Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 02:29:33 +0000 (GMT) From: a disembodied voice emerging from the chaos of reality <cjc26@cornell.edu> To: Chris Costello <chris@calldei.com> Cc: Jesus Monroy <jesus.monroy@usa.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: vi(1) is for whimps Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9906230218040.42185-100000@tankgrrl> In-Reply-To: <19990622173245.A29250@holly.dyndns.org>
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Actually, I was once in a situation where I needed to edit /etc/passwd (because some idiot trashed it and no one could log in as root), but /bin was on a different partition which I couldn't mount for some reason from single-user mode (I don't know, I didn't set up this machine), thus making it impossible to run vi or even ed. So I ended up doing echo root:*:0:0:admin:/root:/bin/csh >/etc/passwd echo daemon:*:1:1:daemon:/root:/sbin/nologin >>/etc/passwd etc. until I was done :) On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, Chris Costello wrote: | On Tue, Jun 22, 1999, Jesus Monroy wrote: | > vi(1) is for whimps | > http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/1986/viforwhimps.html | | Well, you should've posted that to -chat... | | Second, there are other things people use vi for. You can't | add a sentence to a paragraph with cat as easily as you could | with vi, such as: | | So as I headed to the bakery to get some new bread, I decided | to stop at the newspaper stand and pick up the sunday paper. | | So as I headed to the bakery to get some new, delicious white | bread, I decided to stop at the newspaper stand to pick up the | Sunday edition of the Houston Chronicle. | | vi is for people who want to get things done the right way | with a standard tool that is meant for editing files. | | If you want to be pedantic, you shouldn't use 'cat' at all for | editing files! cat is meant to catenate two or more files to | stdout. | | Try ed. | | (Although, if taken properly, the page is a good laugh) Cliff Crawford http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/ -><- i l i k e o a t m e a l )O( To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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