ID: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. From dave at horsfall.org Wed Feb 12 14:31:18 2025 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:31:18 +1100 (AEDT) Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Feb 2025, Norman Wilson wrote: > Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. A former boss of mine insisted that everyone had better know how to use "ed", because after a system crash it might be the only editor available... -- Dave, who had to use "ed" over a 300bd modem From tytso at mit.edu Thu Feb 13 01:30:17 2025 From: tytso at mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:30:17 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: > Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. - Ted From johnl at taugh.com Thu Feb 13 06:48:30 2025 From: johnl at taugh.com (John Levine) Date: 12 Feb 2025 15:48:30 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> Message-ID: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> It appears that Theodore Ts'o said: >On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: >> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > >It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the >default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at >least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on >a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. R's, John From aki at insinga.com Thu Feb 13 07:03:12 2025 From: aki at insinga.com (Aron Insinga) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:03:12 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> Message-ID: <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> I can't check the size of vi or ex right now (not installed), but ed is *tiny* and starts up very quickly. On 2/12/25 15:48, John Levine wrote: > It appears that Theodore Ts'o said: >> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: >>> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. >> It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the >> default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at >> least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on >> a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. > On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it > as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. > > R's, > John From johnl at taugh.com Thu Feb 13 07:34:11 2025 From: johnl at taugh.com (John Levine) Date: 12 Feb 2025 16:34:11 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> References: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> Message-ID: <20250212213411.BD81EBC7BC95@ary.qy> It appears that Aron Insinga said: >I can't check the size of vi or ex right now (not installed), but ed is >*tiny* and starts up very quickly. On debian ex is vim.tiny whcih is about 1.6M, on FreeBSD it's nvi which is about 400K. While those are a lot bigger than ed which is about 50K, by current standards they're also tiny and they start up faster than you can see. If you want to edit something and you like ed, ex is a perfectly adequate substitute. R's, John > >On 2/12/25 15:48, John Levine wrote: >> It appears that Theodore Ts'o said: >>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: >>>> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. >>> It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the >>> default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at >>> least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on >>> a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. >> On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it >> as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Feb 13 07:38:40 2025 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 13:38:40 -0800 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> Message-ID: <20250212213840.GE31438@mcvoy.com> On my 3.7Ghz Intel box vim takes 0.4 to start up and exit and I'm pretty sure 90% of that is the time it takes me to paste :q We aren't running on under 1 mhz CPUs any more. A 10 year old Rasberry Pi had 4 cores @ 900mhz. On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 04:03:12PM -0500, Aron Insinga wrote: > I can't check the size of vi or ex right now (not installed), but ed is > *tiny* and starts up very quickly. > > On 2/12/25 15:48, John Levine wrote: > >It appears that Theodore Ts'o said: > >>On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: > >>>Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > >>It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the > >>default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at > >>least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on > >>a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. > >On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it > >as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. > > > >R's, > >John -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat From crossd at gmail.com Thu Feb 13 08:13:52 2025 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 17:13:52 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <20250212213411.BD81EBC7BC95@ary.qy> References: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> <20250212213411.BD81EBC7BC95@ary.qy> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM John Levine wrote: > It appears that Aron Insinga said: > >I can't check the size of vi or ex right now (not installed), but ed is > >*tiny* and starts up very quickly. > > On debian ex is vim.tiny whcih is about 1.6M, on FreeBSD it's nvi > which is about 400K. While those are a lot bigger than ed which is > about 50K, by current standards they're also tiny and they start up > faster than you can see. > > If you want to edit something and you like ed, ex is a perfectly adequate substitute. That's rather subjective. The `ex` command set is very close to `ed`, but subtly different in (possibly?) annoying ways. As a trivial example, `q` repeated twice in `ed` will exit even if the file being edited is not saved; to do so in `ex` one uses the `vi`-like `q!`. Maybe that's splitting fine hairs, but if the desire is for a "muscle-memory" editor in a constrained environment, that kind of thing can be maddening. An issue here is that the Internet has never reached the Padlipsky ideal of resource sharing: under Plan 9, I brought all the resources I wanted to interact with to me by importing them into some namespace on my terminal (terminal in the Plan 9 sense, not the VT102 sense), where I could interact with them using familiar and comfortable tools. But that never caught on, and the rest of the world still thinks that `ssh` is a nifty idea. Since most of us live in the real world, all too often we're constrained to remote access environments and whatever tools they come with. (Ted: I get it, man; I really do.) Incidentally, for these pragmatic reasons, I've been playing with the Helix editor, and I kinda prefer it to vi/vim. Even though I don't think that character-mode interfaces are all that cool in 2025, at least I can confidently say that I have moved boldly into the 1980s. - Dan C. > >On 2/12/25 15:48, John Levine wrote: > >> It appears that Theodore Ts'o said: > >>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: > >>>> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > >>> It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the > >>> default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at > >>> least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on > >>> a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. > >> On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it > >> as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. From coff at tuhs.org Thu Feb 13 08:38:42 2025 From: coff at tuhs.org (segaloco via COFF) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 22:38:42 +0000 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: References: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> <20250212213411.BD81EBC7BC95@ary.qy> Message-ID: On Wednesday, February 12th, 2025 at 2:13 PM, Dan Cross wrote: > On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM John Levine johnl at taugh.com wrote: > > > It appears that Aron Insinga aki at insinga.com said: > > > > > I can't check the size of vi or ex right now (not installed), but ed is > > > tiny and starts up very quickly. > > > > On debian ex is vim.tiny whcih is about 1.6M, on FreeBSD it's nvi > > which is about 400K. While those are a lot bigger than ed which is > > about 50K, by current standards they're also tiny and they start up > > faster than you can see. > > > > If you want to edit something and you like ed, ex is a perfectly adequate substitute. > > > That's rather subjective. > > The `ex` command set is very close to `ed`, but subtly different in > (possibly?) annoying ways. As a trivial example, `q` repeated twice > in `ed` will exit even if the file being edited is not saved; to do so > in `ex` one uses the `vi`-like `q!`. Maybe that's splitting fine > hairs, but if the desire is for a "muscle-memory" editor in a > constrained environment, that kind of thing can be maddening. > > An issue here is that the Internet has never reached the Padlipsky > ideal of resource sharing: under Plan 9, I brought all the resources I > wanted to interact with to me by importing them into some namespace on > my terminal (terminal in the Plan 9 sense, not the VT102 sense), where > I could interact with them using familiar and comfortable tools. But > that never caught on, and the rest of the world still thinks that > `ssh` is a nifty idea. Since most of us live in the real world, all > too often we're constrained to remote access environments and whatever > tools they come with. (Ted: I get it, man; I really do.) > > Incidentally, for these pragmatic reasons, I've been playing with the > Helix editor, and I kinda prefer it to vi/vim. Even though I don't > think that character-mode interfaces are all that cool in 2025, at > least I can confidently say that I have moved boldly into the 1980s. > > - Dan C. > > > > On 2/12/25 15:48, John Levine wrote: > > > > > > > It appears that Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu said: > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > > > > > > It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the > > > > > > default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at > > > > > > least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on > > > > > > a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. > > > > > > On all the unices I know, vi is also called ex, and if you invoke it > > > > > > as ex, it looks enough like ed to get your editing done. I made a fool of myself in the not too distant past regarding ed. I wasn't aware of the "ed is the standard UNIX text editor" meme and in earnest opened an issue on the Manjaro GitLab concerning the lack of ed in the base install. Context was I had just gotten a Pinebook Pro, which has Manjaro by default, and was doing some initial setup stuff when I found that ed simply wasn't there. I thought to myself, gee, that's been around since the beginning and is still in the POSIX standard, perhaps I'm doing something helpful by pointing it out to the Manjaro folks. Needless to say the ticket was swiftly locked and I found myself unable to open new issues with them. I in all honesty didn't realize I was treading into such laughable territory and thought I was genuinely pointing out a missing piece in their UNIX-like operating system offering. Now all the wiser and admittedly still feel silly that it isn't there...but the existence of this whole thing as a meme I believe has really only served to guarantee that any feedback in any project requesting that ed be installed by default is only ever seen as being an internet troll, no matter what references one cites... I for one like the idea that I can drop into something called a "UNIX-like" and follow tutorials like "UNIX for Beginners" without having to install a bunch of stuff...but less and less folks use these systems "like UNIX" these days so can't say I'm too surprised. All the more reason I forego a packaged distro on my daily driver. - Matt G. From mparson at bl.org Thu Feb 13 09:29:38 2025 From: mparson at bl.org (Michael Parson) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 17:29:38 -0600 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> Message-ID: <39bd2f3c517684e7cad442ccff7e0f24@bl.org> On 2025-02-11 22:31, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Tue, 11 Feb 2025, Norman Wilson wrote: > >> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > > A former boss of mine insisted that everyone had better know how to use > "ed", because after a system crash it might be the only editor > available... A bunch of years ago (~1997), I had a customer in my colo DC hose up their Solaris box, changed root's shell to /user/local/bin/bash, then logged out. Didn't have 'sudo' installed (we just log in as root when we need to do things as root). I don't remember if they even had any non-priv accounts on there. They needed my help to fix it. They didn't want me to fix it, he could do it himself... So, I went and fetched a Solaris install CD, got him to boot that into single-user mode. He immediately tried to edit /etc/passwd, but 1) that was the file on the CD, not the OS, 2) for some reason the termcap/terminfo stuff wasn't working properly, so, vi didn't work, neither did ex. I then had to walk him through mounting the real / fs, then give him keystroke by keystroke ed commands to edit the proper passwd file. Not that ed is/was hard, but he'd never used it and had no idea how to even get started with it. Could we have done this from the live system? Yeah, but he was a bit of a pain as a customer, so, I decided to be a bit malicious. Guy tended to be a bit of a know-it-all, but still needed my help with lots of pretty basic tasks. The pure fact that he tried to change root's shell AND borked the attempt might give you an idea. -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX From stuff at riddermarkfarm.ca Thu Feb 13 10:56:42 2025 From: stuff at riddermarkfarm.ca (Stuff Received) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 19:56:42 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> Message-ID: <8e2fceac-5fb5-184e-cfa1-38b42a53c103@riddermarkfarm.ca> On 2025-02-12 10:30, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: >> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. > > It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the > default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at > least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on > a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. > > - Ted Amusing given that MacOS comes with ed (as required). S. From johnl at taugh.com Thu Feb 13 11:00:14 2025 From: johnl at taugh.com (John R Levine) Date: 12 Feb 2025 20:00:14 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: References: <20250212204830.7CD1ABC7AC20@ary.qy> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <4eb311ff-3081-4403-8590-73c11dc26150@insinga.com> <20250212213411.BD81EBC7BC95@ary.qy> Message-ID: <5e7cce10-ff2a-905f-089b-33f61316c325@taugh.com> >> If you want to edit something and you like ed, ex is a perfectly adequate substitute. > > That's rather subjective. > > The `ex` command set is very close to `ed`, but subtly different in > (possibly?) annoying ways. I believe it, but if you've just booted up a linux box and you need to edit some config file, ex is close enough to ed to get the job done. It's a lot easier than trying to install emacs. Once things have settled down, sure, use whatever editor you want. R's, John From douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu Thu Feb 13 13:09:47 2025 From: douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu (Douglas McIlroy) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 22:09:47 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... External Message-ID: Besides the first day I sat at the PDP-7 console, one of the biggest Unix thrills came when when I logged in remotely to the new Cray at Bell Labs. Here was a monster machine with a manual I had never seen, and I was able to compile and run a program on it at the first try. God bless sh, ed, cc, and a.out. Doug -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph at josephholsten.com Thu Feb 13 14:52:38 2025 From: joseph at josephholsten.com (Joseph Holsten) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 20:52:38 -0800 Subject: [COFF] Kids these days.... In-Reply-To: <8e2fceac-5fb5-184e-cfa1-38b42a53c103@riddermarkfarm.ca> References: <3CEBBD3E872A6AB89CC1A5D40F1540D2.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> <20250212153017.GA106698@mit.edu> <8e2fceac-5fb5-184e-cfa1-38b42a53c103@riddermarkfarm.ca> Message-ID: <742b60bf-d9be-452b-88b7-5aa16a8da550@app.fastmail.com> On Wed, Feb 12, 2025, at 16:56, Stuff Received wrote: > On 2025-02-12 10:30, Theodore Ts'o wrote: >> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Norman Wilson wrote: >>> Remind them that ed (pronounced e d) is the standard editor. >> >> It's annoying for me that many Linux distros install vi/vim as the >> default editor, and not ed --- and I never learned how to use vi, at >> least not fluently. For me, it's either ed or emacs (or emacs-nox on >> a server/VM), so I have to install ed explicitly after a new install. >> >> - Ted > > Amusing given that MacOS comes with ed (as required). On my iPad, I’ve taken to using Blink.app as an SSH or Mosh client to real unix systems. But occasionally I just want to edit a local file. For a while ed (presumably from busybox) was “available” but crashing. Apparently they have removed ed in favor of full vim. No, the vi command is not linked to it.